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The Implanted Radio-Frequency
Identification Chip: "Smart Cards" in a Surveillance Society RFID tags implanted in physical objects or human
beings By Tom Burghardt http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10097
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Global Research, September 6, 2008 |
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If incorporating personal details into
an RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip implanted into a passport or
driver's license may sound like a "smart" alternative to endless
lines at the airport and intrusive questioning by securocrats, think again. Since the late 1990s, corporate grifters
have touted the "benefits" of the devilish transmitters as a
"convenient" and "cheap" way to tag individual
commodities, one that would "revolutionize" inventory management and
theft prevention. Indeed, everything from paper towels to shoes, pets to
underwear have been "tagged" with the chips. "Savings"
would be "passed on" to the consumer. Call it the Wal-Martization
of everyday life. RFID tags are small computer chips
connected to miniature antennae that can be fixed to or implanted within
physical objects, including human beings. The RFID chip itself contains an
Electronic Product Code that can be "read" when a RFID reader emits
a radio signal. The chips are divided into two categories, passive or active.
A "passive" tag doesn't contain a battery and its "read"
range is variable, from less than an inch to twenty or thirty feet. An
"active" tag on the other hand, is self-powered and has a much
longer range. The data from an "active" tag can be sent directly to
a computer system involved in inventory control--or surveillance. But as Consumers Against Supermarket
Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Electronic Privacy
Information Center (EPIC) state in a joint position paper, "RFID has the potential to jeopardize consumer privacy, reduce
or eliminate purchasing anonymity, and threaten civil liberties." As
these organizations noted: While there are beneficial uses of RFID,
some attributes of the technology could be deployed in ways that threaten
privacy and civil liberties: * Hidden
placement of tags. RFID tags can be embedded into/onto objects and
documents without the knowledge of the individual who obtains those items. As
radio waves travel easily and silently through fabric, plastic, and other
materials, it is possible to read RFID tags sewn into clothing or affixed to
objects contained in purses, shopping bags, suitcases, and more. * Unique
identifiers for all objects worldwide. The Electronic Product Code
potentially enables every object on earth to have its own unique ID. The use
of unique ID numbers could lead to the creation of a global item registration
system in which every physical object is identified and linked to its
purchaser or owner at the point of sale or transfer. * Massive data aggregation. RFID deployment requires the creation of massive databases containing
unique tag data. These records could be linked with personal identifying
data, especially as computer memory and processing capacities expand. * Hidden
readers. Tags can be read from a distance, not restricted to line of
sight, by readers that can be incorporated invisibly into nearly any
environment where human beings or items congregate. RFID readers have already
been experimentally embedded into floor tiles, woven into carpeting and floor
mats, hidden in doorways, and seamlessly incorporated into retail shelving and
counters, making it virtually impossible for a consumer to know when or if he
or she was being "scanned." * Individual
tracking and profiling. If personal identity were linked with unique RFID
tag numbers, individuals could be profiled and tracked without their
knowledge or consent. For example, a tag embedded in a shoe could serve as a
de facto identifier for the person wearing it. Even if item-level information
remains generic, identifying items people wear or carry could associate them
with, for example, particular events like political rallies. ("Position Statement on the Use of RFID on Consumer
Products," Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, November 14, 2003)
As last week's mass repression of peaceful protest at the Republican
National Convention in St. Paul amply demonstrated, the Bush regime's
"preemptive war" strategy has been rolled out in the heimat. As
the World Socialist Web Site reports, On Wednesday
eight members of the anarchist protest group the Republican National
Convention Welcoming Committee (RNCWC) were charged under provisions of the
Minnesota state version of the Patriot Act with "Conspiracy to Riot in
Furtherance of Terrorism." The eight
charged are all young, and could face up to seven-and-a-half years in prison
under a provision that allows the enhancement of charges related to terrorism
by 50 percent. ... Among other
things, the youth, who were arrested last weekend even prior to the start of
the convention, are charged with plotting to kidnap delegates to the RNC,
assault police officers and attack airports. Almost all of the charges listed
are based upon the testimony of police infiltrators, one an officer, the
other a paid informant. (Tom Eley, "RNC in Twin Cities: Eight
protesters charged with terrorism under Patriot Act," World Socialist
Web Site, 6 September 2008) As the ACLU pointed out, "These charges are an effort to equate
publicly stated plans to blockade traffic and disrupt the RNC as being the
same as acts of terrorism. This both trivializes real violence and attempts
to place the stated political views of the defendants on trial," said
Bruce Nestor, president of the Minnesota Chapter of the National Lawyers
Guild. "The charges represent an abuse of the criminal justice system
and seek to intimidate any person organizing large scale public
demonstrations potentially involving civil disobedience," he said. An affidavit filed by the cops in order to allow the preemptive police
raid and subsequent arrests declared that the RNCWC is a "criminal
enterprise" strongly implying that the group of anarchist youth were
members of a "terrorist organization." Which, as we have learned over these last seven and a half years of
darkness, is precisely the point: keep 'em scared and passive. And when
they're neither scared nor passive, resort to police state tactics of mass
repression. While the cops beat and arrested demonstrators and journalists
outside the Xcel Energy Center, neanderthal-like Republican mobs chanted
"USA! USA!" while the execrable theocratic fascist, Sarah Palin,
basked in the limelight. But I digress... Likened to barcodes that scan items at the grocery store check-out
line, what industry flacks such as the Association for Automatic
Identification and Mobility (AIM) fail to mention in their propaganda about RFID is that the
information stored on a passport or driver's license is readily stolen by
anyone with a reader device--marketers, security agents, criminals or
stalkers--without the card holder even being remotely aware that they are
being tracked and their allegedly "secure" information plundered. According
to a blurb on the AIM website, Automatic Identification and Mobility (AIM) technologies are a diverse
family of technologies that share the common purpose of identifying,
tracking, recording, storing and communicating essential business, personal,
or product data. In most cases, AIM technologies serve as the front end of
enterprise software systems, providing fast and accurate collection and entry
of data. ("Technologies," Association
for Automatic Identification and Mobility, no date) Among the "diverse family of technologies" touted by AIM,
many are rife with "dual-use" potential, that is, the same
technology that can keep track of a pallet of soft drinks can also keep track
of human beings. Indeed, the Association touts biometric identification as "an automated method of recognizing a person based on a
physiological or behavioral characteristic." This is especially
important since "the need" for biometrics "can be found in
federal, state and local governments, in the military, and in commercial
applications." When used as a stand-alone or in conjunction with
RFID-chipped "smart cards" biometrics, according to the industry
"are set to pervade nearly all aspects of the economy and our daily
lives." Some "revolution." The industry received a powerful incentive from the state when the
Government Services Administration (GSA), a Bushist satrapy, issued a 2004
memo that urged the heads of all federal agencies "to consider action
that can be taken to advance the [RFID] industry." An example of capitalist "ingenuity" or another insidious
invasion of our right to privacy? In 2006, IBM obtained a patent that will be
used for tracking and profiling consumers as they move around a store, even
if access to commercial databases are strictly limited. And when it comes tracking and profiling human beings, say for mass
extermination at the behest of crazed Nazi ideologues, IBM stands alone. In
his groundbreaking 2001 exploration of the enabling technologies for the mass
murder of Jews, communists, Roma and gays and lesbians, investigative
journalist Edwin Black described in IBM and the Holocaust how,
beginning in 1933, IBM and their subsidiaries created technological
"solutions" that streamlined the identification of
"undesirables" for quick and efficient asset confiscation,
deportation, slave labor and eventual annihilation. In an eerie echo of polices being enacted today against Muslims and
left-wing "extremists" by the corrupt Bush regime in their quixotic
quest to "keep America safe" in furtherance of capitalist and
imperialist goals of global domination, Black writes: In the upside-down world of the Holocaust, dignified professionals
were Hitler's advance troops. Police officials disregarded their duty in
favor of protecting villains and persecuting victims. Lawyers perverted
concepts of justice to create anti-Jewish laws. Doctors defiled the art of
medicine to perpetrate ghastly experiments and even choose who was healthy
enough to be worked to death--and who could be cost-effectively sent to the
gas chamber. Scientists and engineers debased their higher calling to devise
the instruments and rationales of destruction. And statisticians used their
little known but powerful discipline to identify the victims, project and
rationalize the benefits of their destruction, organize their persecution,
and even audit the efficiency of genocide. Enter IBM and its overseas
subsidiaries. (IBM and the Holocaust: The
Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful
Corporation, New York: Crown Publishers, 2001, pp. 7-8) As security and privacy analyst Katherine Albrecht writes describing IBM's patented "Identification and
Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged Items in Store Environments," ...chillingly details RFID's potential for surveillance in a world
where networked RFID readers called "person tracking units" would
be incorporated virtually everywhere people go--in "shopping malls,
airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes,
restrooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, [and] museums"--to
closely monitor people's movements. ("How RFID Tags Could Be Used to Track Unsuspecting
People," Scientific American, August 21, 2008) According to the patent cited by Albrecht, as an individual moves
around a store, or a city center, an "RFID tag scanner located [in the
desired tracking location]... scans the RFID tags on [a] person.... As that
person moves around the store, different RFID tag scanners located throughout
the store can pick up radio signals from the RFID tags carried on that person
and the movement of that person is tracked based on these detections.... The
person tracking unit may keep records of different locations where the person
has visited, as well as the visitation times." Even if no personal data are stored in the RFID tag, this doesn't
present a problem IBM explains, because "the personal information will
be obtained when the person uses his or her credit card, bank card, shopper
card or the like." As Albrecht avers, the link between the unique RFID
number and a person's identity "needs to be made only once for the card
to serve as a proxy for the person thereafter." With the wholesale
introduction of RFID chipped passports and driver's licenses, the capitalist
panoptic state is quickly--and quietly--falling into place. If America's main trading partner and sometime geopolitical rival in
the looting of world resources, China, is any indication of the direction
near future surveillance technologies are being driven by the "miracle
of the market," the curtain on privacy and individual rights is rapidly
drawing to a close. Albrecht writes, China's national ID cards, for instance, are encoded with what most
people would consider a shocking amount of personal information, including
health and reproductive history, employment status, religion, ethnicity and
even the name and phone number of each cardholder's landlord. More ominous
still, the cards are part of a larger project to blanket Chinese cities with
state-of-the-art surveillance technologies. Michael Lin, a vice president for
China Public Security Technology, a private company providing the RFID cards
for the program, unflinchingly described them to the New York Times as
"a way for the government to control the population in the future."
And even if other governments do not take advantage of the surveillance
potential inherent in the new ID cards, ample evidence suggests that
data-hungry corporations will. I would disagree with Albrecht on one salient point: governments,
particularly the crazed, corporate-controlled grifters holding down the fort
in Washington, most certainly will take advantage of RFID's surveillance
potential. In 2005 for example, the Senate Republican High Tech Task force
praised RFID applications as "exciting new technologies" with
"tremendous promise for our economy." In this spirit, they vowed to
"protect" RFID from regulation and legislation. Needless to say,
the track record of timid Democrats is hardly any better when it comes to
defending privacy rights or something as "quaint" as the
Constitution. Under conditions of a looming economic meltdown, rising unemployment,
staggering debt, the collapse of financial markets and continuing wars and
occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. imperialism, in order to shore up
its crumbling empire, will continue to import totalitarian methods of rule
employed in its "global war on terror" onto the home front. The introduction of RFID-chipped passports and driver's licenses for
the mass surveillance and political repression of the American people arises
within this context. Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco
Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love
& Rage and Antifa Forum, he is the editor of Police State
America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning,
distributed by AK Press. |
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Disclaimer: The views expressed in
this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of
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