Monday, August 08, 2005

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

The U.S. is now testing a program to track all visitors with radio "tags":
All foreign travellers using visas will also obtain their radio tags from U.S. Customs officials when they first register to enter the United States. The tag is embedded into a document, which the traveller presents to enter or leave the United States.

The crossing points are equipped with antennas that read the tags for a secured and coded serial number linked to a database with the information provided by the traveller.

The antennas can read the tags up to 10 metres away and recognize many tags simultaneously. Ideally, travellers will be able to flash them going by at highway speeds, he said.

In principle, the idea of speeding up border crossings is a plus. But this system is utterly mind-boggling in its potential for abuse.

While the current plan may be to have antennas only at border crossing points, does anybody believe that some future administration (and maybe this one if the program gets off the ground quickly enough) won't decide to place them wherever it sees fit within the borders? Or maybe to place them outside the borders in friendly states? Or to extend the range so as to be able to track movement in neighbouring states? I try to avoid tin-foil hat theorizing, but there's just no getting around it on this one.

And there's a downside for the U.S. as well, as I have to wonder whether many people be eager to visit if they're exposing themselves to that kind of intrusion. But with all too many Americans more interested in shutting the border than in encouraging inflow, that factor seems to be lost in the shuffle.

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