California Senate Blocks Foolish Chip Implants
Per an article in today's Los Angeles Times:
Putting "mark of the Beast" hysteria aside for the moment, the entire notion of tagging people with these chips is sheer idiocy from a purely technical standpoint. It's not some magic bullet that will make everything secure and controllable.
While this Democratic representative seems to have gotten a clue, somebody seriously needs to give the majority of people in "leadership" positions a course in chaos theory, like YESTERDAY.
To those that think, "Oh well, if we just tag prisoners, or illegals, or well everybody, then we'll know right off whether they're a criminal, or a threat of any kind," I have but one word for you: REPROGRAMMING.
And anyone who tells you they've made the tech hacker-proof ought to be slapped immediately, and HARD.
Already it's been proven that those idiot RFID tags their putting into our passports are useless, because they can be wiped and reprogrammed to say whatever the hell you want.
And the real danger with such an over-reliance on this sort of thing is that it lends a false sense of security.
The extreme extension of this would be to imagine Osama bin Laden himself walking up to the border control agent bold as day, but if his passport RFID tag says, "I'm innocent Mr. Magillicutty, a simple cobbler from Connecticut", that border control believes what the damned chip says, and not their own eyes. Just because the computer says it, it doesn't make it so. That applies to our voting, and it would sure as hell apply here. The data is only as reliable as the person who programmed it.
Like all of these foolish "security over freedoms" measures from illegal wiretapping, to permitting torture, or detention without trial, the only people the technology ends up constraining or unfairly abusing are ordinary, law-abiding citizens, and actually ends up HELPING the very bad people we're trying to stop.
The criminals and ultimately even ordinary people will find ways around it, so therefore all you've done is spend gobs of money to hurt innocent people, and yielded zero results save for bad ones.
It's like pouring water over a hand. The more you tighten your grip, the more water slips through your fingers.
Implanting RFID chips into humans, especially if it's mandatory, is pointless, totalitarian, and completely antithetical to the American spirit. It's an affront to the presumption of innocence, to whatever's left of the 4th Amendment, and is merely the technological equivalent of the Soviet, "Papers please!"
The state Senate passed legislation that would bar employers from requiring workers to have identification devices implanted under their skin.
State Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) proposed the measure after at least one company began marketing radio frequency identification devices for use in humans.
The devices, as small as a grain of rice, can be used by employers to identify workers. A scanner passing over a body part implanted with one can instantly identify the person.
"RFID is a minor miracle, with all sorts of good uses," Simitian said. "But we shouldn't condone forced 'tagging' of humans. It's the ultimate invasion of privacy."
Simitian said he fears that the devices could be compromised by persons with unauthorized scanners, facilitating identity theft and improper tracking and surveillance.
Putting "mark of the Beast" hysteria aside for the moment, the entire notion of tagging people with these chips is sheer idiocy from a purely technical standpoint. It's not some magic bullet that will make everything secure and controllable.
While this Democratic representative seems to have gotten a clue, somebody seriously needs to give the majority of people in "leadership" positions a course in chaos theory, like YESTERDAY.
To those that think, "Oh well, if we just tag prisoners, or illegals, or well everybody, then we'll know right off whether they're a criminal, or a threat of any kind," I have but one word for you: REPROGRAMMING.
And anyone who tells you they've made the tech hacker-proof ought to be slapped immediately, and HARD.
Already it's been proven that those idiot RFID tags their putting into our passports are useless, because they can be wiped and reprogrammed to say whatever the hell you want.
And the real danger with such an over-reliance on this sort of thing is that it lends a false sense of security.
The extreme extension of this would be to imagine Osama bin Laden himself walking up to the border control agent bold as day, but if his passport RFID tag says, "I'm innocent Mr. Magillicutty, a simple cobbler from Connecticut", that border control believes what the damned chip says, and not their own eyes. Just because the computer says it, it doesn't make it so. That applies to our voting, and it would sure as hell apply here. The data is only as reliable as the person who programmed it.
Like all of these foolish "security over freedoms" measures from illegal wiretapping, to permitting torture, or detention without trial, the only people the technology ends up constraining or unfairly abusing are ordinary, law-abiding citizens, and actually ends up HELPING the very bad people we're trying to stop.
The criminals and ultimately even ordinary people will find ways around it, so therefore all you've done is spend gobs of money to hurt innocent people, and yielded zero results save for bad ones.
It's like pouring water over a hand. The more you tighten your grip, the more water slips through your fingers.
Implanting RFID chips into humans, especially if it's mandatory, is pointless, totalitarian, and completely antithetical to the American spirit. It's an affront to the presumption of innocence, to whatever's left of the 4th Amendment, and is merely the technological equivalent of the Soviet, "Papers please!"
posted by CTF Editor at
4:11 AM
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