When it won't need a tyranny to deprive us of our freedom

[Guest guest]

" Zepp " <zepp

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 21:52:49 -0800

[Zepps_News] When it won't need a tyranny to deprive us of

our freedom

 

 

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1714256,00.html

 

When it won't need a tyranny to deprive us of our freedom

 

The creeping extension of implantation technology will eventually

break down all the barriers between us and the state

 

[it's going to make it harder to diagnose certain patients. It used

to be that if someone came up to me and told me the government was

tracking them through a device the government had implanted in them,

you could pretty much assume you were talking to a paranoid

schizophrenic. No more...]

 

George Monbiot

Tuesday February 21, 2006

The Guardian

 

It received just a few column inches in a couple of papers, but the

story I read last week looks to me like a glimpse of the future. A

company in Ohio called City-Watcher has implanted radio transmitters

into the arms of two of its workers. The implants ensure that only

they can enter the strongroom. Apparently it is " the first known case

in which US workers have been tagged electronically as a way of

identifying them " .

 

The transmitters are tiny (about the size of a grain of rice), cheap

(£85 and falling fast), safe and stable. Without being maintained or

replaced, they can identify someone for many years. They are injected,

with a local anaesthetic, into the upper arm. They require no power

source, as they become active only when scanned. There are no

technical barriers to their wider deployment.

 

The company that makes these " radio frequency identification tags " ,

the VeriChip Corporation, says they " combine access control with the

location and protection of individuals " . The chips can also be

implanted in hospital patients, especially children and people who are

mentally ill. When doctors want to know who they are and what their

medical history is, they simply scan them in. This, apparently, is " an

empowering option to affected individuals " . For a while, a school in

California toyed with the idea of implanting the chips in all its pupils.

 

A tag such as this has a maximum range of a few metres. But another

implantable device emits a signal that allows someone to be found or

tracked by satellite. The patent notice says it can be used to locate

the victims of kidnapping or people lost in the wilderness. There are,

in other words, plenty of legitimate uses for implanted chips. This is

why they bother me. A technology whose widespread deployment, if

attempted now, would be greeted with horror, will gradually become

unremarkable. As this happens, its purpose will begin to creep.

 

At first the tags will be more widely used for workers with special

security clearance. No one will be forced to wear one; no one will

object. Then hospitals - and a few in the US are already doing this -

will start scanning their unconscious or incoherent patients to see

whether they have a tag. Insurance companies might start to demand

that vulnerable people are chipped.

 

The armed forces will discover that they are more useful than dog tags

for identifying injured soldiers or for tracking troops who are lost

or have been captured by the enemy. Prisons will soon come to the same

conclusion. Then sweatshops in developing countries will begin to

catch on. Already the overseers seek to control their workers to the

second; determining when they clock on, when they visit the toilet,

even the number of hand movements they perform. A chip makes all this

easier.

 

The workers will not be forced to have them, any more than they are

forced to have sex with their bosses; but if they don't accept the

conditions, they don't get the job. After that, it surely won't be

long before asylum seekers are confronted with a similar choice: you

don't have to accept an implant, but if you refuse, you can't stay in

the country.

 

I think it will probably stop there. I don't believe that you or I or

most comfortable, mentally competent people will be forced to wear a

tag. But itwill become an increasingly acceptable means of tracking

and identifying people who could be a danger to themselves, or who

could be at risk of sudden illness or disappearance, or who are

otherwise hard for companies or governments to control. They will, on

the whole, be people whose political voice is muted.

 

As it is with all such intrusions on our privacy, it won't be easy to

put your finger on exactly what's wrong with this technology. It won't

really amount to a new form of control, as all the people who accept

the implants will already be subject to monitoring or tracking of one

kind or another. It will always be voluntary, at least to the extent

that anything the state or our employers want us to do is voluntary. But

there is something utterly revolting about it. It is another means by

which the barriers between ourselves and the state, ourselves and the

corporation, ourselves and the machine are broken down. In that tiny

capsule we find the paradox of 21st-century capitalism: a political

system that celebrates choice, autonomy and individualism above all

other virtues demands that choice, autonomy and individualism are

perpetually suppressed.

 

While implanted chips will not lead to the mass scanning of the

population, another use of the same technology quite possibly will. At

the end of last month, a leaked letter from Andy Burnham, the Home

Office minister, revealed that the identity cards for which we will

involuntarily volunteer will contain radio frequency identification

chips. This will allow the authorities to read the cards with a scanner.

 

I propose that as the technology improves, the police will be able to

scan a crowd and (assuming everyone is carrying his

voluntary-compulsory ID card) produce a list of whom it contains. I

further propose that it will take only a year or two for this to seem

reasonable.

 

Already we have become used to the police filming demonstrations for

the same purpose. When they started doing it, about 10 years ago, it

caused outrage. It gave us the impression that by protesting we became

suspects. But now we don't even notice them: even to the extent of

waving and shouting, " Hello, Mum " . Like every other intrusion on our

privacy, they have become normal.

 

I also propose that the mass scanning these identification chips will

allow will be assisted by another kind of surveillance technology.

Last week, campaigners in west Wales obtained a letter sent by the

Welsh Development Agency to Ceredigion County Council. It revealed

that the agency, with the help of the European Union, is setting up an

industrial estate outside Aberystwyth. Its purpose is the " market

acceleration " of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). With the help of

companies such as BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and our new friend Qinetiq,

the agency hopes to find the best way of encouraging the " routine

operation of UAV systems UK-wide " . Ceredigion council's website lists

various functions of the UAVs, of which the first is " law enforcement " .

 

So the police won't even have to be there. Someone sitting in a

control room could fly a tiny drone (some of them are just a few

inches across) equipped with a receiver over the heads of a crowd and,

with the help of our new identity cards, determine who's there. It

sounds quite mad, just as the idea of biometric identity cards in the

UK once did. All these new technologies somehow contrive to seem both

wildly implausible and entirely likely.

 

There will be no dramatic developments. We will not step out of our

homes one morning to discover that the state, or our boss, or our

insurance company, knows everything about us. But, if the muted response

to the ID card is anything to go by, we will gradually submit, in the

name of our own protection, to the demands of the machine. And it will

not then require a tyrannical new government to deprive us of our

freedom. Step by voluntary step, we will have given it up already.

 

www.monbiot.com

 

--

" Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government

talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court

order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about

chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order

before we do so "

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004

 

Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com

For news feed, http:////zepps_news

For essays (please contribute!) http://zepps_essays

[Guest guest]

The Verichip and its relative RFID are already being promoted for

healthcare.....already FDA approved..being promoted and used. All

might find it interesting to take a look at this....and I agree, this is

very frightening for what it will become in the future. Think

carefully! http://www.ncvhs.hhs.gov/050111mn.htm

<http://www.ncvhs.hhs.gov/050111mn.htm> Department on Health and Human

Services; National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics;

Subcomittee on Privacy and Confidentiality. Claudia French RN, LPHA

cfrench180 <cfrench180

International Medical Veritas Association

http://imva.info/ <http://imva.info/> Diabetics International

Foundation

http://members.tripod.com/diabetics_world/

<http://members.tripod.com/diabetics_world/>

 

, " califpacific "

<califpacific wrote:

>

> " Zepp " zepp

> Mon, 20 Feb 2006 21:52:49 -0800

> [Zepps_News] When it won't need a tyranny to deprive us of

> our freedom

>

>

>

>

> http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1714256,00.html

>

> When it won't need a tyranny to deprive us of our freedom

>

> The creeping extension of implantation technology will eventually

> break down all the barriers between us and the state

>

> [it's going to make it harder to diagnose certain patients. It used

> to be that if someone came up to me and told me the government was

> tracking them through a device the government had implanted in them,

> you could pretty much assume you were talking to a paranoid

> schizophrenic. No more...]

>

> George Monbiot

> Tuesday February 21, 2006

> The Guardian

>

>