A little googling would show there are other sources for the story, including press releases from the company doing it. (I guess that one of the more alarming aspects of this, to me, is that the company is actually bragging about it instead of trying to keep it quiet. Either their own internal culture doesn't realise how totally horrifying most people will find compulsory surgical implants, or else their market research shows they're already winning their propaganda war.)

Further, clicking on "About us" at SpyChips.com would immediately reveal that the website is run by CASPIAN, a consumer privacy rights group founded in 1999 a few months *before* the Auto ID consortium was set up; its aim was to warn people about the activities not of "the Beast", but of consumer data aggregators (originally, the focus was on so-called "loyalty cards"). Yes, Katherine Albrecht is the president of CASPIAN and is a christian. However she also holds a Bachelor of Science degree, a Doctorate in marketing, and her arguments against these privacy invasions are conventional and rational. (In fact most of Albrecht's activities consist simply of informing the public what the industry is up to, since so much of what they are trying to do is so patently frightening they are trying to keep it quiet, and no further commentary is required once it is exposed.)

Interestingly, the RFID industry attempted to muckrake Albrecht in 2004, and both failed to find anything juicy and also got caught doing it. Since then, the focus of criticism of Albrecht has been "oh, she's a christian, you know, number of the beast fanatic etc etc." It seems to me that the RFID propaganda machine has smartened up, and instead of defending their indefensible product, their aim now is to make all objectors look like religious loonies. The fact that most of us are actually non-religious computer geeks who simply understand how dangerous this stuff is, can be simply glossed over. Another of their tactics seems to be changing the names and structures of their consortia so often that it becomes difficult to discuss them coherently. This helps them to distance themselves from criticism of their numerous privacy and security screw-ups.

[ reply ]

Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/newsbriefs/134/579#579