Identity Badge Worn Under Skin

Here is a better idea. Why don't we just tatoo a bar code on everyone's forehead? We can even do forearms; just like the Nazis.

n2s :barf:
 
Be careful where you tattoo that bar code. If the supermarket scanner accidentally hits it, you may be embarrassed to find how little you go for.
 
I just came across this in my files, from three years ago. In retrospect, the last line is ironic: it isn't taking long, is it?

Threat of National ID
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON -- A device is now available to help pet owners find lost animals. It's a little chip implanted under the skin in the back of the neck; any animal shelter can quickly scan lost dogs or cats and pick up the address of the worried owner.

That's a good side of identification technology. There's a bad side: fear of terrorism has placed Americans in danger of trading our "right to be let alone" for the false sense of security of a national identification card.

All of us are willing to give up some of our personal privacy in return for greater safety. That's why we gladly suffer the pat-downs and "wanding" at airports, and show a local photo ID before boarding. Such precautions contribute to our peace of mind.

However, the fear of terror attack is being exploited by law enforcement sweeping for suspects as well as by commercial marketers seeking prospects. It has emboldened the zealots of intrusion to press for the holy grail of snoopery — a mandatory national ID.

Police unconcerned with the sanctity of an individual's home have already developed heat sensors to let them look inside people's houses. The federal "Carnivore" surveillance system feeds on your meatiest e- mail. Think you can encrypt your way to privacy? The Justice Department is proud of its new "Magic Lantern": all attempts by computer owners to encode their messages can now be overwhelmed by an electronic bug the F.B.I. can plant on your keyboard to read every stroke.

But in the dreams of Big Brother and his cousin, Big Marketing, nothing can compare to forcing every person in the United States — under penalty of law — to carry what the totalitarians used to call "papers."

The plastic card would not merely show a photograph, signature and address, as driver's licenses do. That's only the beginning. In time, and with exquisite refinements, the card would contain not only a fingerprint, description of DNA and the details of your eye's iris, but a host of other information about you.

Hospitals would say: How about a chip providing a complete medical history in case of emergencies? Merchants would add a chip for credit rating, bank accounts and product preferences, while divorced spouses would lobby for a rundown of net assets and yearly expenditures. Politicians would like to know voting records and political affiliation. Cops, of course, would insist on a record of arrests, speeding tickets, E-Z pass auto movements and links to suspicious Web sites and associates.

All this information and more is being collected already. With a national ID system, however, it can all be centered in a single dossier, even pressed on a single card — with a copy of that card in a national databank, supposedly confidential but available to any imaginative hacker.

What about us libertarian misfits who take the trouble to try to "opt out"? We will not be able to travel, or buy on credit, or participate in tomorrow's normal life. Soon enough, police as well as employers will consider those who resist full disclosure of their financial, academic, medical, religious, social and political affiliations to be suspect.

The universal use and likely abuse of the national ID — a discredit card — will trigger questions like: When did you begin subscribing to these publications and why were you visiting that spicy or seditious Web site? Why are you afraid to show us your papers on demand? Why are you paying cash? What do you have to hide?

Today's diatribe will be scorned as alarmist by the same security-mongers who shrugged off our attorney general's attempt to abolish habeas corpus (which libertarian protests and the Bush administration's sober second thoughts seem to be aborting). But the lust to take advantage of the public's fear of terrorist penetration by penetrating everyone's private lives — this time including the lives of U.S. citizens protected by the Fourth Amendment — is gaining popularity.

Beware: It is not just an efficient little card to speed you though lines faster or to buy you sure-fire protection from suicide bombers. A national ID card would be a ticket to the loss of much of your personal freedom. Its size could then be reduced for implantation under the skin in the back of your neck.
Click to expand...
 
Maybe you aren't aware that you're already far, far too late and barking up the wrong tree:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/022904rfidtagsexplode.html

The tags can already potentially be in anything manufactured in the last few years.

At least the proposed implants have the potential to do something useful and at least its public so when laws are passed governing the tags you can react.

Banning the technology is utterly futile. Uninventing is VERY difficult, especially this late in the day. Using unsound arguments against specific implementations of the tags is also pretty futile because your opponents have fairly concrete (or should have unless they're stupid ministers who are too lazy to do their homework) reasons for their existance while you only have speculation. You need to know EXACTLY how the tags are really being abused, record/document the abuse and let the world know.

Try again.
 
Try what? The case against mandatory national identification in any form is clear. In the form of intrusive technology, it is even more insidious. If you are convinced that the State will protect you, against all experience, then all I can say is, you are welcome to wear your chains with pride. I will not.
 
if ya dont worry about stuff like this ya have more faith in our gov't than me, the folks who injected men with syphilis back in the '30s and '40s for testing and put the japanese americans in internment camps, just for starters, yes it bothers me.
 
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