Leading the nation in what is sure to be a wildfire of similar legislation, NH House votes to bar the unauthorized implants of tracking chips in people and clothing, criminalizes the use of RFID for tracking consumers.
In a further sign of things to come, the State is updating its anti-skimming laws to prohibit the closing of data broadcast by RFID-enabled credit and debit cards. The affect may render RFID without value to retailers otherwise supporting its use.
A public transport group has asked the Supreme Court sday to nullify the Land Transportation Office’s radio frequency identification system for being unconstitutional.
If you wonder how a private firm like Docvia can afford to intake, store, document, disburse, update and protect your medical history, personal emergency contacts, health insurance records and more for only $5. per year, don't. It doesn't really happen like that.
InvisibleBracelet.org, or "iB" as the firm likes to call it, appears to have a profit model entirely different than they would have you believe from their very government-looking website. In press releases accommodatingly picked up verbatim by the AP, the Company appears benevolently intervening to assist the American Ambulance Association, among others, with the capability to virtually diagnose your medical problems, call your wife, text your kids and probably take out the trash, all while you are on the way to the hospital, in the capable hands of a paramedic to whom you have granted all this data.
The magic pill to perform this miracle is iB's online storage of your information, and its provision of documents to carry in your wallet to prove it. All for $5. per year.
If you want to opt out, "[iB] stores all electronic communications...your health information, contact information and financial information for a period of at least ten years."
"Locator information is your name, electronic mailing address, physical address, and/or other data that allows someone to identify you."
"Docvia and your internet service provider (ISP) may use locator information as is necessary to enforce any of the terms of the Docvia Terms of Use."
"Docvia works with many business partners in making the iB service available to consumers."
"Certain features of the iB service may be used in conjunction with other Docvia products, and those features may share information..."
"Docvia may assign a Member's rights under the program with or without notice to such member."
"Aggregate information may be provided or sold to third parties."
Docvia and iB appear to be just another firm masquerading as a public service provider in an effort to gain valuable data under misleading marketing practices. This practice has itself come to be known as noncompetitive privacy policy.
Noncompetitive privacy policy is demonstrated whenever a company gathers valuable information from customers, for resale, without acknowledging the value gained, and obtaining the data under misleading circumstances.
Insurance companies and their investigators are certainly salivating to become 'partners' according to Docvia's privacy policy. This would allow them to track you using your IP address, mobile phone, and the mobile phones and contact numbers of those in your emergency contact list.
Customer lists, blinded as to specific health records, can easily be sold to insurers, health provider networks and more. The list goes on and on.
According to presenters of the 2009 RFID Journal's medical proposals, RFID chips have been implemented to track "implantable medical devices."
Questions arise concerning whether or not RFID chips, which broadcast an ID number or other data, remain in the chipped products when they are implanted into patients.
The safeguards and disclosures regarding the practice have likely yet to be developed or considered. Potential HIPAA violations, in addition to other likely challenges, are lurking, yet nobody has spoken up. The RFID Journal trade group continues to quietly lobby for zero regulation on the matter.
In one of the strangest, most reaching arguments for promoting RFID contractors, the RFID Journal has printed the argument that speeders riding sports motorcycles across the US are such a menace to society that we all must now broadcast an ID number from our license plates, from 30 feet away, to anyone who wants to read it.
Believe it or not, the article actually makes the case that if the speeding sport bikers across the US only had RFID chips in the license plates, which they routinely remove or "flip" to hide, then the stalwart police would not have to give high speed and winged persuit. The image is one of the officer in his crisp uniform, slowly shaking his head as the biker goes by at mach 2, returning to his latte secure in the knowledge that the biker would get his ticket and summons in the mail.
"Drat!" Says the biker when he gets the later uniformed knock on his door, "foiled again by the RFID chip!"
Needless to say, not only would the bikers remove the entire plate if they want, since the cops can't catch them anyway, they would also buy, borrow or steal other license plates to broadcast the wrong number to the idiot with the latte.
In actuality, it doesn't need to be a motorcycle. What do they do when they are outrun by a bicycle?
In a generous handout to what will surely be picked up by both civil libertarians and ultra-right wing conspiracy nuts, the Federal Government has jumped into the fray by having the Departement of Transportation request bids by RFID contractors to submit solution bids.
