This is wildly OT, but I just thought, given the advocacy nature of a number of monks (qv tilly et al), that this might be of interest. <pAn article on ZDNet (that I can't get to link right) discusses the idea of implanatable ID chips. A poll at the bottom of the says that 70%(!) are opposed to using this.

While it is abusable, I would say that the following are rather neat uses:

  1. Identity theft more difficult (though never impossible)
  2. Identity verification a snap
  3. Tracking kidnapped victims more easily
  4. Tracking criminals made easy
  5. Heck, tracking people lost in the mountains made easy
  6. No more ID badges at work
  7. Medical information immediately available to first responders
And the article had more neat uses. Personally, as a Wiccan and a liberal, I can see many of the potential abuses of this type of system. But, McCarthyism didn't have an implantable identity card, and neither did Nazism. They did just fine in terms of suppressing their populace. This will not give rise to a 1984-type society, anymore than the explosion of the internet gave rise to utopia, 50% of purchases via the WWW, or any of the other stupid predictions from 5 years ago.

Just remember - for every futuristic novel that claims doom'n'gloom, I can point to ten that use the exact same technology, but it's a comparative paradise.

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: (OT) Implantable ID chips
by George_Sherston (Vicar) on Dec 21, 2001 at 20:36 UTC
    I think a lot hinges on whether it's compulsory or optional. Of course, even if it's optional, if everybody does it then there's social or even economic pressure to join in (the more people who have a mobile phone, the harder it is to operate without one). But to my mind the critical thing is that there should be no compulsion by the state.

    This is not to do with it it being physically invasive - though that makes it more of a big deal - but part of a general reluctance to live under a constitution that tells me what I must do, as opposed to what I must not do. That's not an inviolable principal. I don't mind paying taxes, or being conscripted in wartime. But taxes one only pays if one works or buys (granted we all do that, but there is a distinction to be drawn), and conscription in war is an emergency thing.

    What I don't like is that the government would require me to do something (like carrying and ID card, or registering with the local police when I move house, as I understand one has to in some other parts of Europe) just because I exist. I think the right to sink without trace is important, not because one ever really wants to exercise it, but because it's a boundary on state power.

    And the reason I like this boundary to be there is really just a matter of history. If you had to look back over the last five hundred years, and pick a country to be born into at some point in that time, in a social situation chosen at random, what countries would be high on your list? High on mine would be all those countries that have a legal and cultural tradition that the government can tell you what you mustn't do, but not what you must.

    They just seem to have been nice places to live, and I think that niceness resulted in part from that tradition.

    Thanks for raising this interesting topic. Cd we have a link to the article?

    § George Sherston
[reply]
      I suggest that a lot of your concerns could be put to rest by allowing people to have multiple identity cards/chips. Just like we can have multiple PGP keys now, multiple IDs would allow people to participate in diverse activities and make it hard for a malicious government/whatever to correlate their activities.

      This is not to say that we should all have multiple identities, just multiple identifiers. Sort of like having three licenses with the same photo and description, but different numbers. This should make it much harder to track people through all their day-to-day activities. Of course the tax office would have to have the details of who owned what identifier-number, but there would be no reason for anyone else to. This would stop say your employer from finding out where you went partying last night, but federal agents could still flag certain IDs.

      Of course no one in their right mind would implement this system because the whole idea of a ID card/chip is to intrude into peoples privacy, not protect it. I suggest this is why anonymous digital money will never take off either.

      ____________________
      Jeremy
      I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

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Re: (OT) Implantable ID chips
by stefan k (Curate) on Dec 21, 2001 at 21:35 UTC
    I remembered to have heard this a good while back vaguely and I found it:
    Slashdot Article
    German Heise Newsticker
    German Telepolis Magazine Discussion

    And the stranges part is that they cite Scott McNealy (SUN) with something like Some may call this Big Brother I call it being a father (translated from german, thus probably not a real citation).

    Strikes me.

    Regards... Stefan
    you begin bashing the string with a +42 regexp of confusion

[reply]
Re: (OT) Implantable ID chips
by count0 (Friar) on Dec 21, 2001 at 21:49 UTC
    <my 1.5 cents>
    I heard a story on my (excruciatingly long, holiday-traffic, maniacal-driver-ridden) drive home yesterday, on NPR somewhat related to this.

    It was more focused on the medical benefits of such a chip, although the interviewed did express his feeling that eventual requiring of an implanted chip for day-to-day life was inevitable.

    You can listen to it here.(Scroll down to 'Human Medical ID Chips')
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Re: (OT) Implantable ID chips
by crazyinsomniac (Prior) on Dec 22, 2001 at 09:36 UTC
    I dislike this idea very much. Implanting foreign objects into the body can adversly affect health. Furthermore, what is wrong with medical id bracelets?

     
    ___crazyinsomniac_______________________________________
    Disclaimer: Don't blame. It came from inside the void
    perl -e "$q=$_;map({chr unpack qq;H*;,$_}split(q;;,q*H*));print;$q/$q;"

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Re: (OT) Implantable ID chips
by impossiblerobot (Deacon) on Dec 22, 2001 at 10:24 UTC
[reply]
      We already have something that is nicely compressed and easily readable: dna. Rather than implant something that can be ripped out or counterfitted, just go with some kind of fast dna scanners. There's fun for ya! Just spit at the ATM for your money! Or use your friend's spit!

      On a similar note, does anyone know anything about retinal scanning? I can think of some fairly gruesome scenarios there. Does the eye actually have to be attached to a body?

      Ah well, the old numeric tattoo is still an option. Seems like just about every other idea from the 3rd Reich has been brushed off and used by someone. There's a war on, after all. This is no time to get squeamish!

[reply]
        Apparently gouging out someone's eye a la Demolition Man does not work. In retinal scanning the device looks for a pattern of blood vessels on the back of the eye. Without bloodflow, the pattern will look different. How different, I don't know and really don't want to find out.

        The trouble with using such systems to auhorise transfers of money is that no system can prevent someone holding a gun to the back of your head and forcing you to authorise the transfer.

        Rubber hose cryptanalysis - it's a winner, every time.

        I actually thought that the ID stuff was more to do with tracking peoples movement, although tracking their purchases is practically the same thing.

        ____________________
        Jeremy
        I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

[reply]
        Gattaca

        --
        perl -pe "s/\b;([mnst])/'\1/mg"

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