Big Dogs House

The Number of the Beast

Jul 12, 2009 Political

It’s been coming down the pike for awhile, so slyly that many people aren’t aware of it in any way, or if they are, it is probably dismissed as a false concern.

The problem is micro-chips embedded in everything from your passports to your phone, all capable of providing information about you to whoever has the capability to read them, and it’s becoming increasingly easy to do so. The Federal government has been embedding RFID chips, or radio frequency identification chips into the new passports, presumeably to facilitate the flow of information, but apparently this chip is very open to abuse.

Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a Motorola reader he’d bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Francisco with one objective: To read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car.

It took him 20 minutes to strike hacker’s gold.

Zipping past Fisherman’s Wharf, his scanner detected, then downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians’ electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags.

Within an hour, he’d “skimmed” the identifiers of four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet.

Embedding identity documents — passports, drivers licenses, and the like — with RFID chips is a no-brainer to government officials.

Increasingly, they are promoting it as 21st century technology that will help speed border crossings, safeguard credentials against counterfeiters, and keep terrorists from sneaking into the country.

chron.com

Once again, we see that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I approve of an idea that keeps terrorists at bay- who wouldn’t? But I do think that whoever thought this up didn’t think this through to it’s complete end game, or they would have safeguarded these chips from illicit hacking before sticking them into passports, driver’s licenses, ID cards, cell phones, cars, and every other thing they think they need to keep track of us “just in case” we get unruly, we’re late for dinner, or they need our advice on international policy and/ or fiscal restraint.

Putting a traceable RFID in every pocket has the potential to make everybody a blip on someone’s radar screen, critics say, and to redefine Orwellian government snooping for the digital age.

“Little Brother,” some are already calling it — even though elements of the feared global surveillance web exist only on drawing boards, neither available nor approved for use.

But with advances in tracking technologies coming at an ever-faster rate, critics say, it won’t be long before governments could be able to find anyone in real time, 24-7, from a cafe in Paris to the shores of California.

The key to getting such a system to work, opponents say, is making sure everyone carries an RFID tag linked to a biometric data file.

chron.com

This sounds like so much fun, being at the beck and call of anyone who seriously  wants to find out who you are, and your credit score, and any other records they might want to access- including, possibly, your medical records and/ or DNA. This might be a good thing, in that a person would not have to carry around a slew of documents- instead, your chip would be scanned- but to do this right, the government, or whoever is going to be in charge of this needs to get it right, and can you really trust the government to get anything right?

The probability and opportunity of and for abuse is too easy by far at the moment. And there are other considerations.

The purpose of using RFID is not to identify people, says Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer at Homeland Security, but rather “to verify that the identification document holds valid information about you.”

Likewise, U.S. border agents are “pinging” databases only to confirm that licenses aren’t counterfeited. “They’re not pulling up your speeding tickets,” she says, or looking at personal information beyond what is on a passport.

The change is largely about speed and convenience, she says.

An RFID document that doubles as a U.S. travel credential, Callahan says, “only makes it easier to pull the right record fast enough, to make sure that the border flows, and is operational.”

Homeland Security has been promoting broad use of RFID even though its own advisory committee warned that radio-tagged IDs have the potential to allow “widespread surveillance of individuals” without their knowledge.

In its 2006 draft report, the committee recommended that “RFID be disfavored for identifying and tracking human beings.”

For now, chipped PASS cards and enhanced driver’s licenses are optional and not yet widely deployed. Roughly 192,000 EDLs have been issued in Washington, Vermont, Michigan and New York.

But as more Americans carry them “you can bet that long-range tracking of people on a large scale will rise exponentially,” says Paget, a self-described “ethical hacker” who works as an Internet security consultant.

Mark Roberti, editor of RFID Journal, an industry newsletter, recently acknowledged that as the use of RFID in official documents grows, the potential for abuse increases.

“A government could do this, for instance, to track opponents,” he wrote in an opinion piece discussing Paget’s experiment. “To date, this type of abuse has not occurred, but it could if governments fail to take privacy issues seriously.”

chron.com

Now, I am not one for “conspiracies”- personally, I feel that people are too stupid and venal to hold a conspiracy together for long; however, I am not necessarily in favor of allowing the ease by which venal and corrupt people can take advantage of us either. We need to be very, very careful in what we do and how we do this- we cannot rely on others’ altruism.

The chains we put on ourselves we cannot blame on others.

Tags: big brother, orwell, rfid, unwarranted intrusions

With Obama, Big Brother Is Watching You

Mar 1, 2009 Political

Remember not too long ago when the Real ID issue was front and center? Remember how all the so called civil liberty organizations were opposed to this “National ID”? The original Real ID was supposed to be a way for states to have uniformity in the ID process because it mandated a certain kind of ID. There were many organizations who were opposed to the concept.

I was not too fond of the whole thing because it was another intrusion of the government. The government laid out a list of items that were required for a license to meet the Real ID standard. All well and good but it added additional cost to states for the licenses. This cost was not paid for by the federal government and the states were going to pass them on to the people receiving the licenses. The cost of one of these was reported to be over $100.

Real ID went by the wayside and now the feds want something called the Enhanced Driver’s License (EDL) which sounds nice enough but it has a Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip in it.

Janet Napolitano opposed the Real ID when she was Governor of Arizona but now that she is in charge of Homeland Security she is in favor of the RFID embedded devices. The difference is, they are saying that we are not doing Real ID and instead going to “enhanced” driver’s licenses. The enhancement is the RFID and that is the change from Real ID.

For those who do not know, and RFID is a little electronic device that sends out an infra red signal that can be read. How it is powered (active or passive) is another issue but they all work the same. Some stores and been embedding them in products so shopping carts can be pushed past a reader and all items charged to the customer. They have a purpose but making people carry them is not a good one.

Several years ago RFIDs could be read from nearly 70 feet. I am certain it is farther by now but 70 feet is problematic enough. Suppose the police start equipping cars with an RFID reader. They could then drive around reading who is in a car and if someone they happen to have a warrant for or who is wanted for any reason is detected they could then manufacture a reason to stop the car.

Suppose you wanted to attend a gun show, pro or anti government rally, church, synagogue or mosque, and the government wanted to know who was attending these places. What would stop them from sending an operative in with a reader to get a list of who was there? People at gun shows could be placed on a list of gun owners (or potential gun owners), people at a rally or protest could be listed and placed on some type of watch list. People who attend certain religious services could be singled out for one reason or another. The government can require an EDL to buy a gun and then use the information to create a database of gun owners.

Banks and other businesses could put RFID readers near the entrance and then obtain information about who has entered. It could be used for a number of things. However, the most disturbing would be a government that decided to put RFID readers all over town to track movements of people.

Sound far fetched? There are over 20,000 closed circuit cameras in England and Chicago wants one on every street corner. How far away would the reader be?

I will not get one of these unless I absolutely have to and then I would never remove my license from my vehicle. I have other identification that will get me anywhere my license will so I could leave it in the car. It is also possible to wrap RFIDs in aluminum foil and keep the signal from getting out though this is not a 100% fix. There are companies that sell wallets that block RFID transmission. The moonbats could just carry theirs under their tin foil hats…

Sounds like a minor issue but the government is too intrusive as it is and with Obama and his desire to make this a Socialist country the government will become more intrusive. Makes me wonder why Napolitano changed her mind and why the civil liberties organizations are not all up in arms.

Silly me, Bush was the one taking our liberties. The Real ID under him was oppressive but now that The Evil Won is in, they have nothing to worry about…

I guess it won’t be too long into the future before government is implanting these in children as they are born. That is assuming the liberals actually let them be born…

Tags: big brother, enhanced driver's license, Obama, real id, rfid, socialism

Fat Tax, Mileage Tax, What Next?

Dec 30, 2008 Political

The state of Oregon is looking at using GPS systems to track the number of miles people drive and then tax them accordingly. Those who are taxed by the mile will have their gasoline taxes rebated at the pump, or so says the Governor of the state.

Privacy advocates worry that the system will be used to track people though the government says it cannot and will not do that. However, if it involves a GPS then they can track people so the capability is there. Will they? One can most assuredly believe they will the first time a child is abducted or some other emergency exists. They will justify their acts based on public safety or “its for the children.”

The move is designed to improve revenue for the roads (though they never use the taxes for that exclusively). Revenue is down since people are driving fewer miles and using fuel efficient vehicles, what they wanted us to do in the first place. Now they want to tax per mile which means it will be easier for them to generate revenue by simply increasing the amount per mile drivers are taxed. There is no word on how the state will handle vehicles that drive primarily on roads that are not maintained by the state such as roads on private property.

I think this is a bad idea and it will lead to invasion of privacy. It will also lead to people paying more in taxes. I would not be surprised if people who are mobile move out of the state to avoid it.

Put Down That Sugary Drink

In New York, Governor Paterson has proposed 88 new taxes in an effort to shrink the state’s growing deficit. Seems to me that cutting waste would be the first step but Paterson is a Democrat and they never met a tax they didn’t hike.

One of the most controversial taxes is the tax that will be levied on sugary drinks like non diet colas. The state is using its power to levy taxes in order to force behavior on people. This will only lead to people going to other states to buy sugary drinks. Look at how they already avoid paying taxes on tobacco. Pretty soon, the Indian reservations will be selling mail order cola.

The interesting thing is that they want to curb obesity by taxing sugary drinks when artificial sweeteners have been linked to obesity. The artificial sweeteners might actually cause the body to crave more sugar leading to people eating more.

Regardless, this is a bad idea. First of all it is not the state’s job to decide what people should or should not drink or eat. This is an individual choice and if people become obese then that is their concern. The fact of the matter is everyone is going to die and depriving people of what they enjoy (or taxing it so they cannot afford it) only delays the inevitable. Life is a sexually transmitted terminal condition.

The state claims that people’s health is its only concern but the fact is the state wants to make money and taxing sugary drinks is how they are going about it. I can guarantee that if everyone decided to stop drinking sugary beverages and stuck to diet drinks, water or milk then the state would either tax them or find something else to tax. The state will find a way to increase revenue when the flow of money slows or stops because of behavior they wanted. See above about Oregon.

When will this insanity end? What next? Will they tax red meat or fatty foods because they increase the risk for high blood pressure and heart disease? Will they tax people with emphysema (or other COPDs) more because they use oxygen less efficiently?

This is a slippery slope because once this camel gets its nose under the tent there will be no stopping it. Government can decide what it thinks is healthy and what it thinks is not and increase taxes according to its own arbitrary standards all in the name of looking out for the people and their health.

It is not government’s job to decide for us how we manage our health. This is a matter of personal responsibility (something government knows nothing about) and it is up to each person to decide what is best.

Taxes are nothing more than a form of involuntary servitude where the fruits of our labor are confiscated. We work and our money is taken but we have little say in how it is spent, spending that usually involves a huge amount of waste.

I propose a fathead tax. Then people like Paterson would be required to pay more in taxes.

Come to think of it, so would all politicians.

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Tags: behavior, big brother, New York, oregon, paterson, taxes