Thursday, November 02, 2006
Prisoners of America
I recently read somewhere about the new laws going into effect regarding "homeland security". Probably the most alarming is the radio-frequency identification (RFID) cards that will now be in all passports issued, may be soon required to be in your drivers license, and are required by all non-citizens to be carried while visiting this country.
The biggest objection I have (if you don't count the invasion of privacy that is obvious) is that critical personal data is broadcast up to 15 meters from these chips making them an incredible source for anyone with very cheap equipment to steal your identity.
Then if they do something off color, go some place suspicious in the governments eyes, or do something down right criminal, you get tagged for it. Tourism in this country is already being effected by issuing these cards to visitors. Read some of the travel blogs from the UK, France, the Netherlands and you will see that folks are downright against having their personal identification information broadcast in this manner.
The Netherlands and a couple of other countries have lodged complaints about the invasion of privacy issues to their citizens. Does anyone remember when they wanted to use these chips to track cattle in this country? The ranchers objected on the basis of not feeling good about how and where all this information would be stored.. so now we treat visitors worse than we treat cows???
I can envision a scenario here, I am in line at the local market carrying my passport (if I had one that was not pre-chip that is) and some sleazy character is sitting by the door with is seemingly innocent ipod.. he grabs my data, which can even include credit card information.. he walks out the door without my even knowing my identity has been stolen.
OK, lets now imagine a bit farther down the line. He gives this ill gotten information to one of his female compatriots (I am vainly hoping that a male could not easily cross a border with a females identity.) Goes over the border to Canada (on my credit card) books a flight to say.. Turkey and gets out of the country.
Then I get a vacation. I go over to one of my favorite cities.. Paris. Meantime this guy is living it up on my credit card, being tracked across many borders, into places that are at war even.. smuggles guns.. whatever.. and someone in some bureaucratic office sees a pattern emerging that indicates I have been everywhere a bomb has gone off, everywhere there have been illegal happenings.. and they tag me for having "ties" with terrorism or any crime.
I think you see where I am going with this so I will leave the rest of the scenario to your imaginations. I just read this 60 page piece of garbage that talked incessantly about beefing up border security, stopping the travel of terrorists, and how we will win against terrorism.. (hard to fathom when you realize the American executive branch are the terrorist leaders today.)
Then I read this entry in some forum by a Canadian business woman who had just found out the sticker on her car window (she traveled across the border frequently) was transmitting her every move.. a sophisticated tracking device.. she was pretty angry. This RFID is also affecting free trade with our "allies".
Am I paranoid? Perhaps I am.. but then you have to understand that even as a grown woman, my mommy won't let me visit Northern Ireland because she is sure that quite innocently I will stumble into some illicit endeavor by the IRA.
Now, before you go "oh yeah, like that is gonna happen" let me tell you about a trip many years ago I made to Paris. The French government (unbeknown to me) was holding someone that the US wanted to extradite for some crime.. this guy had friends, he was not a French national, and these friends started setting off bombs, and committing (dare I say it?) acts of terrorism. I was pretty much oblivious to all of this, until I saw the newspapers the next day. The timing was truly bizarre. I had been to just about every place at very close time proximity to where these events were going down.
I have a photograph I took during that trip, as I was astonished to see a French policeman armed with an automatic machine gun on the streets of Paris. (a reaction to all the stuff that I was so blissfully unaware.)
Now think about it, if I was being tracked with some stupid chip, do you think I would have made it out of the country? Since they stopped the bus I was on to get to the ferry, and removed several people "of interest" I very likely would have been one of the detainees. Not a pleasant thought.
Now lets move to another thought that has crept into my paranoid little mind. You know that wall they are putting up on our southern border? What if it is to keep us in as much as to keep anyone out?
I think it is fair to say that my political views are not popular with the current regime. Does my exercising my freedom of speech link me to terrorists? If the government decided to label me with "anti-American" or any of the labels they are illegally imprisoning people without due process and no recourse, what would stop them from denying me leaving the country even though all I am guilty of is disagreeing with them?
Here is one more thing, and then I will put this one to bed. I have a passport that does not have the chip. It is good for a few more years. I go out of the country, to somewhere requiring a visa, which I get.. and they haven't done the chip thing to visas (which is also in the works) my visa is about to run out, and the powers that be don't answer the issue of my being allowed to come back into the US. Guess what? They aren't going to let me on the plane. (Now I am not so sure I really would want to come back, but if I did, I would be SOL. ) These decisions are done in secret behind closed doors. Maybe the secretary knocked the re-entry request into the trash and it never even got looked at. There I am, no visa, no way to cross any more borders, and suddenly suspect.
Sorry folks, this is reminding me way too much of movies about Hitler's Germany where the Gestapo officer says " Where are your papers?" in a threatening manner.
The biggest objection I have (if you don't count the invasion of privacy that is obvious) is that critical personal data is broadcast up to 15 meters from these chips making them an incredible source for anyone with very cheap equipment to steal your identity.
Then if they do something off color, go some place suspicious in the governments eyes, or do something down right criminal, you get tagged for it. Tourism in this country is already being effected by issuing these cards to visitors. Read some of the travel blogs from the UK, France, the Netherlands and you will see that folks are downright against having their personal identification information broadcast in this manner.
The Netherlands and a couple of other countries have lodged complaints about the invasion of privacy issues to their citizens. Does anyone remember when they wanted to use these chips to track cattle in this country? The ranchers objected on the basis of not feeling good about how and where all this information would be stored.. so now we treat visitors worse than we treat cows???
I can envision a scenario here, I am in line at the local market carrying my passport (if I had one that was not pre-chip that is) and some sleazy character is sitting by the door with is seemingly innocent ipod.. he grabs my data, which can even include credit card information.. he walks out the door without my even knowing my identity has been stolen.
OK, lets now imagine a bit farther down the line. He gives this ill gotten information to one of his female compatriots (I am vainly hoping that a male could not easily cross a border with a females identity.) Goes over the border to Canada (on my credit card) books a flight to say.. Turkey and gets out of the country.
Then I get a vacation. I go over to one of my favorite cities.. Paris. Meantime this guy is living it up on my credit card, being tracked across many borders, into places that are at war even.. smuggles guns.. whatever.. and someone in some bureaucratic office sees a pattern emerging that indicates I have been everywhere a bomb has gone off, everywhere there have been illegal happenings.. and they tag me for having "ties" with terrorism or any crime.
I think you see where I am going with this so I will leave the rest of the scenario to your imaginations. I just read this 60 page piece of garbage that talked incessantly about beefing up border security, stopping the travel of terrorists, and how we will win against terrorism.. (hard to fathom when you realize the American executive branch are the terrorist leaders today.)
Then I read this entry in some forum by a Canadian business woman who had just found out the sticker on her car window (she traveled across the border frequently) was transmitting her every move.. a sophisticated tracking device.. she was pretty angry. This RFID is also affecting free trade with our "allies".
Am I paranoid? Perhaps I am.. but then you have to understand that even as a grown woman, my mommy won't let me visit Northern Ireland because she is sure that quite innocently I will stumble into some illicit endeavor by the IRA.
Now, before you go "oh yeah, like that is gonna happen" let me tell you about a trip many years ago I made to Paris. The French government (unbeknown to me) was holding someone that the US wanted to extradite for some crime.. this guy had friends, he was not a French national, and these friends started setting off bombs, and committing (dare I say it?) acts of terrorism. I was pretty much oblivious to all of this, until I saw the newspapers the next day. The timing was truly bizarre. I had been to just about every place at very close time proximity to where these events were going down.
I have a photograph I took during that trip, as I was astonished to see a French policeman armed with an automatic machine gun on the streets of Paris. (a reaction to all the stuff that I was so blissfully unaware.)
Now think about it, if I was being tracked with some stupid chip, do you think I would have made it out of the country? Since they stopped the bus I was on to get to the ferry, and removed several people "of interest" I very likely would have been one of the detainees. Not a pleasant thought.
Now lets move to another thought that has crept into my paranoid little mind. You know that wall they are putting up on our southern border? What if it is to keep us in as much as to keep anyone out?
I think it is fair to say that my political views are not popular with the current regime. Does my exercising my freedom of speech link me to terrorists? If the government decided to label me with "anti-American" or any of the labels they are illegally imprisoning people without due process and no recourse, what would stop them from denying me leaving the country even though all I am guilty of is disagreeing with them?
Here is one more thing, and then I will put this one to bed. I have a passport that does not have the chip. It is good for a few more years. I go out of the country, to somewhere requiring a visa, which I get.. and they haven't done the chip thing to visas (which is also in the works) my visa is about to run out, and the powers that be don't answer the issue of my being allowed to come back into the US. Guess what? They aren't going to let me on the plane. (Now I am not so sure I really would want to come back, but if I did, I would be SOL. ) These decisions are done in secret behind closed doors. Maybe the secretary knocked the re-entry request into the trash and it never even got looked at. There I am, no visa, no way to cross any more borders, and suddenly suspect.
Sorry folks, this is reminding me way too much of movies about Hitler's Germany where the Gestapo officer says " Where are your papers?" in a threatening manner.
