Worried the Mark of the Beast might screw with your fashion sense? Don't worry, RFID chips are just as powerful — and far less conspicuous.
In April, the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, Spain added something special something to their list of perks for VIPs — microchip implants that carry not only status, but your tab.
Patrons who elect to undergo the procedure with an on-site doctor graft their bar account to their skin for the next 20 years. If the demand is high enough, the club's sister operation in Rotterdam will likely follow suit.
The technology involved? RFID, short for Radio Frequency ID. Around since the late '80s, the chip requires no power, is often smaller than a grain of sand and capable of carrying a startling amount of data.
Obviously, it's designed to do more than alleviate the drag of waiting for a credit card receipt while sipping an apple martini. Imagine, for example, monitoring the health of your grandmother by checking whether or not she's opened her medication bottle lately. If your life hangs in the balance, your complete medical history embedded in the palm of your hand could help doctors determine a course of treatment, even if you're unconscious.
Imagine the possibilities of tracking down a kidnapped child within hours because police were able to locate the device her parents implanted at birth.
Clearly, the chip has some legitimately beneficial purposes that are hard to ignore. To see it reduced to something so retarded as a time-saver when ordering a round of drinks is sad. To see the potential abuse corporations and the government are just waiting to dole out once the technology becomes more widespread is even worse.
As someone who values their privacy, I often make purchases with cash instead of a credit or debit card. I forgo the convenience of plastic because I know stores and companies that I do business with mine the data of each purchase and sell it to someone else. I avoid "club cards" for the same reason — the discount isn't worth the database entry.
As of recently that option has been invalidated, though, as American currency is embedded with these tiny receivers. And unlike a UPC symbol, each one is unique — meaning each new $20 bill in one's wallet can emit a personalized signal from up to 40 feet away. If so inclined, someone could track the entire life cycle of the money, from the Treasury, to the bank, through the ATM and to my purchase. My desire to be left alone has just been shot right out the window.
The applications are even more staggering than that. Since each is unique, each object can be tracked separately, too. Every shirt bought, every can of soda drunk, it can all theoretically be traced back to you. Would you care to share how many pairs of jeans you own with WalMart? Didn't think so.
Worse still, this technology can be used for identification fraud and other crimes. Anyone with the proper frequencies can retrieve information from a distance. We might elicit a quiet chuckle knowing those drunken sods at the Baja Beach Club could have their bank account literally beamed out of them without their knowledge, but if it's that easy it's also no more difficult to steal a social security number or a complete identity. The amount of information to take is limited only to what the user puts on it. For many lazy people, the RFID chip would become the ultimate Google AutoFill button.
True, these are all worst-case scenarios. The infrastructure needed to implement wide-scale usage of RFID transmitters is years away; figuring out who owned what information and how to coordinate it with legislation is also still on the drawing board.
But the technology is here, and it's evolving. Aside from the fact that current designs are already well hidden, newer versions can be printed onto a product's box — that exclamation point could be hiding a transmitter. Before you know it, the presence of an RFID spy chip could be completely undetectable, meaning that every time you purchase something, you're unwillingly giving the seller the right to monitor it (and you) for years to come.
Living in the United States, I'm beset by a government that is actively trying to learn all it can about its citizens as a form of control. Think they only want to learn about your travel plans? Think again. Giving this level of personal access to our Orwellian bureaucracy will open the door to surveillance that is not only undesired, it's unconstitutional. It's sad to think that our elected leaders would use this boon to spy on us, but given this administration I wouldn't hold anything against them.
I'm not an opponent to advances in technology. As I've noted, there are some intrinsic benefits for on-call information retrieval. In this case, however, I think the benefits to corporations and the government far outweigh the benefits we the people receive.
Just because we have the wherewithal to track a person's travels virtually anywhere on the planet using global positioning systems doesn't mean we should. Pepsi may be able to adapt its supply shipments by knowing exactly what quantity each location sells, but you can bet any derived profits will be shipped overseas like everything else.
If I knew that this technology could be used only for good, I'd be more positive about its implications. Human nature, however, has taught me to think otherwise. For every child saved, another could be stalked by an abusive parent. The risks are just too great.
In the end, I just don't trust anyone with that much information. Privacy is very important to millions besides me — some still even believe in the old adage: "Don't Tread on Me." I don't even care that the entire procedure is currently voluntary. The whole idea is a catastrophe waiting to happen.
But hey — if you do buy into it, you can dance and drink and only wait for the other shoe to drop instead of your bar bill. Nifty.
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Non sequitur: In my March 22, 2004 column, I commented on Spain's pro-peace political upheaval (to recap: it's good). It appears the United Kingdom is following suit — Labour was dealt a severe blow in recent elections, and more people are calling on Tony Blair to resign. Likewise, popular support for Australia's Labor Leader Mark Latham is apparently high enough that both George W. Bush and John Kerry feel the need to trash him in support of pro-war Prime Minister John Howard.
If only the United States had an option to choose a leader dedicated to peace.
Canon Fodder is a weekly analysis of politics and society.
Canon Fodder is a bi-weekly analysis of politics and society.
