The Government is Playing a Game Of Tag, And You'er It

It's always been an issue with me since I was a young child, privacy. Maybe because I didn't have a lock on my bedroom, or because I lived in a small town in South Western Pennsylvania, where everyone new what you were doing, and mom and dad, new it before you got home. But what ever the reason, I like my privacy.
This is the reason I fight against the Patriot Act, the government being allowed to listen in on phone and computer conversations. There is a not so new thing going on in that department, that my partner in crime and I wrote about awhile back, and that is chipping.
I was going to take the day off today, and get some much needed work done around here, but I ran across this article in my News scanning ritual, and I thought I would share it with you. It is on how you are tagged and you don't even realize it. All in the name of trying to save a buck. Read on>>>

What makes this different from classic "bar codes" is that the data storage capacity for RFID enables each and every tagged item to have its own unique identifier, whereas the bar code system has one code for an entire class of item.

The Gillet Corporation, has begun to put chips in all of their products, and to no ones surprise Wal-Mart is the biggest investor in these tracking devices, shelling out 250 million in RFID technology. Wal-Mart requires all of its high end electronics to have the RFID chips, and tags in them.  

The government is also getting in on the RFID action. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is testing the use of RFID-tagged cards for visitors to and from the United States. Border guards would "read" the cards each time a visitor to the U.S. crossed the divide. The Defense Department has issued several big-ticket contracts to RFID suppliers in order to tag their shipments of food, clothes, and weapons around the world.

Medical Use
The chips could have a upside to them, say an elderly person is unable to give their medical information in the Emergency Room, the attending would only have to scan the person to get the information.
There is a chip that is being used on pets, to help track them incase they are lost, or there is a medical need.

A rabies scare in the Bordeaux region of France in September 2004 motivated the Digital Angel Crop.to distribute 50,000 of its RFID tags to implant in pets in the region. A year later, Digital Angel supplied 2,000 chips and 28 readers to identify pets displaced by Hurricane Katrina, both to read chips that had already been implanted in pets, and to create a database of information about the animals in order to identify them.

Tommy Thompson, the former Secretary of Health and Human services under the Bush administration, now on the board of VeriChip said in an interview on CBS Market Watch,

Today everybody knows what an iPod is," said Thompson, "and the same thing as with a chip in your arm that is placed there instantaneously, and is going to be able to help you secure your medical records which will be able to allow you to...be able to get immediate care."

Thompson also said that he would be willing to have the chip put in him, but as of Dec. 5th,  has not had the procedure.
Fighting For You
No one has fought harder than Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, to expose the usage of the RFID chips. Albrecht and McIntyre recently published "Spy Chips: How Major Corporations and Governments Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID," which details their investigations of RFID usage and its implications.

McIntyre said that Walgreens and Goliath could use their new RFID system "not just to track displays, but customers as well." She noted that Goliath has emphasized the ability to hide the RFID readers in light fixtures and other unobtrusive areas, "so customers couldn't see them."
"Furthermore," says the filing, "it will allow the flow of specific shopper traffic within a store to be monitored and analyzed. In addition, the system will allow subsequent marketing programs, such as coupons or direct mail, to be tailored to or made conditional on shopper interests, shopping patterns, or prior exposure to marketing materials."
The Pentagon has been in talks with VeriChip" over using these technologies, said McIntyre. "We're looking at...a government-held database of medical information records on every American."
Alex Eckelberry thinks that the usage of RFID for surveillance presages an erosion of individual privacy, and individual liberty with it.

  Tag you're it!
ABA