http://news.com.com/States+to+test+ID+c ... ews.1039.5

My thoughts as a foreign visitor?

Okay, initially, i was very very pissed off! How dare they. Ofcourse, my news item came from somewhere else before which didn't explain the whole thing the way this article does.

I've been involved with RFID for over a year and a half now. I know quite a bit about it, its myths, its possibilities. The way i see it, this is pretty much at the same level as calling me in, fingerprinting and photographing me everytime i enter or leave the country. No real difference. But that in itself has been of much discomfort to me and a bit of a piss off. But i let it be, cause i think a country has a right to protect itself, even though its clearly profiling (even with the addition of other nationalities who require visas.

But I do know what this technology is capable of. Currently, it seems to me that this is close distance recognition tags. You can't really track people's movements with this at all. It will be futile. Having said that, are the US people allowing the govt to take more and more liberties and letting more and more of the rope slip? Would people allow something like this on themselves? How comfortable are people here about experiencing the same fingerprinting, tagging and photographing at another country's border.

Sorry, its just a sensitive issue with me. Since spetember, i've been in the country 4 times, following this procedure everytime. One thing i have to say though that even with the huuuge wait times for me, the people who have conducted these things at the immigration center have been the nicest people i've met and in some cases, have apologised for many things, cept the registration itself cause i'm sure thats something they're not allowed to do. But they've been very catering.

I believe they are most likely told to be nice and occasionally apologize. It's the best way to deal with what really is degrading situation. Degrading for all parties involved.

Oh well, I don't think this is a surprise, no?

Its a bit of a surprise.

From what I know, unless you're a private company with permission to do so, the only time RFID survelaince on a person is allowed is when its medical or on a prisoner. I'm still trying to figure out where the loophole is or if i've been working on the wrong assumption.

This police should be challenged in the U.S. courts. It's one thing to want to track who comes in to and who comes out of the country. It's another thing to create a system that is ripe for abuse, with no real need for it.

you think this is bad, wait for the time when they call for this:

"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name ..."

well I think this is a (un)healthy step in that direction. bABA, I'm going to have to disagree with your arguement that its not different. Primarily because knowing when someone leaves or enters is quite a bit different than knowing what hotel they stayed at, what restaurant they went to (even if they paid in cash0 what drinks they brought, what telephone they used, what clothing they purchased, who they spoke with, etc etc etc. This chip is getting us prepared for that by slowly breaking down our resistance to living in a heavily policed environment (step one was the Patriot Act). People started being convinced they had to give up some of their provacy rights etcm for the greater good, so hey, what's a little more? which is basically your arguement. You're so used to be stopped at the border for 5 hours that hey, hey, what's a little more. in fact they'll probably tell you that since they now have your personal actions already recorded, you'll spend less time in the border. They won't need to check your luggage, they already know what's in it...that way you'll probably willingly accept the chip. Because you're got nothing to hide. you come here, chill with your friends, etc, so they can;t, in theory, really nail you for something.which is what most people that vacation here will think. business men will be pissed though, since its not the gov't responsibility to track what conferences and meetings and post-conference dinners they go to. They do have something to hide (not necessarily illegal, but just not public knowledge either). And their are plenty of people that are outright illegal, but harmless, so aren;t a terrorisy threat and shouldn't be tracked as though they were. People coming here for work, to buy things, whatever.

These chips are clearly more about population control than terrorism....something this silly administration has had large chunks of the population fooled on for an eternity. I don't see any of his lovely propositions to legalize all the mexican immagrants that he had suggested earlier, etc, as a way to end terrorism. why? Because Mr. George W. "To tell you the truth my main focus was never Bin Laden" Bush just really believes in a police state. Honestly, i can;t even say more than that, since I have no idea why it would serve his best interests to have a police state, and if i could find a way to tie it into religion i probably would, but I doubt that's it either. The guy is just operating out in No Man's Land in the trenches between hysteria and power and he's implementing programs as we speak where we won't see the repercussions for a few more decades, but when they rear their ugly head, its going to hurt.

Thanks my ancestors already have tatoos on their arms, i really don't think i want to encourage a repeat form of identity classification on everyone who lives, enters, and leaves the U.S, who isn't a wealthy straight male wasp who's political views and cultural habits aren't perfectly in line with what the government says.

Time for some education.

Dolce. You're doing what a lot of anti-rfid people do. Which is fine cause theres so much misinformation.

I'm not saying i'm used to a 5 hour wait so whats a little more? The way i see it, the way theyre being used, they're completely useless. Theyre used only at the border to see when you came in and when you left. Which is quite useless cause i still have to go in, get fingerprinted and IDed so they know my atime of arrival in any case and haven't speedened anything up.

Primarily because knowing when someone leaves or enters is quite a bit different than knowing what hotel they stayed at, what restaurant they went to (even if they paid in cash0 what drinks they brought, what telephone they used, what clothing they purchased, who they spoke with, etc etc etc. This chip is getting us prepared for that by slowly breaking down our resistance to living in a heavily policed environment (step one was the Patriot Act).

Contrary to popular belief, RFID chips cannot help you to do that. From my understanding of what types of chips will probably get used over here (based on whats written), they're short range. The physics behind the chips will never allow this to change. You will have to have an RFID reader every 5 feet all over the US to figure out where you are in order to do it. You will have to make sure there is no metal, water, anything that interferes. Sure, theyre better than barcodes but what you're suggesting above is in today's world, science fiction. The infrastructure required will cost more than anything else. The only way of actually monitoring visitor movements is to have a chip with built in cellular tracking, the price for which once again, will be great, will not function in certain places, against the law completely for tracking the actual motion of people and something that is not being used in this project.

But this leads me to the question. Why!?!? If these chips are issued to me when i enter and taken when i leave, they serve absolutely no purpose at all. Its a verification of nothing more than a point of entry and a point of exit, which is already happening right now. And because they wont get rid of fingerprinting and photographing, taking the oath, taking down all the information of your stay, the chip isn't realy replacing anything at all. And it probably cannot even replace because otherwise, it needs to be embedded inside me or my vehicle, somehting i wouldn't allow just to enter a country at all (if its not embedded, you can give the chip to anyone and they can just leave on your name). So what worries me is that like you said, this seems like a first step (a pointless one) in letting people get used to something to then expand and do something even more controvercial later on. It really sucks. Unlike many people on this board, i believe in how people can slowly be taught to accept thigns (i forget the word but i know its very popular on this board).

the restauarant, what i eat, what i paid, its all a myth. RFID will not be able to do that. It just can't.

Nope, not anti-right, just anti some of Bush's actions. There are as many people on the left who support it and people on the right that don't. It's more about individual understandings of right to privacy. And many people from across the spectrum have different understandings of it. look, you could call krem and NCAR "right" and me "left" and it doesn't seem like any of us are gung-ho on this introduction of new surveillance technologies. we have our own reasons, but we still think this is a dumd idea. Forgive me if i misinterpretted either of your two statements. as i also stated, i don't actually see why bush is doing it. So I'm assuming its just something he;s doing with not enough consideration in how it could manifest further down the line. i don't know...


well the finger printing is to make sure its the same person leaving because us whities tend to think all folks of minority features look exactly the same. if you gave your i.d. to another pakistani that is agbout the same weight and hair cut, they'd probably have no freaking clue.

j/k

Actually its because the people at the border are responsible for submitting the proof, and this is how they've decided to do it since it goes and gets archived somewhere off-site.



I'm saying this is a step in the direction. technology changes weekly if not daily, and these chips don't do that, but we'll get used to wearing them and five years from now they'll give us an even more advanced chip. Remember that joke about barcode tatoos that everyone will have so that everytime they enter a store a lazer will track their consumer tendencies (we were joking about our shopping habits at diesel)...well I know its a joke, but still....



well that's exactly why. because right now when you enter and exit their is a conscious point of information retrieval, wearing a chip gets you used to non-conscious information tracking. i really feel like this is what it is about. sorry if you disagree but it is doing something quite differently than fingerprinting, which requires you to be there, get out of your car, be allowed to question certain actions 9in regards to your privacy) etc. When they just take the chip off you, are you going to know what they're taking in the way you know if they are taking a finger print? what when the chip gets a bit of an update? And another update? Version 2.1? are you even going to be questioning if anything has been changed? Its just pushing towards automating private information retrieval and that's just inherently suspicious by nature.

dolce, FYI: anti-right is not the same thing as anti-rfid.

Thank you Krem .. i was amused when she wrote that .. almost fell on the floor laughing. hehehehehehe

Dolce, RFID has been around for 50 years. Its been used since world war 2. Technology already exists. No need for version 2.5 or 3.1 Beta. Its all there. But unless you're using the most kik ass systems, there is no way in hell that anytime in the near future, you could track me accurately. I have 4 different types of RFID hardware lying in front of me. ad as we speak, i'm banging my head cause tilting the antenna (embedded, not the alien stick outs!!) makes them unreadable. I do see a move for it in the near future but i have faith in the people that this is going to have such a huge outcry (look at retail. RFID has been kept out of retail because of the misinformation around it). Actually put the tag on people and you're calling for protests from everywhere!

Oh, i know why the fingerprinting and photographing is there. Which is why i think its so useless to have these chips. these chips can verify when the tag left and came back but can't provide security on if its the same person (unless you go traditional and just rely on the passport picture). So in essense, they mentioned something about speeding things up but i dont see how that will happen at all.

They really shouldn't be doing this. I know DoD is big on RFID right now and rightly so. but i think this is overkill in many ways.

I just thought it was a typo!


oh well...there goes my whole arguement...thanks...thanks alot...I think yo can take over from here....



edit** bABA you laughing at me when you've got all those completely incoherent remarks in the other thread????? As if. =; (talk to teh hand, hehe)

come on .. you know me enough to know that i have no idea what the hell the right is and what the left is. to me, left is everything on the .. well ... left of me .. and well .. right is ... you know where i'm going with this.