The Panopticon Expands, or, David Brin, Call Your Office…

…on second thought, don't bother, the office will call you–it knows where you are.

Very soon there won't be any more of these sorts of firsts to notice and it will all be business as usual. But for now, I'll take a moment to note this Financial Times report on what they are saying is the first (though I wouldn't be surprised to learn it wasn't) use by a company of Verichip RFID skin implants to help control where its workers are going. The company in question is CityWatcher, a video surveillance outfit from Ohio.

Reason became the first magazine to prove with visual evidence that it knew where all its readers were back in June 2004, with our groundbreaking and eye-opening customized cover featuring a picture of each individual subscribers house, from the air, accompanied by this excellent Declan McCullagh story on the possible upsides on the coming (or here) "zero privacy" society. I told the story of John Gilmore, the leading paladin fighting legal battles for more citizen privacy–including the struggle to not have to show i.d. to get on a plane–back in our August-September 2003 issue.