Everybody Must Get Chipped!

[gunug]

In a BBC Forum article science fiction author Elizabeth Moon mandates that we should all of us have a chip or barcode:

QUOTE

If I were empress of the Universe I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached - a barcode if you will; an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals.

It would be imprinted on everyone at birth. Point the scanner at someone and there it is.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120522-b...eryone-at-birth

What do we think of this?  And more importantly where would we put it?  On the back of the neck like Barbie and Ken?  Under our boxer shorts like the guy in Johnny English who is pretending to be the Archbishop of Canterbury?  (Christ is coming, look busy!)

Should I write this as a survey?

[krissel]

A man named Adolph had a similar idea about 70 years ago.

This has zero chance of being implemented in the USA, at least in the foreseeable future. I don't want someone tracking my every move....yeah, I know, it's getting pretty close to that now.  

[Paddy]

Oh yeah - great idea IF all the people in power - our governments, police forces, armed forces etc. were a nice, extremely intelligent, well-behaved, entirely honorable bunch who would never, ever made a mistake about anything, or never, ever spied on/arrested/tortured/killed anyone for illegal/highly suspect reasons.

But that's hardly the case, is it?

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too."  ~ W. Somerset Maugham

[tacit]

QUOTE(krissel @ May 24 2012, 04:40 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

A man named Adolph had a similar idea about 70 years ago.

This has zero chance of being implemented in the USA, at least in the foreseeable future. I don't want someone tracking my every move....yeah, I know, it's getting pretty close to that now.  

Well, tracking is a bit different from identification. A bar code can identify you but not track you, just as a drivers license can identify you but not track you.

I'm not quite sure what the point of an identification barcode or chip or whatever would be. I mean, what's the intended purpose? To prove that John Smith is actually John Smith? Under what circumstances would that be necessary where we don't have any means to identify someone now, what function would it serve, and what would keep people from using bribery, hacking, or other means to modify their entry in the database if they so desired?

Privacy and intrusion issues aside, I just don't get the *point* of such a system.

[Xairbusdriver]

QUOTE

Privacy and intrusion issues aside, I just don't get the *point* of such a system.

Surely you jest. If you put those issues aside, what is left?! Any means of identification can be used for tracking. But tracking is much more useful if it includes knowing who is being tracked! The fact that someone is somewhere is interesting, knowing who that person is would be much more valuable to many entities. I may be paranoid, but I'm not naive enough to not see at least some abusive uses for this technique. And the two biggest abuses would be privacy and intrusion. I gotta' shut down the computer right now, there are some black helicopters coming this way.

[krissel]

Tracking is merely identification in more than one place at different times. The radio frequency chips can be read without your knowledge as you pass by a scanner.  This is ideal for that.  No one can convince me that it would only be used to identify me in case I'm found lying somewhere.  

[Xairbusdriver]

But who would ever accuse you of lying?!

I think part of the problem some of us have is simply the meanings of "tracking" and "identification." I suppose it would be possible to merely track that a chip bearer has been scanned at a specific location. But I also assume that the chip will provide much more unique information; identifying as much information as can be on the chip and correlated to information stored in other places. Otherwise, the 'tracking' could be done with a turnstile/light bean/pressure pad.

"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." (Admins excluded, of course!    )