Proving once again that "protect the children!" is the single greatest justification for awful, awful ideas ever devised, the Spring, Texas school district has instituted a new policy of requiring all students to carry ID badges with radio-frequency chips that allow the student's movements to be tracked at all times. Arguably done to prevent student kidnappings (in spite of the fact that the district has never experienced one), other more practical benefits include automatic attendance monitoring and continuous tracking capabilities for concerned parents.
Similar systems have already been adopted at a charter school in Buffalo, NY and in a Phoenix, AZ school district, with the Phoenix variant relying on fingerprinting to verify the students' identity. (This of course creates the additional side benefit of a database of fingerprints for every student in the district. Should come in handy in crime investigations a few years down the road!) Some school districts have already expressed interest in systems using the subcutaneous RFID (radio frequency id) chip approved by the FDA in October. An implant, many argue, could bypass some of the problems of the ID card, such as the fact that a kidnapper could throw it out the window, as well as preventing more mundane abuses such as students giving their friends their ID cards in order to register them as present when they aren't.
Of course the biggest benefit is unstated: Getting children used to being chipped and tracked continuously so they don't grow up with the expectation of privacy. Which will differentiate them from a large subset of adult Americans today who for various reasons object to National ID card schemes. This is one of those issues that unites viewpoints from the "left" and "right" of the political spectrum, from the civil libertarians who object to the creation of a police state where everybody is treated as a criminal who must be monitored at all times, to those of an Apocalyptic Christian bent who notice an odd similarity between the ID chip and the Mark of the Beast mentioned in Revelations.
As is typical in any "protect the children!" -style Trojan Horse argument, this application of the RFID technology puts any naysayers into the unenviable rhetorical position of appearing to advocate for child kidnapping. The Spring Texas School Board's decision to adopt the $180,000 system was said to be a unanimous one, with no recorded objections of parents or teachers. One might reasonably expect this pattern to continue, particularly in other relatively affluent districts.
My concern that this is the first step down the road to everybody in the US being required to carry (or be implanted with) similar identification is mainly this: Mr. Galt has been predicting the day when we "all get chipped" for years now (it is rant # 12, I believe) and when it finally happens I'm gonna owe him five bucks.
I think my personal pick for most likely company to be tapped to create the national ID card is Diebold. Yes, that Diebold, the one that makes the voting systems that nobody really trusts. They make ID cards too, as well as ATMs, safes, jailhouse doors, padded cells and armor plating for tanks. They are also an industry leader in the field of biometrics. De La Rue, the company that owns Sequoia Voting Systems would also be a strong contender for the job, since they already make national ID cards for other countries ( as well as passports and in some cases currency.) Of course, this is all reckless speculation on my part. Which is why I'm willing to give odds!
Chips, anyone?
Posted by flamingbanjo at January 12, 2005 12:13 PMthey have biometric fingerprinting at disneyworld. i think it's only applicable to adult tickets right now. it was introduced in 1995 for passholders, to prevent people from sharing their annual ticket, which kind of made sense, but we went there for one day and still had to be fingerprinted before our one-time entry, which was creepy. yet we all lined up like cattle for it. chips wouldn't surprise me, i guess. i just hope that five bucks that you'll owe mr. galt has depreciated a great deal before it comes to pass.
Posted by: anne at January 17, 2005 05:34 AMMore than likely a thriving black market economy will thrive alongside RFID chip-implantation. You'll be able to buy somebody else's chips (no doubt the gubmint will make it a felony to remove said chips), or else some erstwhile hacker will develop a way to wipe the info on the chip and replace it with completely different info, either fictitious or stolen from another person, which if performed in large enough numbers will make the entire system functionally useless.
It's sort of what I do with those stupid QFC "customer loyalty" cards: I frequently find these lying on the street, and so I just remove the one I have from my key chain and replace it with the newly found one. Even if I pay by credit card, it still screws up the system, since the payee account and card account never match, which makes the whole point of the cards -- to track customer purchases -- completely ineffectual.
Posted by: KING COMTE I at January 17, 2005 12:58 PMAnne: Actually, you could've told me that the Magic Kingdom was requiring retinal scans on kids and I would've believed you. Why not? It just seems so... Disney. For that matter, in order to really ensure everyone's safety and enjoyment, why not require tracking collars that can also deliver a strong electric shock? Welcome to the World of Tomorrow, kid!
Comte: I think that the primary point of the shopping cards is to gather demographic information, which is not entirely invalidated by not being attached to the correct name. That being said, I still applaud your introduction of confusion, (or "bad data") into their process.
The idea that I owe them this information just because they sold me some tomatoes has always pissed me off.
Posted by: flamingbanjo at January 17, 2005 06:45 PMComte, all they have to do is get the Banks on board and we're screwed. And the Banks would love it. Consider this: you can't withdraw money from your account unless your chip matches the ID you registered when you opened the account (which they scanned when you applied). Think how much that would cut down on "Identity Fraud", which is why Banks will love it and the media will too. That means you can't cash your paycheck unless the ID you registered at work matches the ID on the account which matches the chip. You can't use your credit card at the store unless the ID registered to the card matches the chip. You can't get money at the ATM.... you see how this works. You can't just swap your chip for some other guy's chip, or erase your chip number, without losing your whole life up to that point. Maybe not a big obstacle for criminals who really want to "drop out", but regular guys like us who occasionally save a little money from one year to the next, or want to keep the credit rating we've accumulated, or who are just plain afraid we'll get busted at tax time if our Social Security account doesn't report the right amount of income that was registered against our chip ID, will find it pretty difficult to fight it.
Posted by: The Green Man at January 18, 2005 08:04 AMTGM,
At that point, I think I will insist that my employer begin compensating me in Gold Krugerands...
Posted by: KING COMTE I at January 18, 2005 09:41 PMenough with the boring ID crap, government-dudes; when will the chips be able to blow up bad guys' heads?
Posted by: raej at January 20, 2005 11:33 AMYeah! Like Snake Plissken!
You're right, Disney World should totally get those!
Posted by: flamingbanjo at January 20, 2005 12:33 PM