The Real Id Act passed in the spring of 2005
federalized control over driver's licenses. "The act gave the
Department of Homeland Security the power to set technology
standards for licenses -- including the potential to require them
to carry RFID chips. Requiring spychips in licenses would mean
consumers could not leave home without a tracking device, at least
not if they're driving. (This bill has been widely denounced by
civil libertarians as creating a de facto national ID card.)" from
Spychips by Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre.
Governments like to assure their citizens that
surveillance will make them safer, but surveillance is more likely
to ensure the security of the regime in power than to protect the
citizens. Once surveillance tools are in place,’ governments
are tempted to use them to identify and hassle people who oppose
their rule, whether they are members of opposing political parties
(think Watergate) or citizens acting for peaceful change (think
Martin Luther King, or, more recently, twenty-one-year-old Sara
Bardwell, a member of the group “Food not Bombs” that
cooks for the homeless, who was intimidated by the FBI for
protesting the Iraq War. Surveillance by the state has a chilling
effect on people’s willingness to work for social change and
root out abuse. In a surveillance state, people keep their heads
low and conform. And, of course, that’s just how the
government likes it." from Spychips by Katherine Albrecht and Liz
McIntyre.
U.S.
School District to Begin Microchipping Students --Buses
fitted with global positioning system (GPS) devices 16 Jun 2008
A Rhode Island school district has announced a pilot program to
monitor student movements by means of radio frequency
identification (RFID) chips implanted in their schoolbags. The
Middletown School District, in partnership with MAP Information
Technology Corp., has launched a pilot program to implant RFID
chips into the schoolbags of 80 children at the Aquidneck School.
Each chip would be programmed with a student identification number,
and would be read by an external device installed in one of two
school buses.
From the Daily Reckoning dated 6/3/06
This past Thursday, the House approved this set of rules that
will force
states to issue every adult American citizen an electronic ID card.
The
bill was approved by a 261-161 vote.
"Passed without congressional debate as a rider tucked into the
2005
Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Defense, the Global War
on
Terror and Tsunami Relief," reports Detroit's Metro Times, "the act
seeks
to have states drastically overhaul procedures for issuing
drivers'
licenses by increasing the amount of documentation required to
prove
citizenship or legal residency and boosting the personal
information
contained on each card, including the addition of biometric
identifiers
such as fingerprints or retinal scans."
As if that wasn't creepy enough, University of Washington School of
Law
professor Anita Ramasastry reported in a column for CNN.com, such
tags
emit radio frequency signals that would "allow the government to
track the
movement of our cards and us."
"Private businesses," Ramasastry adds, "may be able to use remote
scanners
to read RFID tags too, and add to the
digital dossiers they may already be
compiling. If different merchants combine their data - you can
imagine the
sorts of profiles that will develop. And unlike with a grocery
store
checkout, we may have no idea the scan is even occurring; no
telltale beep
will alert us."
What's next? Microchips implanted in our brains so that Big Brother
read
our minds along with the ability to listen to our phone calls, read
our
emails, and know where we are at all times.
Signed into law April 24, 2008, the oh-so innocent sounding
Newborn
Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007 establishes a national
database
of newborn DNA. This law establishes collection and warehousing
of
newborn DNA for scientific research and requires no parental
consent
or knowledge.http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/6676