Thursday, February 07, 2013

Technology is great. Chip your dog if you're a Brit. Chip the newborn?

Think how much TSA would love that at the airport. How employers could use a low cost RFID reader to avoid liability for hiring illegal immigrant workers. How you'd never have to carry around a bulky Social Security card, or have to remember the number when filling out forms. Ease of driver license renewals or denials, lack of need for any voter photo-ID. The possibilities are endless.

This Strib link. This Google. Here.

They could even chip personal firearms, at the factories, at retail outlets, and cross reference your chip and your handgun's. Chip cartridge boxes before sale. As easy as pie. A while back, decades actually, there was an outcry when Intel proposed to code a unique identity into every microprocessor it made. Now as I understand it Microsoft codes unique identifiers into its Windows operating system copies, so it can refuse to update pirate copies - no payment up front, no update. And when you visit websites you IP is easily identified. You can even sign up with Facebook, and identify yourself by the social network data you generate, there, for Zuckerberg and whoever else your data is shared with. Once they chip you, and the reader has to verify your chip and workstation are duly registered, as a set and individually before you can access the web, things will be so much more open and less oppressive. With Reagan as president back in 1984, it's probably been done already. All but chipping you. For now. Your medical records would be in the cloud, indexed by your chip, in case of an accident while a tourist. For setting insurance contracts, verifying drug prescriptions at border crossings. Many innovations are feasible.

Money would be unnecessary, your credit would ride with your chip.

The black market for chip removal, recoding, chips at the border for illegal entrants, pirated chips removed at autopsy, all that might prosper. It could be bigger market-wise than illicit drugs. DNA logging and chipping at birth would make aspects of law enforcement easier. Hacking the database could, as needed, be made a capital crime.