They Really Are Watching You

[kliljedahl]

Another gem from Mark Morford:

They Really Are Watching You
Ready for your own all-new, sinister ID card, courtesy of Homeland Security? Shudder

Well, now we've done it.
Congress just passed it and Dubya has promised to sign it and the Homeland Security Department is giddier than Mel Gibson in a nail factory over it and marketers nationwide are salivating at the groin at the prospect of it, and the next big step toward America becoming an even more delightfully paranoid and draconian Big Brother wonderland has now officially been taken.

It's called Real ID. It is, in short, a new and genetically mutated type of driver's license for all Americans, replacing your current license and replacing your Social Security card and replacing your sense of well being and privacy and humanity and part of a new, uniform, deeply sinister, national uniform card system whereby every person living and breathing in these paranoid and tense times shall henceforth be much more traceable and watchable given how we will all soon be required by law to carry this super-deluxe computerized ID card with us at all times, packed as it will be with more personal, digitized info about you than even your mother knows.

Real ID is coming very soon. The legislation was passed with little outcry and zero debate by both House and Senate just last week because lawmakers snuck it into a massive $82 billion military spending bill, and therefore no one was really paying much attention and this is the way you get thorny disturbing culturally demeaning bills to pass without resistance from smart people who should know better.

The new law will, according to the Wired News story linked above, require everyone to hand over not one, not two, but fully four types of documentation to renew their driver's license, such as a photo ID, a birth certificate, proof that their Social Security number is legit and something that validates their home address, like a phone bill. DMV employees will then have to verify the documents against giant teeming federal databases and store the documents and a digital photo of you in a database. Isn't that fun? Doesn't that sound gratifying?

Link: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/05/18/notes051805.DTL&nl=fix


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[RPM]

1. can we microwave our card

and fry the circuitry? I think either that or forgetting to carry it will be my plan...

[Nordmadr]

2. I think a tin foil sleeve would be appropriate. N/T

[RPM]

4. ooohhhh - we could market tin-foil wallets!!!

Good idea!

[Nordmadr]

8. The problem with simply dismantling the damned thing

would be that it wouldn't work when they had to read it at the airport, train station, gestapo checkpoint, etc. It would have to remian fucntional when needed, and blocked the rest of the time...thus the tin foil. Just my 2 pence.

Olaf

[BR_Parkway]

5. "damn, I forgot to take it out of my pocket and it went through the

washing machine...."

[kineneb]

12. I like the big magnet plan myself

Subject object to large bar magnet, then recode to say something creative. If these things get out, there will be a black market in reprogramming them, trust me. Probably by 15 year-old nerds.

[jojo54]

3. 'stay angry enough to resist'.

This is part of a blog from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/11671513.htm

<snip>The Real ID Act is not just one more ugly development. The Real ID Act imposes a national ID card... . When Bush signs that thing... the American experiment in freedom will be over. No pretense any more. An America with a national ID card is not America. If the Real ID Act isn't overturned, America is gone.

[realFedUp]

6. Great one. nt

[Demeter]

7. Then I Hope They Are As Bored As I Am

[Selatius]

9. 20 years from now, they will be tracked by GPS systems

The technology will exist to imbed a tracking device into your card, like a microchip. I'm fairly certain someone in government is waiting for the technology to catch up now.

[InformedSource]

11. The technology exists now and in the future ...

the public toilets will drug test your urine and use trace dna to identify you, and then you'll be "rendered" to "rehab centers" where you'll be "deprogrammed" until you renounce your non-Christianity and non-patriotism and get with the program. Those who don't will simply be deleted from official existence and will be unable to survive, not having access to anything.

But I'm notoriously pessimistic. Hope I'm wrong.

[Shallah Kali]

13. I know they already allow medical ID chips in people

Patient's medical chip worries some
http://www.suntimes.com/output/tech/cst-nws-chip14.html

The VeriChip itself contains no medical records, just codes that can be scanned, and revealed, in a doctor's office or hospital. With that code, the health providers can unlock a secure database that holds that person's medical information. The electronic database, not the chip, would be updated with each medical visit.

But the chip's possible dual use for tracking people's movements has raised alarm.

''If privacy protections aren't built in at the outset, there could be harmful consequences for patients,'' said Emily Stewart, a policy analyst at the Health Privacy Project.

SNIP

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday announced $139 million in grants to help make real President Bush's push for electronic health records for most Americans within a decade.

I can't find it now but I have also read about groups worrying about people's privacy with all the tracking chips in products we buy. Does anyone have more info than my faulty memory is providing?

[Selatius]

14. You're talking about RFID chips

Go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID#Controversy

My fear is, twenty years from now (or however long it takes the technology to shrink down in size to fit neatly into a plastic card), they will be able to read your location from space using satellites at anytime they desire. It's like having an RFID transceiver to communicate with RFID tags today, except it can pick up the signal from hundreds of miles above your head.

[silverweb]

16. They can probably do it already.

Do you seriously think that they're going to let us know what their full technological capabilities for tracking and spying on us are? Naaahhh....

:crazy:

[markus]

17. Can't happen

RFID chips rely on power radiated by the reader. They have no internal power source.

[Selatius]

18. True, but the technology could be more radical decades from now

The voltage generated by a transceiver is enough to get an RFID chip with no internal power source to respond, but the ranges today are measured only in meters. This is all true. The technology does not yet exist to do the same over, say, several miles. This is true as well. However, I would not bet my life it will remain true decades from now.

[paparush]

20. Track you by your cell phone

they already can.

Sorry, I sat through SW III last night w/ my 10 yr old. I was 10 when the original came out in '77. I can still watch the original 3 and feel like I'm watching a decent movie. The latest three are absolute rubbish.

[struggle4progress]

10. kick

[silverweb]

15. This is one of Morford's best.

I sent it to everyone I know.

Would an aluminum foil envelope really work to block the RFID transponder? If so, I think that's going to be a "must have" accessory when these things come out to keep the card handy for when it might be needed, but shield it from general exposure.

The fact that we even have to worry about this is obscene.

[rodeodance]

19. and the jaugernaut keeps on plowing ahead