Redstate

I've been keeping an eye on Applied Digital Solution for about four years now, since they first announced the VeriChip.  I watched them through the laborious process of getting it approved by the FDA (they got denied at least once that I remember), watched them market it as a kidnapping deterrent in South America, watched as the first Americans "got chipped" on the Today Show (a family from Florida with medical problems), and as they tried to market the VeriChip as a security ID.  Apparently, they've now succeeded in their most recent endeavor.

As you mentioned, this smacks of big brother/mark of the beast.  However, you may be interested to know even more stuff about RFID technology:

-The big credit card companies are all scrambling to replace their magnetic strip cards with RFID cards.  Mastercard already has some, known as PayPass cards, with PayPass scanners available at some McDonald's across the country - and they just recently announced PayPass cards will be able to be used on the Chicago Subway system as well.

-Visa has new cards out with RFID technology known as VisaNet.

-American Express has issued their RFID cards known as ExpressPay, with scanners available at CVS Pharmacies.

-A company called Precision Dynamics Corporation is marketing their new RFID wristbands for use at some fast food restaurants and retail stores.

So what you've got is a technology that one company is using for Identification and Security purposes and another sector is using for buying and selling of goods.  How long will it be until the two sectors merge, using RFID technology for both purposes?

That's when this whole thing gets really dangerous, IMO.

They are field testing technology that has the RFID tag built into your cell phone. Just wave your phone over the terminal and viola you purchase is paid for.

CVS uses it now to track intrastore drug shipments and there will soon be an RFID built into the label on your prescription bottle. Then the evil government will know where all your drugs are, not the mention the crooks who will drive around your neighborhood looking for a score in your medicine cabinet.

This is very dangerous technology indeed, dangerous to freedom that is.

Walmart uses it for tracking pallets of goods going to stores...where will it end? In your wallet, car, house, appliances, money, medicine, jewelry and anywhere your imagination takes you.

Dont wish to sound like an alarmist but....

Stop the world, I wanna get off.

One of the deepest and most challenging problems in information technology is authentication. To date, every single scheme known for establishing identity has serious flaws, and it's been a holy grail for a long time to come up with a better one.

The traditional reason for wanting positive identification is the obvious one: to keep bad guys out. Broadly, that means preventing access to sensitive resources, locations, or information by unauthorized parties. The newer and more compelling reason is to let the good guys in. This is what's driving the whole RFID initiative. You can create tremendous efficiencies and improve all kinds of processes if you have reliable information about who or what is where and when. So far, it's all good.

But bio-chipping people is frightening, and not just because of the obvious reminiscence of ID numbers tattooed on people's arms. The potential power of positive identification coupled with much richer and ubiquitous data-collection systems will be available to everyone, not just governmental authorities, and our current understandings of "privacy" will be completely transformed.

You now face a world in which everyone can see through your lies.

Someone should write a novel about this. It has the potential to change the whole way humans interact with each other, and the changes may be good! We will certainly start enforcing stricter limits on government power; we're seeing that already in the reaction to the NSA's improved surveillance capability. But that's the tip of the iceberg. Just imagine how different life would be if you could no longer lie to people as easily as we do now.

technology. Video phones were tried in the 60s and the reason they failed is that people did not want a medium where they had to look the person in the face as they told them whatever lie they wanted to tell.  It was a case of bad market research as they put the video system into a block of phones and only afterward found that people were not ready for them.

Today you can buy background sounds to match where you say you are , the chip puts an end to it all. BTW, Heinlein wrote Podkayne of Mars and IIRC she carried a coin with tracking features  in it.  Oh, and my truck keeps track of my driving which could be used to prove I was or was not speeding one day.  The jury is out IMO as to whether this will be net good or bad.  My guess, the chip will come but it will have an On/Off switch.

I suppose someday you will be able to just walk into a store, see something you like, and walk out with it -- your bank account being charged as you pass through the door sensors.

But obviously there are Orwellian uses for such technology.