Big Brother in your hip pocket

[Carl Spackler]

"The problem here is that RFID tags can be read through your wallet, handbag, or clothing. It's not hard to build a system that automatically reads the proximity cards, the keychain RFID "immobilizer" chips, or other RFID-enabled devices of every person who enters a store. A store could build a list of every window shopper or person who walks through the front door by reading these tags and then looking up their owners' identities in a centralized database. No such database exists today, but one could easily be built.

Indeed, such warnings might once have been dismissed as mere fear-mongering. But in today's post-9/11 world, in which the US government has already announced its plans to fingerprint and photograph foreign visitors to our country, RFID sounds like a technology that could easily be seized upon by the Homeland Security Department in the so-called "war on terrorism." But such a system wouldn't just track suspected Al Qaeda terrorists: it would necessarily track everybody--at least potentially. "

Read the rest: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040216&s=garfinkel

Then think about the fact that the University of Virginia built the world's 3rd fastest supercomputer for under $6 million (chump change) from off-the-shelf Macs (yea! Go Apple! This post was made on a mac, in fact). So pretty much any national company with foot traffic could create and mine a database of individual's movements and habits.

Now would be a Really Good Time to push the front-running candidates to commit to specific steps they would take to protect us from govt and corporate tracking.

[BiggJawn]

1. Now for a very good use for tinfoil...

Don't waste it on a hat :tinfoilhat:

Carry it in your wallet. A piece of metal foil snuggled next to an RFID tag will de-tune it so it can't be read.

That's how it works in the library. The tag is stuck inside the pocket, and the "date due" card has a foil core.