Nexus - 1506 - New Times Magazine-pages

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Crown, New York, 2001, pp. 7-8, excerpts at http://www. "China's national ID cards, for instance, are encoded with ibmandtheholocaust.com/excerpts.php) what most people would consider a shocking amount of It's an eerie echo of polices being enacted today against —_ personal information, including health and reproductive Muslims and left-wing "extremists" by the corrupt Bush history, employment status, religion, ethnicity and even the regime in its quixotic quest to "keep America safe" in name and phone number of each cardholder's landlord. furtherance of capitalist and imperialist goals of global | More ominous still, the cards are part of a larger project to domination. blanket Chinese cities with state-of-the-art surveillance As security and privacy analyst Katherine Albrecht technologies. writes, describing IBM's patented "Identification and Michael Lin, a vice president for China Public Security Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged Items in Store Technology, a private company providing the RFID cards Environments": for the program, unflinchingly described them to the New "It chillingly details RFID's potential for surveillance ina York Times as 'a way for the government to control the world where networked RFID readers called 'person __ population in the future’. And even if other governments tracking units' would be incorporated virtually everywhere do not take advantage of the surveillance potential inherent people go—in 'shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus _ in the new ID cards, ample evidence suggests that data- stations, elevators, trains, hungry corporations will." (ibid.) airplanes, restrooms, sports I would disagree with Albrecht arenas, libraries, theaters, [and] on one salient point: museums'—to closely monitor governments particularly the governments, particularly the people's movements." ("How | °" / crazed, corporate-controlled RFID Tags Could Be Used to crazed, corporate-controlled grifters holding down the fort in Track Unsuspecting People", : . Washington, most certainly will Scientific American, August grifters holding down the fort take advantage of RFID's 2008, http://www.sciam.com/ | jy Washington, most certainly — ff surveillance potential. article.cfm?id=how-rfid-tags- . In March 2005, for example, could-be-used) will take advantage of RFID's the Senate Republican High Tech According to the patent cited . . Task Force praised RFID by Albrecht, as an individual surveillance potential. applications as "exciting new moves around a store or a city technologies" with "tremendous centre: "[An] RFID tag scanner promise for our economy". In located [in the desired tracking this spirit, they vowed to location] ... scans the RFID tags on [a] person... As that "protect" RFID from regulation and legislation. (http:// person moves around the store, different RFID tag scanners _ republican.senate.gov/httf/) Needless to say, the track located throughout the store can pick up radio signals from record of timid Democrats is hardly any better when it the RFID tags carried on that person and the movement of comes to defending privacy rights or something as "quaint" that person is tracked based on these detections... The as the Constitution. person tracking unit may keep records of different Under conditions of a looming economic meltdown, locations where the person has visited, as well as the rising unemployment, staggering debt, the collapse of visitation times." (ibid.) financial markets and continuing wars and occupations in Even if no personal data are stored in the RFID tag, this — Iraq and Afghanistan, US imperialism, in order to shore up doesn't present a problem, IBM explains, because "the its crumbling empire, will continue to import totalitarian personal information will be obtained when the person uses —_ methods of rule employed in its "global war on terror" onto his or her credit card, bank card, shopper card or the like". the home front. The introduction of RFID-chipped As Albrecht avers, the link between the unique RFID __ passports and driver's licences for the mass surveillance number and a person's identity "needs to be made only —_and political repression of the American people arises once for the card to serve as a proxy for the person __ within this context. 0 thereafter". (ibid.) With the wholesale introduction of RFID-chipped passports and driver's licences, the capitalist | About the Author: panoptic state is quickly —and quietly — falling into place. Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the Daw Aenn Califaenin Ae veal ace « one ..governments, particularly the crazed, corporate-controlled grifters holding down the fort in Washington, most certainly will take advantage of RFID's About the Author: Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. As well as writing for Covert Action Quarterly, he is the editor of Police State America: US Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning (2002), distributed by AK Press. The complete version of his article here is available on his Antifascist Calling... blogsite at http://antifascist-calling. blogspot.com/ and also at http://www.globalresearch. ca/PrintArticle.php2articleld=10097. Population Surveillance in China and the USA If America's main trading partner and sometime geopolitical rival in the looting of world resources, China, is any indication of the direction in which near-future surveillance technologies are being driven by the "miracle of the market", the curtain on privacy and individual rights is rapidly drawing to a close. Albrecht writes: NEXUS ¢ 13 surveillance potential. OCTOBER — NOVEMBER 2008 www.nexusmagazine.com