Proposal for UK Prisoners to be Given RFID Implants 188
Raisey-raison writes "There is a proposal in the UK to implant "machine-readable" microchips under the skin of thousands of offenders in an effort to free up more space in British jails. The article states that uses are being considered both for home detention, as a means to enforce punishment, as well as for sex offenders after their release. Many view this as a slippery slope leading to much wider use; starting as a purely voluntary act and gradually becoming more compulsory, it would endanger human rights and privacy. There are also health questions involved, given that long-term studies have linked similar implants to cancer in lab mice and rats. Ironically, the same technology has been proposed for medical purposes as well. In the USA, some state agencies have already made decisions about this issue.
Its just criminals (Score:5, Insightful)
Tomorrow children. In a generation or 2, everyone will have them.
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Or they could stop throwing people in jail for victimless crimes, such as drug offenses... for which 16% of prisoners are there for.
http://www.justice.gov.uk/docs/population-in-custody-0407.pdf [justice.gov.uk]
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Most likely drug prohibition is actually responsible for a higher proportion of prisoners. Since prohibition tends to have lots of non "victimless" crimes assocciated with it. e.g. people in the "black economy" can't use the courts so they tend to use violence to deal with "business disputes".
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Look at some actual research [bbc.co.uk]. Ecstasy is less dangerous than tobacco or alcohol.
I want to be able to buy ecstasy legally. I don't mind if it's taxed (charge £10 for four tablets, give £9 to charities or the NHS if you like). They can put some big warning notices on the box too, like they do for tobacco, and a recommended maximum dose, like they do for alcohol.
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Those companies will want to advertise just like alcohol and tobacco companies.
It doesnt sound so utopian anymore does it?
It goes from quote 'a victim-less crime' to a major problem.
AFAIK people who want it legalized want it to be legal to grow it in their back yard.
They dont fully understand what legalizing it means.
Ads for drugs, legal drugs (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah I know that but if its legal then that means there would be companies made to supply it. Those companies will want to advertise just like alcohol and tobacco companies.
Dude, that already occurs. Did you go to any kind of club recently?
Fully legalizing drugs would at least regulate advertisment and control quality.
They dont fully understand what legalizing it means.
Depends on the drug in question. In some countries, there are plans to legalize ownership and growing of cannabis (within defined limits), while selling it remains illegal. "Legal" doesn't necessarily mean that you have to allow companies to produce and supply the product. Might as well just mean you aren't going to criminalize the users.
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And as for growing a bit, once again have it just like alcohol. Here you are allowed to brew X amount of beer and make X amount of wine. Should be the same with pot, only allowed to grow a few plants at a time.
This has the added benefit of reducing the black market which is where most of the problems with drugs come from.
Also note that under the current system it is way easie
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Tomorrow children. In a generation or 2, everyone will have them.
This is one of the reasons why sex offender monitoring and limiting programs gives me the creeps. If they aren't safe enough to be released into society, leave them in jail. If they aren't a danger and have completed their sentence don't monitor them.
It's a very short logic jump of why are we just monitoring sex offenders and not just all previous criminals? So let's do that as well.
I think schools will want them on their students. The U
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If you really want to go stick your head i the sand and pretend slow encroachment is not real, by all means go ahead. The rest of us prefer to live in the real world were you DONT trust your government.
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Tell me: if I hold an apple in the air and let it go, will it fall to the ground, or hang in mid air?
I think you will agree with me that it will fall to the ground. Why do we predict this? Because of a long history of observing similar cases. We know that unsupported objects tend to fall. We've seen it happen so many times that we have developed a sop
Gradual Acceptance could happen (Score:3, Insightful)
A simple fact that many Slashdotters apparently find hard to grasp is that the "slippery slope" is a logical fallacy. That means it's not a valid argument. Sorry, but there you are.
Depends on the particular subject. In this case, it's somewhat clear to me that gradual acceptance might occur, and that we should thus not accept it.
First, we tag criminals, maybe even only those who accept it. After a few years, there are some success stories, and it becomes mandatory, it's just criminals after all. People see that nothing bad seems to happen, and a few well-publicised cases occur where the tags prevented a crime from happening. So then people start using them as batches, for entry in
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Or maybe the earth will explode. I'm planning on being alive tomorrow anyway.
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They already tag people so they don't have to lock them up despite the fact that tags obvi
Maybe it's just me... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Maybe it's just me... (Score:5, Funny)
Then only outlaws will wear tinfoil hats.
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That being said, I wonder what kind of effect a catscan would have on those devices.
Re:Maybe it's just me... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I just hope it's optional.
Prisoners should be given the option to say either, "Implant the chip under my skin", or "Shove it up your arse."
And if america did this (Score:1, Insightful)
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1984 is set in England.
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Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
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They won't force them on us, they will just make it really inconvenient to us, pussies, to live without it.
[/macho trip]
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Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the last time anyone tried this in Western Europe was when the Nazis tattooed numbers on the hands of Jews.
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No, the scary thing is that the parents indoctrinate their kids to accept being chipped, so by the time they are 18, there is a whole flock of new voters who will ask "What's so bad about having a tracking chip implanted? What do you have to hide?"
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Even worse, RFID can be read from a long way away by anyone. It's not just bent coppers you have to worry about, it's everyone.
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I think most peoples' problem with this idea is that you cannot remove or disable it. Though I don't ascribe to the rampant paranoia surrounding RFID, most of that is because (to the best of my knowledge) I can just go largely incognito by leaving my RFID chips at the house. With RFID implants, your identity is never completely private, because it can always be scanned wherever you are. It's not like you can just switch it off until you need it, unless you feel like wearing a faraday cage....
Force them to hang it out. (Score:1, Funny)
Well ... (Score:1, Insightful)
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the Christians will freakout (Score:2)
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He's also a complete idiot, as are the greater portion of Americans. (I'm American, don't start the flamewar) You're quite right
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Super radical christians said the same thing about barcodes in the day. Now they're ubiquitous and nobody really cares.
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...in the same way people will start caring if anyone wants to implant RFID chips in everyone. All I'm saying here is that it's not like it takes 21st century technology to get the hardcore fundamentalist crowd yammering on and on about the end times.
all state's property can be tagged (Score:2, Interesting)
This is /. - how long before chip mods? (Score:5, Interesting)
If your ID chip accesses your credit line - how long before Warren Buffett/Bill Gates' ID becomes the hot new fake ID?
It is well known that all manufacturing processes produce a some number of defective products. How do we deal with those?
RFID can be zapped with a static charge - anybody for Van DeGraff generators?
Retasking, rewriting, forged, hacked and destroyed RFID is all that this policy will lead to. AND,
Re:This is /. - how long before chip mods? (Score:4, Interesting)
Forgery is possible but it's non-trivial, particularly as the chips shouldn't offer any way to reprogram the UUIDs that they broadcast. You'd need a pirate RFID manufacturing plant: possible but costly. Destroying the chips is a more likely attack, but these things will be so common in the future that it will be extremely hard to go anywhere without picking a few up by accident, so you'll soon be back on the system if you do that (albeit as an anonymous person until you do something else to identify yourself, such as using a credit card).
Re:This is /. - how long before chip mods? (Score:4, Insightful)
The market for pirated DVDs couldn't exist without the blanks. Perhaps a third or so are created in factories in China - but the rest are purchased from the usual sources and diverted to illicit copying. What's to keep chip manufacturers from supplying the black market?
Want to consider what would happen if the chips were really tightly controlled? There would be a market for chips forcibly extracted from the original "owner."
At root, it is a stupid idea - but my pets have them. Now, if the animal control folks would just buy the scanner we lobbied for (and, budgeted two years ago) so that a lost/runaway could be returned....
In short, the barriers to adopting this policy are formidable and the end result is far from certain.
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Make a RFID Chip "broadcaster/jammer" (Score:2)
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FWIW directional antennas (dish, yagi) could direct a RF signal source at distance & coupled with a rifle site it would make all of those people carrying RFID easy targets to pick out of a crowd.
Whose idea was RDID tags in passports, anyway? The Saudi's?
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You'd then emulate the cloud. Pretty simple.
Location of the implants (Score:2)
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Well, the frontal sinus would make an ideal location for them... Well within the ability of modern endoscopic techniques; no visiable lump as with subcutaneous insertion; virtually no way for the animal - er, prisoner - to remove it without medical assistance; and, it lies close enough to the surface to respond to a reasonably low-powered scanner
Now, the wrist, on the other hand, not such a great place. The w
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Welcome to the exciting world of "sarcasm". The GP did express his disdain for superstitious BS such as otherwise-rational people fearing the spooooooooky Mark of the Beast.
I absolutely oppose any proposals to "chip" humans (for ID purposes - Put me at the front of the line to have a machine/neural interface jack installed, however), but doing so for re
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"He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name." [Rev 13:16-17, NIV]
Everyone knows that refers to Bill Gates [egomania.nu]. The mark on the right hand is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and the mark on the forehead came from pounding it on the keyboard.
Makes perfect sense to me! (Score:4, Insightful)
After all, it's not like RFID chips could be swapped, erased, removed and as we all know, relying on technology to enforce behavior has never failed. That's why DRM is so popular and electronic passports are completely unhackable, and even if they were hackable, it's not like people get used to the new systems and forget to do the most basic of checks.
Also, the social repercussions for putting these in inmates raises no problems, all you need to do is look at the great success the US has had with the sex offender registry in rehabilitating people.
I can't find a single reason not to do this. Go Britain!
WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!? It took me a whole 2 seconds to think of all of these, how has this idea made it this far?
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The purpose of the sex offender registry is not to rehabilitate. It is to notify the community to beware. So many sex offenders reoffended after being released, and so many parents said that they would have been more careful, had they only known that a predator was in the neighborhood. So, you get pressure on politicians, and bam, democracy in action.
P.S. You might have more success in expressing your opinions if you didn't use so much sarcasm.
P.P.S. Yo
Another reason... (Score:3, Informative)
This country has surveillance and tracking that's gone beyond anything the Nazi SS and the KGB could ever dreamed of having. So much for living in a free democracy.
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2007 International Privacy Rankings [privacyinternational.org]
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Banning involuntary tagging won't work.. (Score:2, Interesting)
What is so wrong with current monitoring systems? (Score:2)
Re:What is so wrong with current monitoring system (Score:4, Insightful)
mobile phones (Score:2)
Oh yeah, that's why cellphones were invented.
It's Called an iMplant (Score:2)
jails full? hey I've got an idea (Score:2)
Obligatory Bill Hicks quote... (Score:2, Funny)
You keep the shitty food and the shitty weather and we get the Great Barrier Reef and lobsters the size of canoes?...
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I'm Jack the Ripper! --No, I'M Jack the Ripper! We're all Jackthefuckingripper!
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We'll just keep those lobsters, comrade.
stop punishing, start helping them become citizens (Score:2)
Why is there such a high prison population? Are all of these people behind bars dangerous persons who would damage society if left free? I don't think so. Perhaps only a few of them are really dangerous. Most of them would probably do no further damage if released, so I see no point in spending tax money in feeding people who would do no further damage to society. Punishment? Does anybody still believes that punishment is the right approach to crime? We should focus on changing people, not punishing t
Re:stop punishing, start helping them become citiz (Score:2)
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Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat in - Santana.
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My idea is based on my belief that people do not belong to their societies, that people stand as free individuals. Participation in a society happens as a necessity of birth (until people grow) and as a privilege (after people become adults). So I see society as a set of individuals who have all agreed to stay in the same place and adhere to some common rules of behaviour. Now if some individual violates the social customs or laws, they should be made to attend some custom educational programmes and give
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look out your food and your car (Score:2)
A pretty stupid application (Score:2)
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Everyone is a criminal (Score:2, Insightful)
You're already tracked with CC#, SIN, medical, etc (Score:2)
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I'm certainly not a fundamentalist, probably not insane and not even particularly worried about whether or not this is used to track people.
If I was a criminal in any country under the crown and a government agency tried to implant an RFID tag in me, I would insist that the government agency be dissolved and all the members of said agency involved in my implant be charged. Just following orders is no defence.
As I said, I'm not fundamentalist, in fact I believe that we evolved to our form and guess what? W
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You seem to have reinforced my concern.
I am not part of the hive. I do not always think the current fashionable thoughts. That is good, as far as I'm concerned.
My post responded to your question, specifically, "What's the huge issue for abuse?". The huge issue for abuse is that the act of implanting an RFID tag in someone against their will is abuse. The reasons of the objector are irrelevant.
Your original post seemed to make the assumption that there is no harm in having the tags implanted, although the
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If it were ever the case that this became government policy then you could all for agencies to be dissolved all you liked but it would make no difference at all, if you fell into the category of criminals needing to be tagged you'd be tagged
Prior art, if you want (Score:2)
Oops, we had that before.
Nevermind...
Yeah, I hate criminals. Some should never be let out.
But they are still humans. Not cattle.
History revisited (Score:2)
Society may have the right to take away another's freedom but it has no right to take away another's human rights or dignity (unless you support capital punishment). No doubt tagging prisoners would make the life of prison warders easier, but then so would gassing or shooting their
Reminds me of Total Recall (Score:2)
Sex offenders (Score:2)
What no one has said... (Score:2)
you break the law, you pay the price. You loose your rights the day you pull the trigger, force the clothes off... Criminals have too many rights as it is. Now I see TV commercials for some "behind the bars" TV show with prisoners complaining "there's no privacy, people are all over, separated by race". Well if ya wanted privacy you shouldn't have done the crime.
I'm sorry to go against the modern grain and thought process but things have gotten too soft. Prison's
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Brand or take a digit (Score:2)
Seriously, I can't help seeing all these stupid ideas as the effects of gobalization. The more we are connected and influenced by others around the world, the more a single bad idea will spread.
On the whole the new world order isn't bad...for the majority. It just sucks not to be in power...or be powerless...cr
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I am totally against this completely unconstitutional, unreasonable and illegal search and seizure.
I hate to burst your bubble, but the UK doesn't have a constitution. Further their simple domestic non-terrorist related search and seizure laws would give a US defense lawyer a heart attack and while the police would prance around with mirthful joy. What is proposed is entirely legal in the UK and in now way inhibited by any constitution like documents.
As far as RFID and DNA goes (and I assume you are talking about the US, and not UK like in the article), there is no constitutional barrier collecting cr