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with personal identifying data, especially as computer "secure" information plundered. According to a blurb on memory and processing capacities expand. the AAIM website: ¢ Hidden readers. Tags can be read from a distance, not "Automatic Identification and Mobility (AIM) restricted to line of sight, by readers that can be __ technologies are a diverse family of technologies that share incorporated invisibly into nearly any environment where the common purpose of identifying, tracking, recording, human beings or items congregate. RFID readers have __ storing and communicating essential business, personal, or already been experimentally embedded into floor tiles, product data. In most cases, AIM technologies serve as the woven into carpeting and floor mats, hidden in doorways, _ front end of enterprise software systems, providing fast and and seamlessly incorporated into retail shelving and _ accurate collection and entry of data." (AAIM, undated, counters, making it virtually impossible for a consumer to _http://www.aimglobal.org/technologies/) know when or if he or she was being 'scanned'. Among the "diverse family of technologies" touted by ¢ Individual tracking and profiling. If personal | AAIM, many are rife with "dual-use" potential; that is, the identity were linked with unique RFID tag numbers, same technology that can keep track of a pallet of soft individuals could be profiled and tracked without their drinks can also keep track of human beings. Indeed, the knowledge or consent. For example, a tag embedded ina Association touts biometrics as "automated methods of shoe could serve as a de facto identifier for the person recognizing a person based on a physiological or wearing it. Even if item-level behavioral characteristic". This is information remains generic, especially important, since the identifying items people wear or . "need for biometrics can be found carry could associate them with, In 2006, IBM obtained a in federal, state and local for example, particular events patent that will be used for governments, in the military, and like political rallies." (ibid.) in commercial applications". When used as a stand-alone or in conjunction with RFID-chipped "smart cards", biometric technologies "are set to pervade nearly all aspects of the economy and our daily lives". (AAIM, undated, http://www.aimglobal. org/technologies/biometrics) Some "revolution". tracking and profiling The Security State consumers as they move As the corporatist police state Y unfurls its murderous tentacles arounda store, even if access here in the USA, it should come 9 as no surprise that securocrats to commercial databases breathlessly tout the "benefits" of H H imi RFID in the area of "homeland Is strictly limited. security". It doesn't take a genius to conclude that when linked to massive commercial databases as well as those compiled IBM's "Person Tracking Unit" by the 16 separate agencies of the "intelligence The industry received a powerful incentive from the state community"—such as the Terrorist Identities Datamart | when the Government Services Administration, a Bushist Environment (TIDE) that feeds the federal government's _ satrapy, issued a memo in December 2004 that urged the surveillance leviathan with the names of suspected heads of all federal agencies "to consider action that can be "terrorists"—the architecture for a vast totalitarian taken to advance the [RFID] industry". (http://www. enterprise is off the drawing board and onto the streets. spychips.com/press-releases/gsa-document.html) An As last week's mass repression of peaceful protest at the example of capitalist "ingenuity" or another insidious Republican National Convention in St Paul, Minnesota, invasion of our right to privacy? amply demonstrated, the Bush regime's "pre-emptive war" In 2006, IBM obtained a patent that will be used for strategy has been rolled out. (Tom Eley, "RNC in Twin tracking and profiling consumers as they move around a Cities: Eight protesters charged with terrorism under _ store, even if access to commercial databases is strictly Patriot Act", WSWS, 6 September 2008, http://www. limited. And when it comes to tracking and profiling wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/poli-s06.shtml) human beings—say, for mass extermination at the behest af aenaand Nai tdanlaauasn TDMA atandn alana Ta hia tracking and profiling consumers as they move around a store, even if access IBM's "Person Tracking Unit" The industry received a powerful incentive from the state when the Government Services Administration, a Bushist satrapy, issued a memo in December 2004 that urged the heads of all federal agencies "to consider action that can be taken to advance the [RFID] industry". (http://www. spychips.com/press-releases/gsa-document.html) An example of capitalist "ingenuity" or another insidious invasion of our right to privacy? In 2006, IBM obtained a patent that will be used for tracking and profiling consumers as they move around a store, even if access to commercial databases is strictly limited. And when it comes to tracking and profiling human beings—say, for mass extermination at the behest of crazed Nazi ideologues—IBM stands alone. In his groundbreaking 2001 exploration of the enabling technologies for the mass murder of Jews, communists, Romany, gays and lesbians, investigative journalist Edwin Black described in JBM and the Holocaust how, beginning in 1933, IBM and its subsidiaries created technological "solutions" that streamlined the identification of "undesirables" for quick and efficient asset confiscation, deportation, slave labour and eventual annihilation. (/BM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation, RFIDs, AIMs and Biometrics RFIDs are likened to barcodes that scan items at the grocery store checkout line, but what industry flacks such as the Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility (AAIM) fail to mention in their propaganda about RFIDs is that the information stored on a passport or driver's licence can be readily stolen by anyone with a reader device—marketers, security agents, criminals or stalkers — without the cardholder even being remotely aware that they are being tracked and their allegedly 12 ¢ NEXUS In 2006, IBM obtained a patent that will be used for to commercial databases is strictly limited. www.nexusmagazine.com OCTOBER — NOVEMBER 2008