It’s sold in the Washington Post — the CIA’s favorite newspaper — as a wonderful world of convenience come true for consumers:
“RFID-enabled refrigerators could warn about expired milk, generate
weekly shopping lists, even send signals to your interactive TV, so
that you see ‘personalized’ commercials for foods you have a history of
buying. Sniffers in your microwave might read a chip-equipped TV dinner
and cook it without instruction… Companies say the RFID tags improve
supply-chain efficiency, cut theft, and guarantee that brand-name
products are authentic, not counterfeit. At a store, RFID doorways
could scan your purchases automatically as you leave, eliminating
tedious checkouts.”
Excuse me, but I’ll take the tedium.
The problem, critics say, is that microchipped products might very well do a whole lot more.
With tags in so many objects, relaying information to databases that
can be linked to credit and bank cards, almost no aspect of life may
soon be safe from the prying eyes of corporations and governments, says
Mark Rasch, former head of the computer-crime unit of the U.S. Justice
Department.
By placing sniffers in strategic areas, companies can invisibly
“rifle through people’s pockets, purses, suitcases, briefcases, luggage
— and possibly their kitchens and bedrooms — anytime of the day or
night,” says Rasch, now managing director of technology at FTI
Consulting Inc., a Baltimore-based company.
In an RFID world, “You’ve got the possibility of unauthorized people
learning stuff about who you are, what you’ve bought, how and where
you’ve bought it … It’s like saying, ‘Well, who wants to look through
my medicine cabinet?’”
He imagines a time when anyone from police to identity thieves to
stalkers might scan locked car trunks, garages or home offices from a
distance. “Think of it as a high-tech form of Dumpster diving,” says
Rasch, who’s also concerned about data gathered by “spy” appliances in
the home.
Forget identity thieves and stalkers — a distinct minority — and
worry about the government using this technology, not to discover
what’s in your medicine cabinet per se — by way of HIPAA and Section
215 of the Patriot Act, they may already know this — but rather to keep
track of pesky enemies of the state, or would-be enemies of the state,
the sort who actually believe they have a right to challenge the
government, or even mildly petition it.
For autocrats, a world embedded with a constellation of ubiquitous
RFID sensors would be ideal. “A Panopticon Singularity is the logical
outcome if the burgeoning technologies of the singularity are funneled
into automating law enforcement,” writes Charlie Stross.
“Previous police states were limited by manpower, but the panopticon
singularity substitutes technology, and ultimately replaces human
conscience with a brilliant but merciless prosthesis.”
As Stross notes, the state will use this technology to go after the
malcontents and troublemakers, but they will also use it against
pedestrian criminals, those minus political persuasion:
If a panopticon singularity emerges, you’d be well
advised to stay away from Massachusetts if you and your partner aren’t
married. Don’t think about smoking a joint unless you want to see the
inside of one of the labor camps where over 50% of the population
sooner or later go. Don’t jaywalk, chew gum in public, smoke, exceed
the speed limit, stand in front of fire exit routes, or wear clothing
that violates the city dress code (passed on the nod in 1892, and never
repealed because everybody knew nobody would enforce it and it would
take up valuable legislative time). You won’t be able to watch those
old DVD’s of ‘Friends’ you copied during the naughty oughties because
if you stick them in your player it’ll call the copyright police on
you. You’d better not spend too much time at the bar, or your insurance
premiums will rocket and your boss might ask you to undergo therapy.
You might be able to read a library book or play a round of a computer
game, but your computer will be counting the words you read and
monitoring your pulse so that it can bill you for the excitement it has
delivered.
In a totalitarian society we “are all criminals,” or at least easy marks ready to be fleeced by a sociopathic elite.
