Agreed. The amount of information I, a simple insurance claims guy, can get about you with just the basic info available on a police report (public record) is creepy. My brother is working on marketing aparatus that uses facial recognition software to identify your age, gender, sometimes even your identity. That is cross referenced to things like your address, registered vehicles, known buying habits, etc. and then, depending on where you are in a store, a video display greets you by name and presents you with a customized advertisement.
Resistance, I say, is useless. Thence the OP. If you take it as a given that the concept of privacy is about to change radically–meaning if it isn’t solely in your head it ain’t private–why not go with it and at least accept what conveniences are available.
Now this is an outstanding argument against. You can basically pick pockets without actually coming into contact with your mark.
Mmmm, I don’t know if I trust the technology yet, for aforementioned reasons like RFID hacking. But if they created a secure chip, I’d be for it.
But the big determining factor is where I live. I wouldn’t want it if I was an American citizen, but the Canadian government is different and I don’t particularly care if they have this info on me.
I have no particular qualms about it, but there doesn’t seem to be any pressing need either. None of your posited scenarios seem particularly appealing.
If, on the other hand, the chip would enable two-way Internet access, perhaps tying into the brain’s visual and speech processing functions, I would gladly give up whatever illusion of privacy I now have for always-on connectivity. (You hear that, Google? Pretty please?)
I am an ex-Computer Science prof. I have been spent a lot of time around top crypto people.
Absolutely, positively no way. This is just a horrible idea. No privacy, no security, no justification. Idiotic at every level.
Over and over again these chip systems get cracked. The more complex you make it in order to protect it, the more likely somebody goofed and got the programming wrong.
This would be a great way to make life simpler for criminals.
I’d do it if almost everything you did with it required keying in a PIN. That would make it as secure as my debit card, which I use all the time.
My cynical take on things like this is that there are already so many ways for us to be tracked, and so many new ways coming out on a regular basis, that those we’d call Big Brother are already three-quarters of the way there. We can’t stop the information-gathering snowball.
The only way for a world with such tech to be relatively free is for there to be widespread transparency. If everyone uses it and everyone’s aware of it, and even if everyone can access much of the information gathered, then the power of it is somewhat controlled. It requires us to adjust our concept of privacy, but I don’t think there’s any other option.
It is most scary and most detrimental to freedom if the information is held and controlled by small groups of people, whether those be corporate leaders or government agencies.
There was a farmer had a dog and Never was his name-o
N-E-V-E-R
N-E-V-E-R
N-E-V-E-R
And Never was his name-o!
“People are boring” is no excuse. I’m boring - so what? My personal information is nobody else’s business and I sure as hell don’t trust the government to keep my info safe.
You want Google to create the Singularity even sooner?!?
Sure, what the hell, I’d probably go for a chipping (with any number of caveats, of course). As you say, Inigo, you’d have to go completely off the grid in the deep woods of northern Canada to not be under constant surveillance in our modern society. What’s that number they always say, we show up on an electronic camera 100 times per day on average?
Sure. Better Google than anybody else I can think of right now, especially Apple, Microsoft, or the government.
I’m more than willing to give up privacy if it means greater interconnectedness and mutual understanding. The caveat, of course, is that the lack of privacy has to apply equally to everyone, and when does that ever happen in the real world?
Still, I’m about as boring a suspect as they come, and if I can Wikipedia all my thoughts just by thinking them… yes, please chip me, privacy be damned!
(But if it’s just a better ID card, no thanks, more because I don’t want a microchip in my body that can be damaged by a fall and then not repaired by my own body… loose fragments don’t sound fun. Benefits of a convenient ID card don’t outweigh that risk, but an actual communications chip… now we’re talking!)
I can’t figure out exactly what the proposal is. RFID just transmits a short identifier code, not a complete set of medical records or anything like that, and you can’t write to it without removing the chip. So it would basically just be a computer readable nametag, which doesn’t seem Orwellian so much as useless. I can just tell people my name and SS number, without the need for scanners and surgery.
Realistically, anyone who wants all my personal information, including my exact location, can find it if he’s dedicated enough. Chipping won’t change that, but it will make my life a good deal more convenient. I say, bring it on!
(Side note: recently, in a college class, we had to present on a potential new social technology and its implications. About 9/10ths of the class proposed a variant on The Chip. I bet if the poll broke it down by generation, all the yes votes would be 30 or younger, and most of the no votes would be 30 or older)
Heh, Anticrist will have been here for 45 years this June.
Simplicio:
The gadget is an implant. It gets scanned and returns a unique number that has been assigned to you.
The number is referenced to a master account run by LargeSibs, Inc. When you first got your chip, you provided useful info, or authorization for them to obtain the info from the relevant agencies (DMV, your Dr., etc), to LargeSibs, Inc. Banks, address, ID, Driver’s license, etc.
If the reader is a medical professional, the relevant history is delivered to them (to their PC, mobile device, whatever) and they refrain from injecting you with bee venom, or give you the right blood, or whatever.
If the reader is a merchant, the scanned number, plus a PIN you enter works just like a debit card–it transfers funds from the account you’ve identified for neck-scan purchases.
Basically, this is an electronic wallet in your neck. It’s got some potential security issues but those can be addressed adequately by folks who do that sort of thing. It’s convenient, and potentially useful and abuseful in new and interesting ways. It’s viability is predicated on the assumption that privacy as we knew it in, say, 1960 is gone for good and that even today your movements and habits can be fairly easily tracked based on your electronic trail.
The current model of Spanish National IDs has had a chip for almost 10 years. This chip can be activated or not at the ID-bearer’s choice. If you choose to activate it and you get the appropriate reader, you can use it to ID yourself to secure webpages (government, banks).
The new model came out a few months after I’d renovated my ID; I just renovated it again this year and now “I’m chipped” - but the chip did not involve surgery, and changing it for the newer model when the newer model comes out will involve going to an appropriate ID Office, filling a piece of paper, waiting for a few minutes and a few more minuted with the ID Officer (a cop). It will not involve surgery.
I think a better poll (maybe something for a future thread) would be to ask this question then break it down by nationality. I suspect a large majority of those saying they can stand the idea of being chipped are not US Americans.
There’s another kind? I mean I’ve heard of Native Americans, Mexican Americans, African Americans, Italian Americans…but I’m pretty sure they’re all US Americans.
I guess I don’t get the point. Its basically just a SS#, except instead of asking me the number, they can point a scanner at my head. Medical records are already being digitized, mercahnts can already withdraw from your bank account with a unique number (the one on your debit card), you can already do a background check with a SS#, etc. The chip just ads a useless gimmick to something that eitehr already exists or will exist in a few years to make the whole thing seem Orwellian.
An objection I see often raised to this (and, indeed, already brought up in this thread) is the idea that someone can simply scan and steal your information by virtue of getting a device to talk to your chip. But it doesn’t have to be—and almost certainly wouldn’t be—that simple.
I’ll wager that most of you who are scared of a passer-by wirelessly stealing your wallet are current users of keyless entry for your car, or have a remote garage door opener. With those devices, it’s similarly trivial to “sniff” the information being transmitted. But even in those cases, that information is next to useless. The reason is that most of these systems operate on a rolling-code algorithm, and sampling the transmitted data doesn’t give you the keys to the castle. Copying and re-transmitting the code from your car’s key fob won’t trick your car into unlocking.
Now a rolling-code algorithm isn’t on the cutting-edge of cryptographic sophistication, and can be cracked. Most garage door openers have been rendered technically insecure by now, even if it’s still easier just to get in with a crowbar. But the keyless entry example is given to demonstrate how access to the raw data being transferred wirelessly isn’t necessarily useful on its own.
All a RFID system has to do is employ the principles of public-key cryptography. It can easily transmit an identifier that is out there in plain sight, but useless without the corresponding private key. It’s how every online shopping transaction you engage in is handled. It’s how identities are verified with digital signatures and sensitive information is emailed as encrypted messages. If only your bank has the right private key to make use of your Chip’s information, the guys with the sniffers can sniff you all they want and it won’t accomplish anything. Hell, you can have your Chip’s serial number and public key hash tattooed on your forehead, and it’s not going to make you vulnerable.
Can encryption schemes be broken? Sure. But that doesn’t seem to stop most people these days from putting their credit card information into an online merchant’s system…or having a credit card at all, for that matter.
There are plenty of reasons to not want an implanted Chip. But wireless wallet theft isn’t really a good one. A physcal wallet and the credit cards in it are orders of magnitude less secure.
