Revelers of the Beast

Patrons of a Barcelona night club get chipped in order to buy drinks and slink into VIP areas more conveniently, reports WorldNetDaily.

[Link via Politech]

Comments

[kmw]

Considering this is from WorldNetDaily (a tabloid of the far right), I'd want to see a journalist from a more respectable outlet comment on this.

I've noticed a marked tendency on their part to distort a story as much as possible. They like to slow pitch to the "black helicopter" types.

[dead_elvis]

It won't take long for someone to crack the id scheme. Applied to gun control, it will create a big black market for altered, un-chipped guns. When are people going to stop looking to this kind of technology as a panacea? Doesn't matter what you come up with, someone will crack it.

[Madog]

What would be handy is a way to reprogram implanted chips -- the fake IDs of the future.

[JimInNOVA]

I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to cook up a device you could cary (such as a wristwatch) that could pick up other people's signals and store their ID for later use. Good luck convincing your credit card company that someone else was using your card when it's implanted in your wrist.

[Douglas Fletcher]

I'd rather be able to print my own money. That would be useful technology to have.

[Rick Barton]

Some tell William Gibbson! Where are my mirror shades?..."cyberculture is coming onto the radar of ordinary society" are lyrics from a Billy Idol song. Now it seems that cyberculture is the radar of ordinary society!

Just keep the US government far away from this great technology...very far.

Chase (director of the club in Barcelona) believes all gun owners should be required to have a microchip implanted in their hand to be able to own a gun.

Idiot! He's using some cool tech. but now is proposing that it be used to restrict freedom. Hey; will someone in Barcelona please talk to this guy? Really, let's contact him. We don't want him saying things like that when he gets all this media attention.

Applied touted the implant as a potential universal method of gun control.

We can tell them that if they don't pledge not to sell this tech. to the government or to entities that intend for it to be used by government their stock will be on our; "liberty responsible, no buy list".

We need legislation forbidding the government from even reading these chips.

[Joe L.]

Restricting someone's liberty to sell a product in order to preserve Liberty? Isn't that counter-Libertarian? A bit akin to destroying Trong He in order to save it? Or just sarcasm?

[Warren]

What would stop someone from setting up a transceiver on a busy city street and charging a few dollars to the creditchip of everybody that walks by? Or a thousand other variations. Being able to access many people?s credit remotely, on an ongoing basis seems too leaky.

How are they addressing security?

[Rick Barton]

Joe L,

I don't want to legally restrict Applied from selling to any private entities that they want to. I advocate using market pressure to accomplish these goals.

However, having laws forbidding the government from using this technology is a good, pro-liberty idea.

[RFID]

The chips are simply passive RFID devices.

All they do is store a number which can be queried by and RFID reader.

These passive devices don't store changeable information.

This is very similar to your ATM card -- with two notable exceptions:

1. Your ATM card isn't readable from a distance.
2. Some people seem to be willing to use these systems without a PIN.

There are three categories of authentication:

1. Something you know.
2. Something you have.
3. Something you are.

PIN's and passwords are #1. ATM cards are #2. Retinal scans and fingerprint scans are #3.

This technology is somewhere between #2 and #3. Let's call it #2.25.

Using only one method of authentication is poor security. Even true biometrics should be backed up with access codes.

No security system should consist of a single security mechanism. Every security system should consist of multiple redundant layers of security.

Of course, we often give up security for convenience...