Biometric cards and implants with RFID (arphid) chips raising objections from religious

Bruce Sterling commented on this article in Wired recently. Will the invasion of our personal spaces, whether we are thinking "privacy rights" or "mark of the beast" be a uniting factor between libertarians, constitutional rights advocates, and Christian evangelicals?

The RFID (arphid) is just a radio frequency technical gadget, right? Or is it more? My biggest worry is that the standards for the ID chip being put into American's ID cards (passports, state IDs) is from Walmart. "I buy, therefore I am?"

It is a small device
which is about the size of a grain of rice. It is a new development
which eliminates the necessity of using currency or credit cards. It is
already being used by the wealthy as a tool to help prevent kidnapping.
You will use it for it’s advantages and to help prevent fraud and
identity theft. MOTOROLA (an Israeli Company) is the one producing the
microchip for MONDEX SMARTCARD. They developed several implants for
humans using the “Bio-chip.” The “bio-chip” measures 7mm of length and
0.075mm wide, as large as a grain of rice. It contains a transponder
and a rechargeable Lithium battery. The battery is recharged by a
thermocouple circuit that produces an electrical current with the
fluctuation of body temperature. from Ghanaweb.com

My recent post for e-media tidbits

Image via Wikipedia Read my story here.

This is not funny. It is alarming.

Follow my story about privacy, especially the alarming forced use of RFID devices in government issued identity documents. The picture shows one common RFID device, but look at your credit cards and you might find you are carrying, or is it broadcasting, from your RFID-enabled card.

clipped from poynter.org Posted by Barb Iverson 1:18:58 PM Sept. Scientific American: Dude, Where's My Privacy? this is a good time to pause and reflect on the dark side of being socially wired in to a global network -- from identity theft, to the meaning of privacy, to RFID chips that can track more than inventory.

From arstechnica about Washington state's law.

RFID Tags Not Good for your Security

Image via Wikipedia

Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate, has written an article in September's Scientific American, which is devoted to "Privacy,"detailing how the RFID chip in your clothes (or credit card, or passport) can be detrimental to your privacy.

This is a theme currentbuzz has touched on for many years. From cute "dog-tags" and bracelets in elementary school in Celebration, Fl, that let kids move from room to room without logging onto school computers each time, to casinos that watch for pilferage by money-counting employees, to the retailer who just might use the ubiquitous RFID tag to target sales to you, instead of simply using the tag for inventory control, each use of the tag without consideration of the power of these chips and the ease with which information can be read from them, puts us, the public, at risk.

"the risk: anyone with a readily available reader device—unscrupulous marketers, government agents, stalkers, thieves and just plain snoops—can also access the data on the licenses to remotely track people without their knowledge or consent. What is more, once the tag’s ID number is associated with an individual’s identity—for example, when the person carrying the license makes a credit-card transaction—the radio tag becomes a proxy for that individual. And the driver’s licenses are just the latest addition to a growing array of “tagged” items that consumers might be wearing or carrying around, such as transit and toll passes, office key cards, school IDs, “contactless” credit cards, clothing, phones and even groceries."

clipped from www.sciam.com Radio-frequency identi­fication (RFID) tags are embedded in a growing number of personal items and identity documents. Because the tags were designed to be powerful tracking devices and they typically incorporate little security, people wearing or carrying them are vulnerable to surreptitious surveillance and profiling.