Mark of the Beast
Houston Chronicle – Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2001 – Page 44A
National ID card threatens
our Freedom
William Saffire
A device is now available to help pet owners find
lost animals (Please read article below).
It's a little chip implanted under the skin in the back of the neck, any
animal shelter can quickly scan lost dogs or cats and pick up the address of
the worried owner.
That's a good side of identification
technology. There's a bad side: Fear of
terrorism has placed Americans in danger of trading our "right to be let
alone" for the false sense of security of a national identification card.
All of us are willing to give up some of our
personal privacy in return for greater safety.
That's why we gladly suffer the pat-downs and “wanding" at
airports, and show a local photo ID before boarding. Such precautions contribute to our peace of mind.
However, the fear of terror attack is being
exploited by law enforcement sweeping for suspects as well as by commercial
marketers seeking prospects.
It has emboldened the zealots of intrusion to press for
the holy grail of snoopery - a mandatory national ID.
Police unconcerned with the sanctity of an
individual’s home have already developed heat sensors to let them look inside
people's houses.
The federal "Carnivore" surveillance
system feeds on your meatiest e-mail.
Think you can encrypt your way to privacy? The Justice Department is proud of its new "Magic
Lantern": All attempts by owners to encode their messages can now be
overwhelmed by an electronic bug the F'BI can plant on your keyboard to read
every stroke.
But in the dreams of Big Brother and his cousin, Big
Marketing, nothing can compare to forcing every person in the United States -
under penalty of law - to carry what the totalitarians used to call
"papers."
The plastic card would not merely show a photograph,
signature and address, as driver's licenses do.
That's only the beginning.
In time, and with exquisite refinements, the card
would contain not only a fingerprint description of DNA and the details of your
eye's iris, but a host of other information about you.
Hospitals would say: How about a chip providing a
complete medical history in case of emergencies? Merchants would add a chip for credit rating, bank accounts and
product preferences, while divorced spouses would lobby for a rundown of net
assets and yearly expenditures.
Politicians would like to know voting records and political
affiliation. Cops, of course, would
insist on a record of arrests, speeding tickets, E-Z Pass auto movements, and
links to suspicious Web sites and associates.
All this information and more is being collected
already. With a national ID system,
however, it can all be centered in a single dossier, even pressed on a single
card - with a copy of that card in a national databank, supposedly confidential
but available to any imaginative hacker.
What about us libertarian misfits who take the
trouble to try to “opt out"? We
will not be able to travel or buy on credit or participate in tomorrow's normal
life. Soon enough, police as well as
employers will consider those who resist full disclosure of their financial
academic, medical religious, social and political affiliations to be suspect.
The universal use and likely abuse of the national
ID - a discredit card - will trigger questions like: When did you begin
subscribing to these publications and why were you visiting that spicy or
seditious Web site? Why are you afraid
to show us your papers on demand? Why
are you paying cash? What do you have
to hide?
Today's diatribe will be scorned as alarmist by the
same security-mongers who shrugged off our attorney general's attempt to
abolish habeas corpus (which libertarian protests and the Bush administration's
sober second thoughts seem to be aborting).
But the lust to take advantage of the public's fear of terrorist
penetration by penetrating everyone's private lives - this time including the
lives of U.S. citizens protected by the Fourth Amendment - is gaining
popularity.
Beware: It is not just an efficient little card to speed you though lines faster or to buy
you sure-fire protection from suicide bombers.
A national ID card would be a ticket to the loss of much of your
personal freedom. Its size could then
be reduced for implantation under the skin in the back of your neck (*or on the forehead – Rev.13:16-18 – ARK Forum).
__________________________________________________________________
Safire is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of The New York Times, based in Washington, D.C.
Houston Chronicle - Dec. 21, 2001, 10:45PM
Microchips reunite lost pets with
owners
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM
Associated Press
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Barks and Bytes
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PHILADELPHIA
-- Each day, Patrick McCallion takes his 13-month-old dog Stewart to the
corner park, where the exuberant yellow Lab mix can run loose with his pooch
pals. But the park isn't enclosed. So
McCallion took out a bit of disappearance insurance, getting a microchip the
size of a grain of rice implanted under the dog's skin, between the shoulder
blades. In
the last few years, millions of dogs and cats -- as well as tigers and other
unusual pets -- have been implanted with these microchips, which are encoded
with unique numbers to make identifying lost, stolen or abandoned animals a
snap. |
When
a lost pet is brought to a shelter or clinic, workers can use a hand-held
scanner to read the chip's number. A computer database then matches the number
with the pet's owner, medical history and other pertinent information.
At
Queen Village Animal Clinic, where Stewart got his chip, the injection costs
about $30, plus a one-time registration fee of $12.
"Probably every day at least one dog runs away from
that park," said McCallion, 28, of Philadelphia. "You always see the
'missing' posters on trees and poles around the city."
The
chips have been used to reunite thousands of lost pets with their owners. In
northeastern Pennsylvania, LeeAnn Perry's dog, a yellow Lab named Sara, has run
away three times since getting the chip a year and a half ago.
The
pooch last disappeared in November, but was back home two weeks later.
"I
know when she takes off, one way or another she'll be back because she's
chipped," said Perry, 32, of Dunmore, Pa.
Microchip
implantation has been around since the 1980s but was relatively rare until the
mid-1990s, when chipmakers introduced a universal scanner that could read every
model.
Scanners
are now found in most shelters and animal control agencies across the country,
according to Mary Madsen, a customer service supervisor for AVID Identification
Systems Inc.
Norco,
Calif.-based AVID is one of two dominant chipmakers. As of last year, 2.5
million pets were listed in the company database.
The
American Kennel Club operates the other database, which contains more than 1.1
million pets and is affiliated with Schering-Plough Animal Health, distributor
of the HomeAgain chip.
Most
of the pets in the AKC database are dogs (842,645) and cats (265,349). However,
HomeAgain chips, made by Destron Fearing Corp., can also be found in birds,
horses, rabbits, tigers, monkeys, seals and many other unusual pets.
More
than 70,000 lost pets have been reunited with their owners since the AKC
program's inception in 1995, said Associate Director Keith Frazier.
Veterinarians
say old-fashioned pet collars are fine, but not foolproof. They can come off,
fade, or be chewed.
The
chips are a boon to emergency room veterinarians, who often treat injured animals
that don't have identifying information. Vets then face the tough choice of
putting the animal to sleep or administering costly care with no hope of
getting paid.
With
a microchipped pet, the pet's owner can make that decision.
"For
an emergency vet, it's fabulous," said Dr. Jeffrey Proulx of San
Francisco. "A lot of ER practices don't have the funds to go hog wild on
these things."
The
chips have a variety of applications.
Officials
at the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race use them to help prevent illegal dog
substitutions. Valuable horses are sometimes injected instead of branded. In
Chicago, owners of dogs considered "dangerous" are required to have
their pets spayed or neutered and fitted with a microchip for identification.
Professional
football player Damon Moore, of the Philadelphia Eagles, was charged last month
with abandoning his 3-month-old Rottweiler puppy after police found the dog and
the SPCA traced the microchip to the pet shop where Moore made his purchase.
The
next-generation microchip will be equipped with a sensor that reads body
temperature -- eliminating the need for a rectal thermometer.
Down
the road, chips will be able to store information useful in an emergency --
such as whether a dog has had a rabies shot or is allergic to any medicine.
But
chipmakers say it's likely that most information will continued to be stored in
a database.
Could
human microchip implantation be far behind?
Some
say it's inevitable. A British researcher had a chip in his arm for nine days
in 1998, and U.S. researchers say a chip attached to the retina could someday
give blind patients the ability to see. Chips could also be used to carry
medical information or criminal history, raising privacy concerns.
But
for now, it's Rover who has the chip in his shoulder.
"Stewie
used to have a tag," said McCallion, rubbing his newly microchipped dog's
head, "but his brother Murphy bit it off
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