[LINK] Re: 1/4: [Politech] HHS announces program to implant RFID tags
in homeless [priv]
Jase Przychodzen/CoM
Jas.Przychodzen at marion.sa.gov.au
Fri Apr 2 10:04:33 EST 2004
Yes yes hilarious April the 1st joke.
HOWEVER.
Have you all seen the device to monitore the elderly with RFIDs?
Its a glove with a small reader on it (the size of two AA batteries)
it talks to a unit at home, monitoring what the elderly touches.
Then if the touch pattern is out of the norm the unit rises alarm.
I am not sure if I have sent it to the list.
---
Jase Przychodzen
The content of this message is my personal opinion and may not represent
the policy of my employer.
If in doubt, please check with me.
Without Prejudice.
Roger Clarke
<Roger.Clarke at xamax.co To: privacy at lists.efa.org.au, link at anu.edu.au
m.au> cc: Chris Hoofnagle <hoofnagle at epic.org>
Sent by: Fax to:
privacy-bounces at lists. Subject: 1/4: [Politech] HHS announces program to implant RFID tags in homeless [priv]
efa.org.au
02/04/2004 08:01 AM
Note the date. I've used this theme many times in presentations, but
this presentation of the argument is much more nicely composed.
>Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 10:15:52 -0600
>From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
>To: politech at politechbot.com
>X-URL: http://www.mccullagh.org/
>Subject: [Politech] HHS announces program to implant RFID tags in
>homeless [priv]
>
>[This is a joke... I hope! --Declan]
>
>---
>
>From: DELETED at mail.house.gov>
>Subject: latest HHS outrage... please circulate widely! (REMOVEEMAIL)
>Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 09:26:25 -0500
>
>WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
>said Thursday that it was about to begin testing a new technology
>designed to help more closely monitor and assist the nation's homeless
>population.
>
>Under the pilot program, which grew out of a series of policy academies
>held in the last two years, homeless people in participating cities will
>be implanted with mandatory Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags
>that social workers and police can use track their movements.
>
>The RFID technology was developed by HHS' Health Resources and Services
>Administration (HRSA) in partnership with five states, including
>California and New York. "This is a rare opportunity to use advanced
>technology to meet society's dual objectives of better serving our
>homeless population while making our cities safer," HRSA Administrator
>Betty James Duke said.
>
>The miniscule RFID tags are no larger than a matchstick and will be
>implanted subdermally, meaning under the skin. ...
[My seminar line has always been that subcutaneous isn't good enough,
because people will scratch them out, or get their mates to do so.
Look for a place that people will be too squeamish to attack. People
usually suggest the male scrotum. But I've always argued for the gum]
>... Data from RFID tracking
>stations mounted on telephone poles will be transmitted to police and
>social service workers, who will use custom Windows NT software to track
>movements of the homeless in real time.
I guess the utter non-credibility of relying on an MS OS to perform a
real-time function was meant to give the more gullible readers the
clue that the whole article was a sham.
>In what has become a chronic social problem, people living in shelters
>and on the streets do not seek adequate medical care and frequently
>contribute to the rising crime rate in major cities. Supporters of
>subdermal RFID tracking say the technology will discourage implanted
>homeless men and women from committing crimes, while making it easier
>for government workers to provide social services such as delivering
>food and medicine.
A lovely linkage of the initiative to an idea in good standing. The
middle-classes are thereby able to overcome their hesitancy, and
embrace the proposal as being necessary to protect the nice folk.
>Duke called the RFID tagging pilot program "a high-tech,
>minimally-intrusive way for the government to lift our citizens away
>from the twin perils of poverty and crime." Participating cities include
>New York City, San Francisco, Washington, and Bethlehem, Penn.
>
>Participating states will receive grants of $14 million to $58 million
>from the federal Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness
>(PATH) program, which was created under the McKinney Act to fund support
>services for the homeless. A second phase of the project, scheduled to
>be completed in early 2005, will wirelessly transmit live information on
>the locations of homeless people to handheld computers running the
>Windows CE operating system.
It took me a while to get much out of that bit. I guess it provides
the link to the gaming and gambling markets: sci-fi has played
around with the idea of dungeons and dragons devotees getting to play
with real people; and there's bound to be money to be made by
running boards on whether a particular hobo will move, stay put,
drink or die.
>A spokesman for the National Coalition for the Homeless, which estimates
>that there are between 2.3 million and 3.5 million people experiencing
>homelessness nationwide, said the pilot program could be easily abused.
>"We have expressed our tentative support for the idea to HRSA, but only
>if it includes privacy safeguards," the spokesman said. "So far it's
>unclear whether those safeguards will actually be in place by roll-out."
That underlines very nicely what a vacuous notion 'privacy
safeguards' is, when the privacy of your person has been
fundamentally violated.
>Chris Hoofnagle, deputy director of the Electronic Privacy Information
>Center, said the mandatory RFID program would be vulnerable to a legal
>challenge. "It is a glaring violation of the Tenth Amendment, which says
>that powers not awarded to the government are reserved to the people,
>and homeless people have just as many Tenth Amendment rights as everyone
>else," said Hoofnagle, who is speaking about homeless privacy at this
>month's Computers Freedom and Privacy conference in Berkeley, Calif.
Yes, there actually is a Tenth Amendment, and it is about reserving of
powers.
>While HRSA's program appears to be the first to forcibly implant humans
>with RFID tags, the technology is becoming more widely adopted as
>retailers use it to track goods. Wal-Mart Stores said last year that it
>will require its top 100 suppliers to place RFID tags on shipping crates
>and pallets by January 2005.
Now *there's* a good application for them!
>
>Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International
>_______________________________________________
>Politech mailing list
>Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
>Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
--
Roger Clarke http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au http://www.xamax.com.au/
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program, University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Baker Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre, U.N.S.W
Visiting Fellow in Computer Science, Australian National University
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