PRIVACY

BY

DEBORAH M. PICCURELLI

            I’ve been reading a book called Who’s Watching You? The Chilling Truth About the State, Surveillance, and Personal Freedom by Mick Farren and John Gibb. It’s kind of scary how they explain that things we don’t even think about are ways that either the government, or other entities keep tabs on everything we do, and every move we make.

            For instance, take the loyalty cards we use every time we make a purchase at the food stores. Farren and Gibb say that when the cards are scanned, the information on them goes to a gigantic data base where info from all cards of all people who shop at all the stores is gathered. Not only that, but it records on this data base what we buy, how much, etc., etc. Now, that doesn’t sound too bad, does it? But if we think about it, whoever uses what’s collected on this data base can find out a lot of personal things about us. It’s the equivalent to looking in someone’s medicine cabinet when you use their bathroom. They can see what we like to eat, what cleaning products we use, what magazines we read, how we groom ourselves, and even what type of toilet paper we use.

            I feel violated just thinking about it.

            And that’s not all. This book explains about the use of radio frequency identification, or RFID. To paraphrase, this is a system that uses tiny computer chips, smaller than a grain of sand, to track goods at a distance. They’re called “spychips,” and are concealed in the packaging of many products. According to Farren and Gibb, Proctor and Gamble, Gillette, and Wal-Mart have all experimented with them. What’s more, these “spychips” cannot be cancelled once scanned at the checkout. That means they are tracked all the way to the shelf where you store them in your home. These chips have also been used in tagging livestock for such things as identifying an individual animal’s herd of origin. It seems an efficient means to protect humans from infected livestock. But now, some private companies are offering child implant services that are supposed to be helpful to parents and childcare workers in better supervision of the children to prevent abduction and molestation. But what happens when they grow up? Farren and Gibb say that those offering the service “claim that if an active chip is used, battery life is approximately ten years, and after that, removing the device is an equally simple process.” Would anyone remember to do this? Will everyone want to do this?

            There is much more to this book, and I continue to read it with interest. Perhaps we should all have a copy to help us keep abreast of what’s happening behind the scenes now, and what’s to come in the future.