Imagine a future in which your every belonging is marked with a unique number identifiable with the swipe of a scanner, where the location of your car is always pinpoint-able and where signal-emitting microchips storing personal information are implanted beneath your skin or embedded in your inner organs. This is the possible future of radio frequency identification (RFID), a technology whose application has so far been limited largely to supply-chain management (enabling companies, for example, to keep track of the quantity of a given product they have in stock) but is now being experimented with for passport tracking, among other things. RFID is set to be applied in a whole range of consumer settings. Already being tested in products as innocuous as shampoo, lip balm, razor blades, clothing and cream cheese, RFID-enabled items are promoted by retailers and marketers as the next revolution in customer convenience. Consumer advocates say this is paving the way for a nightmarish future where personal privacy is a quaint throwback.
God reveals to us in the Book of Revelation that the day would come where every single human being on earth would be able to be tracked, and that no one would be able to purchase or sell without this special tracking ID system.
PRIVACY INVASION: Government Tags, Passports and Licenses
(chicagotribune.com, 07/11/09) Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a Motorola reader he'd bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Francisco with this objective: To read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car. It took him 20 minutes to strike hacker's gold.
Zipping past Fisherman's Wharf, his scanner detected, then downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians' electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he'd "skimmed" the identifiers of four more of the new, micro chipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet.
Embedding identity documents, passports, drivers licenses, and the like - with RFID chips is a no-brainer to government officials. Increasingly, they are promoting it as a 21st century application of technology that will help speed border crossings, safeguard credentials against counterfeiters, and keep terrorists from sneaking into the country.
But Paget's February experiment demonstrated something privacy advocates had feared for years: That RFID, coupled with other technologies, could make people trackable without their knowledge or consent. He filmed his drive-by heist, and soon his video went viral on the Web, intensifying a debate over a push by government, federal and state, to put tracking technologies in identity documents and over their potential to erode privacy.
Putting a traceable RFID in every pocket has the potential to make everybody a blip on someone's radar screen, critics say, and to redefine Orwellian government snooping for the digital age. "Little Brother," some are already calling it, even though elements of the global surveillance web they warn against exist only on drawing boards, neither available nor approved for use.
The key to getting such a system to work, these opponents say, is making sure everyone carries an RFID tag linked to a biometric data file. On June 1, it became mandatory for Americans entering the United States by land or sea from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean to present identity documents embedded with RFID tags, though conventional passports remain valid until they expire.
Among new options are the chipped "e-passport," and the new, electronic PASS card, credit card sized, with the bearer's digital photograph and a chip that can be scanned through a pocket, backpack or purse from 30 feet.
Alternatively, travelers can use "enhanced" driver's licenses embedded with RFID tags now being issued in some border states: Washington, Vermont, Michigan and New York. Texas and Arizona have entered into agreements with the federal government to offer chipped licenses, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has recommended expansion to non-border states. Kansas and Florida officials have received DHS briefings on the licenses, agency records show.
The purpose of using RFID is not to identify people, says Mary Ellen Callahan, the chief privacy officer at Homeland Security, but rather "to verify that the identification document holds valid information about you."
Neville Pattinson, vice president for government affairs at Gemalto, Inc., a major supplier of microchipped cards, is no RFID basher. He's a board member of the Smart Card Alliance, an RFID industry group, and is serving on the Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.
But as more Americans carry them "you can bet that long-range tracking of people on a large scale will rise exponentially," says Paget, a self-described "ethical hacker" who works as an Internet security consultant.
Could RFID numbers eventually become de facto identifiers of Americans, like the Social Security number?
Such a day is not far off, warns Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate and co-author of "Spychips," a book that is sharply critical of the use of RFID in consumer items and official ID documents.
Data brokers that compile computer dossiers on millions of individuals from public records, credit applications and other sources "will certainly maintain databases of RFID numbers and associated people," he says. "They'd do a disservice to their stockholders if they didn't."
But Gigi Zenk, a spokeswoman for the Washington state Department of Licensing, says Americans "aren't that concerned about the RFID, particularly in this day and age when there are a lot of other ways to access personal information on people."
Tracking an individual is much easier through a cell phone, or a satellite tag embedded in a car, she says. "An RFID that contains no private information, just a randomly assigned number, is probably one of the least things to be concerned about, frankly."
Imagine this: Sensors triggered by radio waves instructing cameras to zero in on people carrying RFID, unblinkingly tracking their movements. Unbelievable? Intrusive? Outrageous?
Actually, it happens every day and makes people smile at the Alton Towers amusement park in Britain, which videotapes visitors who agree to wear RFID bracelets as they move about the facility, then sells the footage as a keepsake. This application shows how the technology can be used effortlessly and benignly. But critics, noting it can also be abused, say federal authorities in the United States didn't do enough from the start to address that risk.
The first U.S. identity document to be embedded with RFID was the "e-passport."
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the finding that some of the terrorists entered the United States using phony passports, the State Department proposed mandating that Americans and foreign visitors carry "enhanced" passport booklets, with microchips embedded in the covers. The chips, it announced, would store the holder's information from the data page, a biometric version of the bearer's photo, and receive special coding to prevent data from being altered.
In February 2005, when the State Department asked for public comment, it got an outcry: Of the 2,335 comments received, 98.5 percent were negative, with 86 percent expressing security or privacy concerns, the department reported in an October 2005 notice in the Federal Register. "Identity theft was of grave concern," it stated, adding that "others expressed fears that the U.S. Government or other governments would use the chip to track and censor, intimidate or otherwise control or harm them." It also noted that many Americans expressed worries "that the information could be read at distances in excess of 10 feet."
According to department records obtained by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, under a Freedom of Information Act request and reviewed by the AP, discussion about security concerns with the e-passport occurred as early as January 2003 but tests weren't ordered until the department began receiving public criticism two years later.
Should biometric technologies be coupled with RFID, "governments will have, for the first time in history, the means to identify, monitor and track citizens anywhere in the world in real time," says Mark Lerner, spokesman for the Constitutional Alliance, a network of nonprofit groups, lawmakers and citizens opposed to remotely readable identity and travel documents.
Scientists are working on technologies that might enable a satellite or a cell tower to scan a chip's contents. Critics also note advances in the sharpness of closed-circuit cameras, and point out they're increasingly ubiquitous. And more fingerprints, iris scans and digitized facial images are being stored in government databases. The FBI has announced plans to assemble the world's largest biometric database, nicknamed "Next Generation Identification."
Here is a website that explains many applications for the RFID chip: http://www.witiger.com/ecommerce/RFID.htm n
For more information on the RFID chip, order the book entitled,
“The Spychips Threat: Why Christians should resist RFID and Electronic Surveillance”
for $20 by calling 1-800-445-3902.
Order the CD, "The Spychips Threat" by Dr. Barela for $10
Order th the book and CD for $25.
