Author
Jody Paulson
I talk about RFID tags, and the insidious trend to reduce human beings into sets of numbers.
Hi, this is Jody Paulson from Moscow ID with what they don't tell you.
As you are no doubt aware, someone out there wants to turn you, your family, and the people you care about into a stack of easily accessible numbers that they can identify, classify, market to, and control. This has been going on for some time, mostly in the name of efficiency. Social Security couldn't possibly be feasible without assigning an unambiguous, crisp, 9-digit number to the living, feeling, creative entity that is you, could it? So we've succumbed to this seemingly mild invasive process of allowing ourselves to become labeled by the government as a number. When I was growing up, I didn't have to apply for a Social Security card until I started working. But these days, American babies are assigned a Social Security number from birth.
Now that we've all accepted the label, it's only a matter of what can be done with that label. How will our identity as numbers come to define, and determine the destiny of, our identity as flesh and blood human beings? Folks, I'm telling you now – if we're not vigilant, we're going to be in real trouble.
You've no doubt heard of RFID tags. They are used in tracking animals and many commercial products. They basically transmit information, in many cases just a number. But, as we all know, a unique number in a database can be connected with whatever information we desire. Give me your social security number, and with the proper clearances I can find out your credit history, job history, criminal history, shopping history, medical history – you name it. Right now there's not a centralized database that holds *all* this information, until recently it hasn't been particularly feasible, and besides, it's nobody's business to know *all* this information. Unless, says Iran-Contra scandal's John Poindexter, you're looking for *gasp* terrorists.
Anyway, getting back to RFID tags, they are currently being used in the Sutter, California school district to simplify attendance-taking, potentially reduce vandalism and "improve student safety." Right now they are being worn as badges, but there are many RFID advocates who want to implant the tags under the skin – so they don't get lost. The school's principal hopes to add bar codes to the existing ID's so that students can use them to pay for cafeteria meals and check out library books.
Passive RFID tags don' t need a power supply: the electric current induced in the antenna by the incoming scan provides enough power for the tag to send a response. They can be read from up to 5 meters (or yards) away. Imagine what life would be like if everyone was forced, like the kids at Brittan elementary, to wear RFID tags, or worse, have them implanted under the skin? It'd sure make things easy for the guys in authority, wouldn't it? A cop zaps a guy from his car and his computer returns a prior drug conviction. There's probable cause!
Need a job? Zip! Sorry, you have a lousy credit rating. Planning on seeing the president's speech? Zip! Sorry, you're a registered green. Taking a flight out of town? Zip! Sorry, you've been flagged as a potential subversive – come strip in front of this camera while we make you do the duck walk. Of course, you wouldn't be *told* this in so many words, but you'd know it. Your whole life is literally on your sleeve for anyone in "authority" to see.
Yes, numbers make things easy. Numbers are a lot easier to store, measure, and manipulate. Numbers don't have faces and expressions, quirks and dreams, soft skin, bright eyes or dignity. It's a lot easier to rip off, impoverish and kill a number. That's why we have to take our humanity back. We must refuse to surrender our innate dignity and worth as human beings for the convenience of labeling and assigning a value to every last aspect of our lives, because that makes them finite and static. Our potential and worth as human beings is, in fact, dynamic and infinite.
Biblical prophesy aside, who wants to be a marked man or woman for the rest of their life?
I'm Jody Paulson, and I just thought you should know.