When Ingsoc fails and the good guys (re Capitalism) wins, the rights to the Newspeak project gets divvied up between the telecoms and dotcoms (who streamline its R&D with text messaging and IM services) and Big Brother receives a settlement package that includes everything from complete amnesty to full royalties and copyrights. To avoid selling-out, he buys in (namely into CBS), and the sale of his complete season DVD box sets have him thinking about licensing out his ideas to private industry in this Brave New World.
It’s no surprise then that Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)—whose earliest ancestor was developed by the Soviets in 1945—is within reach of consumers whether or not they know (they want) it. The Globe and Mail reports:
The plans to “spy-chip” your fridge belong to Procter & Gamble, which has a second patent pending to track consumers in-store. American telecommunications giant BellSouth has a patent pending on the garbage-picking. NCR is behind the shopping cart ads and also holds a patent on “automated monitoring of shoppers” at grocery stores. As for Viagra, like OxyContin, its manufacturers are already tagging bulk bottles at the pharmacy (packs of Diovan, an antihypertensive, are actually tagged individually).
Being “surveillance technology at its finest — cheap, invisible, infallible, ubiquitous ,” RFID goes well beyond tracking your rate of Soma consumption. “Silently, without even a bar code beep, RFID reads and records people’s behaviour and inventories their possessions,” explains the Globe and Mail article, which continues:
[…] a complete history of your movements could soon be recorded and sold to commercial and security interests. Privacy experts predict that RFID will replace the closed-circuit television surveillance currently used by governments in China, Europe and Canada, and businesses are heavily investing in the technology.
For instance, IBM currently holds the “patent to build RFID peepholes into the walls and ceilings of public places, washrooms included. These will surreptitiously identify passersby and look into purses, pockets and briefcases.” Unlike GPS technology, RFID makes it possible to be tracked indoors, and so “many countries [are] using RFID-based smart cards and national identity cards. An American national ID card is on order, as are RFID passports with visitor-tagging at the borders.”
The real wonder is whether any of the revenues generated by RFID will be re-invested into researching a cure for the debilitating strain of chronic optimism that afflicting shills like Mark Roberti of RFID Journal. “RFID is your friend, he says from his Long Island home. He thinks companies are over-sensitive to consumer concerns about their privacy, reports The Globe.
Although a spurious correlation has been observed between this strain of optimism, increased exposure to RFID transmission, and growing RFID revenues, researchers have yet to establish a causal link. However, as many continue disagree with Roberti that RFID is double plus good, exposure to the RFID transmissions alone seem insufficient contract the fever. As The Globe notes:
Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Association says, “It’s going to result in everyone, from the 7-Eleven store to the bank and airlines, demanding to see the ID card [and] scan it in. It’s going to be not just a national ID card but a national database.”
Fortunately, RFID chips are efficacious beyond the point of sale. “Many active tags have practical ranges of hundreds of meters, and a battery life of up to 10 years.”