Laws fight back against RFID fascism

RFID - which stands for radio frequency identification - is another tool of today's high-tech scoundrel. RFID is an identification method that stores data in a tiny tag and can transmit a radio signal that can be read from afar.

So it involves ID's and radio. We can't let the spittle crowd get a foot in the door here.

Though RFID may have a few positive uses, RFID has many uses that are so nefarious that we can't believe they've been allowed to go as far as they have. In an experimental program, right-wing retail and consumer product giants tracked buyers of products by secretly placing RFID readers on shelves to photograph purchasers and transmitting the images to corporate offices hundreds of miles away. Customers were not told they were being photographed.

An even more wrongteous use of RFID involves its forced transplanting in humans. This is something the dinosaur media seems to support, because when you see TV news reports about it, they always act like it's such a great breakthrough, as the whole news team smirks and grins about it. RFID tags can be transplanted under human skin. These tags look like miniature hemorrhoidal suppositories with a tiny soda bottle inside - which is fitting, because I think Corporate America needs to take RFID and shove it up its ass.

But there's good news. After a Cincinnati firm (which is now out of business) began requiring workers to get RFID tags implanted in their skin in order to access the data room, people finally took notice of RFID abuse. Wisconsin and North Dakota promptly passed laws to ban mandatory RFID chips in humans. These laws forbid businesses from making workers get an RFID chip. This month, the California legislature approved a bill to do the same. Employers there would face stiff fines for violating this act. The legislation would prohibit forced RFID tagging as a condition not only for employment but also for promotion or any other "employment benefit."

Naturally, the RFID racket opposes these new laws, accusing legislators of fearmongering. Judging by Big Business's torrid record on human rights, however, we know we have to be fearful of what companies do. Influence by the RFID industry caused right-wing lawmakers in Florida and Oklahoma to kill anti-RFID bills in their states. (A bill against forced RFID implanting is the type of thing you'd think nobody would be against, but some ideologue always is.)

The only maker of human-implantable RFID chips that has approval from the FDA is Applied Digital Solutions, which makes VeriChip. VeriChip won FDA approval several years ago, when ultraconservative vomit inducer Tommy Thompson was Bush's Secretary of Health of Human Services, a department that oversees the FDA. After Thompson left the HHS, Applied Digital Solutions appointed him to its board of directors.

The problems with RFID tagging don't stop at privacy violations, identity theft, and political corruption. Years before being approved by the FDA, RFID implants were shown to cause cancerous tumors in as many as 10% of cases.

Yet the Bush regime has the nerve to call antiwar activists terrorists.

(Source: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9016385;
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070904-california-outlaws-forced-rfid-tagging-of-humans.html;
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/rfid/california-bans-mandatory-subdermal-rfid-tagging-296276.php;
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=240878;
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/conspiracy/rfid-chips-may-cause-tumors-297917.php)