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Finnish Politician Suggests Embedding Chips In Citizens To Protect the Welfare State 312

Posted by timothy from the logical-conclusions dept.
New submitter janit writes that social benefits to Finnish citizens living outside of Finland have in recent days been the cause of controversy, and links to an article which suggests just how much of a controversy: A politician from the True Finns Party, Pasi Mäenranta, is also worried about the abuse of the benefits. He published a post on Facebook, where he suggests that all Finnish citizens leaving the country be embedded with an identification chip. Sounds like a parallel system might be a popular idea with some U.S. presidential candidates, too.
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Finnish Politician Suggests Embedding Chips In Citizens To Protect the Welfare State More

Finnish Politician Suggests Embedding Chips In Citizens To Protect the Welfare State

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  • 2084? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sycodon ( 149926 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2015 @08:45AM (#50292773)

    I guess we need a second installment of 1984 as the pace of ideas from authoritarian control freaks have exceeded Orwell's wildest nightmares.

  • Where have I heard this before... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2015 @08:49AM (#50292803) Journal

    Revelations 13:16-17:

    And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name...

    Just sayin', regardless of reality or fantasy, when your policy suggestion is basically the exact thing the devil does during the "end times," you might have a tough sell there.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      Careful, you'll get the Rapturists all excited and checking their calenders.

      • Which is pretty sinful, IMO, thinking they can predict the end.

        Matthew 24:36:

        "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone."

    • Re:Where have I heard this before... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kilfarsnar ( 561956 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2015 @09:09AM (#50292975)

      Revelations 13:16-17:

      And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name...

      Just sayin', regardless of reality or fantasy, when your policy suggestion is basically the exact thing the devil does during the "end times," you might have a tough sell there.

      I'm not Christian, but I'm glad for that bit of prophesy. This type of thing is all about control. Imagine if you run afoul of the authorities and they are able to cut you off from society just by switching off your chip. It's the same reason I do not look forward to any "cashless" economy, though there are plenty of idiots who think it's a great idea. Once you have to go through an intermediary to conduct any transaction, they've got you by the balls.

      • Re:Where have I heard this before... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TWX ( 665546 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2015 @09:26AM (#50293143)
        Hell, I don't like the idea of a cashless economy because it's dependent on too many active systems that all have to work for it to work. A simple power outage could prevent people from purchasing emergency supplies from their local grocery store, which could otherwise take cash, and could even go so far as to tabulate sales tax by hand or with the store's retail supply of battery-operated handheld calculators.

        • Typical retail clerk, probably per store policy, in a power outage will be to say "Can't do it." Can't/won't take cash because "the computers are down". You can tote up the costs and add the tax and have exact change, but they still won't make the effort to accept it because "the computers are down".

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          I remember shopping when the power went out and the store handed out flashlights and calculators to the cashiers. That was back when everything had price tags.
          Last time I was shopping and the power went out, the cash registers kept working but went down one by one as the server started screwing up, gotta love Windows and the fact that they obviously hadn't tested enough.
          Even if the system hadn't started crashing, they only have so much time on their UPS and first thing they did was stop new customers from e

      • Re:Where have I heard this before... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2015 @09:28AM (#50293161) Journal

        There's a lot of wisdom in the Bible, and other early church writings. Throw out the magic and it's the collection of stories about human nature and conflict written down over thousands of years by the people who had to figure out how human society can and should work. We take that knowledge for granted today, but these people had to figure it out for themselves. And people haven't changed that much.

        • You're kind of idealising biblical societies there though - sure they worked, you can make almost anything work if you believe hard enough, but that doesn't make them optimal. Still, it's true that the bible contains quite a bit of actual history.

    • They said that about credit cards, which now even carry a chip.

    • This is just a high-tech version of a universal ID system. That is what we need to oppose since you can easily extend the concept to allow for non-invasive natural ID technologies (aka biometrics) to become the "mark". That and universal surveillance.

    • Let's face it, the Bible is allegory and the Social Security number is the number you fear. You are marked with it at birth, and though it may not appear physically on your skin, it is embeded in your mind, and written by (in) your dominant (right) hand every time you complete a business transaction. It is essentially a permanent number which identifies you and is almost impossible to change. You are taxed through it, every business is tracked by it, every significant financial transaction requires it - t

      • Let's face it, the Bible is allegory and the Social Security number is the number you fear. You are marked with it at birth, and though it may not appear physically on your skin, it is embeded in your mind, and written by (in) your dominant (right) hand every time you complete a business transaction. It is essentially a permanent number which identifies you and is almost impossible to change. You are taxed through it, every business is tracked by it, every significant financial transaction requires it

        KEEP T

        • Well, for those of us of a certain age :-(, our SSN does not actually identify us.Yes I know the Fed gov't now treats us as identified by our SSN, but I got mine by walking into an IRS office and requesting one. I could have gone back the next day and requested another -- but since at the time the only purpose of the SSN was to track my earnings so as to calculate my retirement payments, splitting my salary reports between 2 numbers would have been stupid.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by c ( 8461 )

      Just sayin', regardless of reality or fantasy, when your policy suggestion is basically the exact thing the devil does during the "end times," you might have a tough sell there.

      The obvious question being, how relevant is this particular bit of mythology to Finnish society? I don't have any strong insight into this... I understand that they're predominantly Christian, but I'd also expect that nations with a heavy socialist bent wouldn't be quite as ready to call their government an agent of the devil. How do

  • >> (ID chipping) might be a popular idea with some U.S. presidential candidates, too

    Do you have something to back that up? Did the Clintons go on the record back in the Hillarycare days on this or something?

  • Especially US presidential candidates....

    --PM

    • Can we connect the chips to a mild electric shocker. Each person would be able to administer a shock to a candidate, but the amount would be barely detectable. When you get enough people together, though, you could cause the candidate some major discomfort. Did Candidate X just insult all women? He's going to be feeling some serious voltage tonight!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TWX ( 665546 )
        Heh. OT, but I found it amusing that when Jeb Bush spoke against Donald Trump's derogatory comments, he cited women as 53% of the voters, using the number like it was a significant minority when it's actually the majority.

  • Sounds like a parallel system might be a popular idea with some U.S. presidential candidates, too.

    I'm genuinely curious. I know the knee-jerk reaction is going to be "Teh Republicanz!", but I haven't heard any suggestion from any Dem or Rep that they want to introduce this. National ID cards? Sure, there are some politicians spouting that, but chipping people like dogs is a step beyond that.

  • Pedophiles also (Score:4, Funny)

    by Yoda222 ( 943886 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2015 @08:57AM (#50292889)
    He is using several arguments: we could track terrorists (== people going to Syria), we could find easily people in natural catastrophes. I think he missed one of the advantages. If everyone, including children, has a gps chip, and the data about location is stored for a reasonable amount of time (let's say 50 years, but more is possible) we will be able to find possible pedophiles if a children complains, even 50 years later!

  • While Marlin Perkins sits back in his Mutual of Omaha office, Jim Fowler is out in the helicopter shooting herds of Finns with tranquillizer darts and tagging them with chips after they collapse.

    Way to treat people like animals. Why don't we just tattoo them, and make them wear armbands? Oh wait...

  • And so it begins.

  • My Citizen's Dividend plan has the following eligibility: all natural-born, resident, American citizens over the age of 18 receive the full Dividend.

    If you weren't born here, you don't get it. This prevents an influx of gold-digging first-generation immigrants from coming to America for the free money.

    If you aren't living in America, its territories, its military bases, its naval ships, or in active military deployment, you're not resident and you don't get shit. You left the country; we'll pay you to

  • a passport in terms of the security it provides for "the state"? Do you think that people won't be stealing/selling the chips to others who want to be identified as Finnish citizens? Do you think that a minor surgical procedure that can be performed in any alley is going to be more secure than a printed document?

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2015 @09:18AM (#50293055)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • As America catches up to chip-and-pin ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by scunc ( 4201789 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2015 @09:23AM (#50293117)
    ... Europe considers implementing a new chip-in-Finn system!

  • I'm all for embedding chips in politicians ... (Score:3)

    by Ihlosi ( 895663 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2015 @09:31AM (#50293195)
    I'm all for embedding chips in politician to protect the state... oh, wait ...

  • Politicians need to be tagged and monitored. Bonus points if you can build remote shock capability into the tags.

  • This is an inevitable development (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2015 @10:10AM (#50293531)

    Scandinavian welfare states evolved from the traditional communitarian cultures of these countries. Within this culture, the Lutheran moral code promotes helping each other out in time of need while stigmatizing freeloading.

    But now Europe as a whole is facing an uncontrollable, Arizona-style flood of refugees who are not part of this culture and who do not feel restrained by the Lutheran moral code. Now Finland has its first Joe Arpaio.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Yoda222 ( 943886 )
      That's why the "true finns party" is asking for the end of the mandatory second language in school. They think Finns don't need to speak the language of these "arizona-style flood of refugees" who have been there only for ... ever (or close) and speaks Swedish.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by digsbo ( 1292334 )
      Insightful. It is interesting that people DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT the revenge effect of the social democracy facing immigration. It's notable how badly things are ghetto-ized in France. It's notable that the countries with the biggest cultural/ethnic supermajorities (the scandinavian countries) are also the ones with the most virulent anti-immigrant minority parties. Germany seems to be dealing better than some, but even they aren't actually doing as well welcoming immigrants as the USA. People forget tha

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ai4px ( 1244212 )
        I was in München last fall. It looks like little arabia around Karlsplatz. I think the Germans are a little too friendly to their immigrants. Of course it doesn't help that the german birthrate has fallen below 1.8:1.

  • ... is the point?

    They want to detect Finns leaving the country at border crossings so as not to fund expatriates? Good luck with that. There are too many non monitored points one can cross the border and I doubt the RFID chips will be worth a damn once the people are out of range.

    Controlling who has access to bank accounts and from where might be a better aproach. Auto deposit of benefit checks could be cut off if the account is accessed from overseas for an extended period of time.

  • To all politicians that think chipping citizens is a good idea: Fuck you.
  • ..and that response is: Fuck you, asshole. How about we 'embed' our collective boots in your ass, jerk? Fucking politicians, why do we even tolerate them!?

  • The first thing I thought of when I read this were the numbers that the Nazis tattooed prisoners in death camps with.

    It amazes me how a politician would think its OK to even suggest this, and how he can even still keep his job.

  • After he had one implanted, we can discuss it.

  • If no one scans it? OK, great, put an RFID chip in a person so they can receive State welfare while living outside the State. What difference does it make? The checks are direct deposited, who verifies the person's identity when they are /outside/ the country? Seems the simple solution is to not offer welfare to citizens who choose to not live in Finland.
  • Small boys with a predilection for building protocol droids using home robot kits and pod racing will start developing a scanner to find the embedded chips in their mother's bodies to liberate them.
  • McVeigh [wikipedia.org] complained that the Army had implanted a microchip into his buttocks so that the government could keep track of him. [Ref 1] [washingtonpost.com]

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