1. Read the information on RFID chip tracking

2. Discuss the pros and cons of instituting the non-elective, partial (some subset of Americans), or full (everyone), chip-tracking of people in America.

3. Propose an action (or non-action) that addresses the issue.

4. What constraints would you like to see on...

   • General/commercial access to the information

   • Government access to the information

   • Security policy regarding the informaion

   • Legal control of the information with right of redress

   • etc.

   • Write up notes and submit as per the specifications at D2L

Some preliminary notes:

• We do not now actually have the ability for "broadcast" RFID chips inserted into bodes because of the needed battery power, but we certainly have the capability of passive chips, and full tracking technology could be implemented with some inconvenience already (e.g., cell phones w/ GPS).

• The United States is considered an extremely dangerous place by many people traveling here from "civilized" countries. There is a large underclass of people in the United States that live primarily outside of the law.

• The court system in the United States is run primarily through plea bargaining, having little to do with the original intent of the system. Some estimates attribute more than ninety percent of convictions to a plea bargain. The main driving force is the cost of running trials. Within allowed state expenses courts have ten times the number of cases they can handle through trial. The chip-tracking of people can reduce court costs, by placing people in specific locations at specific times.

• Ordinary citizenry has nothing to fear from a record of where they are or have been.

• Chip tracking can provide a perfect defense for innocent people.

• One variation is that those with criminal records only can be tracked.

• Networks of criminal behavior, such as drug rings, and slave trafficking rings, can be studied and exposed.

• Illegal immigration would be much harder.

• Anyone who has a normally-registered cell phone is being tracked anyway.

• There is counter technology, such as jamming devices, so that those most likely to be criminal are those least likely to be tracked.

• If not all citizens are required to submit to tracking, we now have different classes of citizens, with poor people comprising the majority of the "lower" class citizenry.

• The tracking of people can be used against normal people for all sorts of reasons, through sales to private detective agencies.

• Well-funded criminal organizations can use this technology to terrorize normal citizens.

• The spectre of totalitarian government control becomes very much more real with the strongest voices for reform being silenced.

• Immigration standards, laws, and the status quo, would immediately be dramatically altered without a necessary change in policy.

• Would this help to make school zones safer?

• Might we want completely independent, but fully interfaced, chip information retrieval systems for each of the fifty states? That is, if one state's system is hacked, it is completely independent of that for other states.

• What are the implications in time of war, or government takeover? In previous generations taking over an entire state, or a country entailed a physical component of, say ripping out phone lines, and blowing up buildings. With an entirely Internet or other network based infrastructure, attacks can (and will) come from anywhere on the Earth, and take place via bitstreams, viruses, and etc.

• Do we as a country become more competitive. Would we now be as competitive if we had used the infrastructure and privacy arguments to prohibit cell phone technology and electronic banking?

Technology notes:

• Would it be convenient just to walk into a store and walk out with what you want? This is possible since you've already been identified. What are the commercial/convenience possibilities?

• What happens if you get hacked, and the information retrieved for your chip is that of a wanted serial killer, or sexual predator?

• Would this help to be safe in the dating scene? Would it help to get past all the initial introductions in a long-term relationship dating scene? Could you automatically know who you might want to meet in a bar where everyone has already been identified?

• What sorts of control (cells of data protected from other cells) of data presented to different readers would you want?

• Do we also need biometric validation so that mobsters or terrorists dont steal body parts with the chips in them to spoof an identity?