Would you be chipped?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My kitties are chipped. If they escape and are captured/shoveled off the pavement and scanned at a vet, someone calls me and I get to have my furrball back. Yippee. I embrace technology, and my cat, once again. Pretty cool–a simple implant in my pet can be linked by a monitoring company to me and my contact information.

Seems like it would be easy to chip humans–implant it someplace where the chip would be protected and hard/useless to steal such as in the base of the skull or under the left ear. And it would be quite useful.

No more wallets stuffed with personal info, cash, credit cards, driver’s licenses: I just set up what bank/credit account I want to use for purchases, maybe have a backup account in case one is denied for whatever reason, and viola! no more “Aw shit! I forgot my wallet!” moments in the grocery store or fancy restaurant with a less-than-impressed date. Just present me with the bill, scan me, maybe I punch in an approval code (PIN) and off I go.

Positive ID / No more dealing with fake IDs: Bouncer scans customers, positive ID, underage delinquents are sent on their way. Cops stop you because you’re a 5th generation American of hispanic descent who is unfortunate enough to live in Arizona? Zap! You’re on your way. Cop stops you for speeding and just intends to give you a citation? ZAP! Oh look! You’re wanted in 3 states! Your body found in the woods naked and mutilated beyond recognition? ZAP! Assuming you weren’t de-chipped, your loved ones have some closure.

Important Medical Information: Rendered unconscious in an accident and there’s stuff the emergency folks should know (blood type, allergies, medical conditions, etc) Zap! It’s all right there for them.

**Cooperation with other active technologies:**Got a warrant? Better not get into a car or use public transprotation because the on-board scanner will identify you and alert the authorities of your whereabouts! Driver’s license restriction? Oh look! The car knows your your license is suspended, or that you don’t have the owner’s permission to drive it–you’re on the hoof.

Paperless Lifestyle: TicketMaster uploads a credit for my Def Leppard tickets into my chip’s profile and Hey! Presto! No more getting to the venue and realizing I left my tickets on the kitchen counter. Or better yet, If I want to I can transfer my ticket to someone else if it turns out I can’t go.

We already have to deal with the possibility of losing our wallets or having them stolen so I can’t really say I’d be any more afraid of theft under the new system. After all, the only thing that someone can get from an unapproved scan is an arbitrary ID number. Without authority, an ID thief can’t do anything with it they can’t already do.

And as for Big Brother concerns, what would they be, exactly? There are 300 million Americans, the vast majority of whom are completely boring in their movements and transactions. We are not beyond surveillance even today–what would really change for the worse that wouldn’t be offset by the advantages of such a system?

2

I thought you were kidding in the DUI interlock pit thread.

Just yesterday my mother got a new Costco American Express card in the mail. She hadn’t asked for one. The ID picture on the back is not of her.

There is a couple in New Mexico who has somehow been tied to my parent’s Costco membership account (they live here in Michigan.) Her name is supposedly the same as my mom’s (I kind of doubt it, actually) but my dad’s is different. They discovered this a couple of years ago when my dad’s credit card was declined there, and supposedly sorted out the mess that had had my dad’s name taken off the account or something. A few months later the same problem cropped up again; despite the account being flagged, the Costco down in New Mexico had allowed this same couple to reactivate their names on my parent’s account number. They shut them down again and flagged the account again. That was supposed to be the end of it. Until yesterday. Now this woman has requested an Amex card in my mom’s name, with her account number, and they granted it to her, and (curses, foiled again!) sent the card to the Michigan address attached to the account. Now my parents have to go back to Costco and straighten this out again. The incompetence is astounding.

This kind of snafu is hardly uncommon. Garbage in, garbage out, and humans make mistakes all the time. Now, the Costco mixup really doesn’t affect my parents too much; if Costco refuses to straighten out the mess once and for all they can cancel their damned membership and live without, but what if it was a driver’s license that was mixed up and got flagged for somebody else’s DUI? If you’re not chipped, it only comes up when you get pulled over, but if you are, your car doesn’t start and you’re late for work. Multiple times, and you never know what day it’s going to happen again. Explain that one to your boss. What if it was a warrant for immediate arrest, and any time you checked in somewhere, the police showed up, and you had to wait in a jail cell (yet again) for the mess to be straightened out, until the next time somebody keyed in the same wrong information?

And that’s just the unintentional mixups. What if somebody WANTS your life to be a living hell, and happens to have access to such a system?

No, THANK you.

3

No. There’s not a single company or government agency I would trust with that kind of information or access.

4

This was tried recently. I worked for a subsidiary of the parent company.

5

NO

I won’t even attempt to offer a logical point of view, but as an atheist it fills me with religious level disgust. You could also try to argue the logic of something like sterilizing the genetically “unfit”(don’t worry it won’t go wrong like all the other times) and I would have the same level of disgust no matter the details.

6

I’ll stay mostly hands-off in this thread, but I need to point out: mixups as described by Jenaroph happen, they happen now and always will. I’ll concede the car restricting the driver is not exactly a bulletproof idea for exactly those kinds of reasons.

And Marley23 underscores basically the same point. It is worth mentioniong, however, those of us who do all their financials online are barely one step removed from the system I presented.

ETA: Logical rebuttals would actually be considered useful in a society that is short on critical thought. I’m not sold on/selling the proposition myself. Just curious about opinions and the reasoning behind them.

7

And what happens when the Central Computer alters your palm flower crystal and turns you into a Runner? What happens then, hotshot?

8

If for no other reason at all than advances in technology, no.
Let’s say you get chipped with the current best-technology device today. And tomorrow they release the news story about the scanner that can read it, hack your bank account and steal your identity tomorrow.
Revision B comes out and they surgically remove your first one to put in the higher-tech model. And in a year they decide that they really should have put in 2 gig of RAM instead of 1. Then a few months later they decide that the entire data format is obsolete and they change in much the same manner that eight track tapes became obsolete.
This goes on and on. Forget it.
Oh yeah, and what Marley said.
And I’ll bet someone will mention the Biblical passage that almost seems to specifically prohibit it as well.

9

Hell NO!

10

No.

I don’t think any organization is trustworthy of this proposed data.

Beyond that, you get into the hacking problem. Any technology created is a technology that can be duplicated, thus you don’t get the freedom of mistaken identity you think you do.
And if it can be copied, you may have less protection because everybody assumes it works properly; they don’t question why Barak Obama is a young white female.

Then, you have the police/LEO problem to consider. They are constantly finding ways and methods to skirt the laws in place, our outright break them in the name of security.

How could the Nazis have benefited from knowing the exact movements of ask of the populace under their control?
None of the people who were Jewish and barely missed detection could have done as they did. None of the Nazi camp who helped the Jews would have gone undetected.
All of the hiding places would be known.
All the peoples medical histories (lineage, Jewish decent) would have been known.

Think of the communist trials here in USA, put on by McCarthy. No need to have them if you’re looking just for names. Look through the movement database and see exactly who was going to all the meetings.

Then we have the US Japanese internment camps, faster roundup and more complete detention of the ‘threat’ than we already had.

Also, all it takes is one switch to be thrown and you’re considered a fugitive, but now they know exactly where you are and what you’re trying to access. You have nowhere to hide and no way to appeal. You can’t call you’re family because as soon as you dial a number you’re scanned and flagged…

and for Hollywood reference, think minority report. I wouldn’t want to live like that.

11

No problem-o. Just download the Sanctuary app into the iPhone (that’s already been tracking your movements since 2007)… :slight_smile:

12

Can you get wandering older relatives chipped? I don’t have any current ones, I’m just curious.

13

Nope -
I’ve managed to carry a wallet just fine for decades. I’ve only lost it once. On the other hand, I’ve had my credit card info stolen maybe 5 times, and I don’t believe that any of those times involved someone writing down the info off of my card. All of them were from someone’s database being hacked.

I also feel no need to let every one with a scanner know exactly where I go, what I buy, what I view, and how long I stay in the bathroom. I’m continually working to keep my data fragmented, so that no one has access to all of it.

So for both security and privacy reasons, no thanks.

I am baffled by this though:

So first you list all the things that could be done so easily, by having a chip scanned, and then you say that a thief wouldn’t be able to use it? How would that work? Either there has to be additional layers of security, or anyone with a chip broadcasting the right ID number can use it.

14

Off the charts creepy. It’s already way too easy for humans to track one another, I’m not up for making it easier.

15

I just started working for a new company and to get things rolling I gave them my email and phone number. Some number puncher put them both into the system wrong. One number off on the phone number and a missing letter on the email. They could not get a hold of me for me to to paperwork and stuff. So after a couple of days they called a third party to get a hold of me to tell me to call them.

Some number puncher is going to have to do the initial setup of the info into the database. I would not trust another human being to do that.

Even if I got to do the number punching I wouldn’t trust the humans who would then keep the system going afterwards.

Also if you are not famous but have lots of money I could just kill you and put your chip in me. How is anyone going to know that I am not John Smith? I have the implant to prove I am John Smith.

16

Nope.

And, with that said, every time I read the OP title my mind thinks “like would I be willing to be disposed of in a wood chipper?” I’d probably be talked into that first.

17

For some reason I thought this was somehow going to be related tothis thread and was thinking, “Who on earth would vote yes??”

Carry on.

18

Hell no. Those things operate on RFID tech, and I can buy an RFID scanner on ebay for $22. I can also get programmable rfid tags and chips online, not to mention making my own. So for less than a night out on the town, I can steal the info of anyone who’s been chipped, just by sitting in the park with my laptop running, and use it to my heart’s content.

The tech has a long, long way to go before I decide to use it.

19

Completely true, and that’s why I added the comment about access to that information. As it is, companies are getting better (and creepier) about correlating the information they have about you and using it to spam you, predict what you want, and things of that type. Once you get to the point where all of that information is on one chip and companies and the government have access to it - which means clearinghouse companies will have and sell every bit of information on the chip in your body - it’s going to increase exponentially.

20

I have no objection to combining a federal passport with a local drivers license, but I would not get chipped. With a separate ID/license, I can always put it in an RFID secure pouch and run, but if chipped I can’t.