mark of the beast?

[RubySlippers]

Darkling Alice,

I suspect the reason is simply that  the underground economy is a cash economy, and since not even the IRS seems certain just how big a chunk of the total economic activity in the USA is generated by the underground, there  is a strong reluctance  on the part of  The (Smarter) Powers That Be to take an action that might be considered shooting oneself in the foot.

Serious estimates are GLOBALLY half the worlds people work in the informal economy and that matches the US GDP, in the US depending on the state that could be big. In NYC for example most street food vendors are off the books since getting a permit is impossible and the regulations are to strict. At least there are more than the very few thousand permits. Cabbies are capped to so gypsy drivers are there to. And since its not just the US most countries have cash and a lot of poor people don't use banks and some have no ID thanks to the restrictive laws eliminating cash would be an issue. My father won't use electronic transactions at all he loves cash and so do most poor. I don't since banking is for rich people.

In Europe we have people from there here did you do away with cash?

[Healergirl]

RubySlippers,

Half Worldwide, I cn believe that.  Considering  the poor-to-nonexistent record keping in much of the word, oh yes, i can believe that.

In the USA?  No, not nearly that high.  But a double digit percentage would not surprise me.  Enough to cause massive disruption if the abolition of cash forced all that activity to go on the books and become subject  require real record-keeping and regulation.

[RubySlippers]

I said worldwide in the US it depends largely on location rural people and those in high tax states who make cash heavy income examples California and New York. If comes down to can you live on just cash surprisingly easier now that two decades ago and can you keep the cash out the tracking ability of the IRS again either to low to notice or off tracking points banks or reportable large purchases.

But if you include criminal income and not overtly clearly criminal cash income it is estimated ,from the book I read, around 15% this includes though income that is reportable but isn't. But its not an easy thing to track.

For example a home hair weaving business might require a cosmetology license so the woman might run it at home without one and not pay taxes on the income since she only takes cash and advertise by word of mouth and on local message boards in businesses (old fashioned) if this party avoids banks and earns a modest income its unlikely she would be found out. Rural businesses are even less likely the local sheriff is unlikely to go after a local farmer doing small engine repair for an extra income after all.

Note though in some countries they would die economically without the informal economy, its just part of the of the global economic system.

[Healergirl]

The IRS has actually gone on record as saying that making it impossible for people to work because they are unable find affordable child care they can trust is not in society's best interest.

This was heard on an NPR interview program while driving so I can't give a hard source for it.  The spokeman was discussing the undocumented deals made by working parents with their neighbors and relatives for child care among other things.

And to hear an actual IRS person say such a thing was jaw-dropping.

[RubySlippers]

Is that so odd why hire a stranger when you can pay a sister with room & board, some money to live in and take care of the children the money in cash as an example. And it can be cheaper for example have to pay out say $250 a month and room & board for the care of two children plus it would be a close relative you can trust.

[BCdan]

I am fine with the RFID as long as its entirely optional.  Making it mandatory to be tracked or identified without warrant is a pretty obvious invasion of my privacy. 

[RubySlippers]

It won't likely remain optional for long, look what they did with the SSN it used to be used narrowly now its your national ID number for everything. The replaced state ID systems with a national one just it appears to be a state ID. An implanted chip will likely be encouraged at birth for the good of the child as a lifelong chip for their safety or something.

[Ephiral]

...did people miss the part where it's a blood-glucose monitor, and there is no chip nor any plan for one that does anything that could be considered a breach of privacy?

[RubySlippers]

The technology could easily be storing of personal information, records and even banking information once it becomes acceptable to implant and what about implanting a newborn to track it with a GPS for the child's safety. I'm not being paranoid here again after 9/11 national ID became acceptable but done through the states to not appear to most being national ID nevertheless.

And SSN are used for what, everything, not just narrow demands of the government using it for income taxation to a general ID that was creeping in for years.

I'm saying the jump will happen to implanting it as the norm but it could happen.

[Ephiral]

The technology could easily be storing of personal information, records and even banking information once it becomes acceptable to implant and what about implanting a newborn to track it with a GPS for the child's safety. I'm not being paranoid here again after 9/11 national ID became acceptable but done through the states to not appear to most being national ID nevertheless.

And SSN are used for what, everything, not just narrow demands of the government using it for income taxation to a general ID that was creeping in for years.

I'm saying the jump will happen to implanting it as the norm but it could happen.

...personal information, records, and banking information in 2 KiB, and GPS (and its power requirements) in a package small enough to practically and easily implant. Yes, you're being paranoid.

[RubySlippers]

How fast is the technology advancing and they could keep the information in a database and the access ID on the chip, and technology is advancing every decade what about in twenty year or fifty years?

[Oniya]

When they get a cell-phone down to implantable size, then you can start worrying.  It's not the data storage.  Hell, you can store gigabytes-worth of data on something you can clip to your keyring.  I could probably fit the entirety of my computer's hard drive, bloated OS and all, onto a data stick.

[Ephiral]

How fast is the technology advancing and they could keep the information in a database and the access ID on the chip, and technology is advancing every decade what about in twenty year or fifty years?

"In twenty years" is technology-speak for "We have no idea if this is even possible, let alone when". Additionally... battery tech isn't advancing anywhere near as quickly as processing and storage, and the battery and antenna are the physically limiting factors on GPS. You need a certain amount of power at certain wavelengths in order to communicate with GPS satellites. This is not avoidable, or something it is possible to design around. In short, you're worrying about something that definitely isn't possible in the foreseeable future, might not be possible at all, and would require several major advances in medical and power tech if it is. Still sounds like paranoia to me.

When they get a cell-phone down to implantable size, then you can start worrying.  It's not the data storage.  Hell, you can store gigabytes-worth of data on something you can clip to your keyring.  I could probably fit the entirety of my computer's hard drive, bloated OS and all, onto a data stick.

At this point, data storage is a limiter; it's just not the hardest one to overcome. As I mentioned, the storage of a rice-grain-style passive RFID tag such as the one shown above is about 2 KiB. That's not a lot of room to work with.

[RubySlippers]

Let see cameras all over, walk by camera, signals goes off and boom your tracked. Think outside the box at what various technologies together can do. I'm not religious but this does look scary depending how things are going.

[Ephiral]

Let see cameras all over, walk by camera, signals goes off and boom your tracked. Think outside the box at what various technologies together can do. I'm not religious but this does look scary depending how things are going.

I'm thinking from the perspective of what the technologies are actually capable of. There's "outside the box", and there's "outside physics". A passive RFID tag has a maximum effective range of five inches from a sensor. (This could theoretically be boosted with better antennas and more power to the sensor, but the operating costs are going to increase geometrically with the range, the sensors would be physically larger, and it would require designing an entirely new standard.) An active tag under normal conditions may boost this to 40 feet, but then you're complicating your already ludicrous power requirements even further. Either one of these can be stopped cold by a Faraday cage that is pretty trivial to incorporate directly into clothing. And exactly what the hell do cameras have to do with anything mentioned thus far?

[RubySlippers]

A great sci-fi example would be Idiocracy a scanner that picks up a bar code all had to have on the right wrist from any camera or Demolition Man what if the reader has a high level ability to pick up the signal the gadget in you doesn't. I don't think this is likely in a long time but it could.

[Ephiral]

A great sci-fi example would be Idiocracy a scanner that picks up a bar code all had to have on the right wrist from any camera or Demolition Man what if the reader has a high level ability to pick up the signal the gadget in you doesn't. I don't think this is likely in a long time but it could.

Sci-fi is unburdened by any particular need to exist within physics, and so makes poor examples. A barcode is particularly easy to subvert - doctor a few pixels. The Demolition Man example is completely non-functional - a passive RFID tag (such as the ones that have been discussed thus far) is powered by the signal from the reader - if it doesn't receive a signal, it's shut down. The physical size of the device sets a hard limit on how powerful a signal it can safely handle - and thus on how much range it has when broadcasting. I'd suggest you read up on the tech you're speculating about before you make any more impossible proposals - this is really layman-with-a-mild-interest level stuff.

[Oniya]

Please remember what the second part of 'sci-fi' stands for, Ruby.

[Caehlim]

I don't know much about RFID to be honest. Just speculating though. Wouldn't multiple readers and RFID chips in close proximity continuously functioning have the potential to start interfering with one another? If everyone were chipped for example and the scanners were placed every few meters along a road, wouldn't we run into trouble with the signals overlapping and confusing the scanners?

We have two different RFID cards for the security system at my work, one for the building and one for my level. I tried sticking them together to make it more convenient and it never seemed to scan properly until I separated them again. This might have just been confirmation bias though, so I'm not convinced by my own anecdotal experience.

[Sethala]

@Lindorable: You have me curious, and I'm sad I didn't check back on the forums here while you were still posting in this thread.  If you happen to still browse this thread and see this, I have two questions for you, and I'd love to try and talk more about what and why you believe.

The first thing I want to know is, how much of this do you really believe is true and how much are you putting forward as a discussion point?  Do you believe it's completely true and want to see who shares your belief, do you think it might be true and want some input on whether to believe it or not, or do you think it's interesting and want to know who else believes it?  The second thing is, if you believe it's true, where did your belief come from?  Mainly what I want to know is, was it something placed in front of you by others (for instance, a family member or friend telling you everything about it, or a pastor giving sermons on the matter), or is it something you found out about and decided to pursue on your own (such as by searching for other websites supporting the idea)?

Back to the current thread however...

This is probably just me having more optimism than is healthy, but... depending on how they're used, couldn't this monitoring system be a good thing?  For instance, let's say that when it's implemented, laws specify that it can be used to prove a suspect's innocence, but cannot be used to prove guilt or as a way to gain other information about a suspect.  In a case like that, if someone gets wrongfully accused, it's much easier to prove that they were 30 miles away from the crime scene by showing their ID tag being that far away, than it would be if they simply had an alibi with little or no witnesses.

Now I know the technology for it doesn't work that way, and that a lot of this is baseless conjecture, but if it's handled well I think something like this could improve things.  (Though admittedly, I don't think the current US government would be someone I trust to "handle it well".)

[Ephiral]

I don't know much about RFID to be honest. Just speculating though. Wouldn't multiple readers and RFID chips in close proximity continuously functioning have the potential to start interfering with one another? If everyone were chipped for example and the scanners were placed every few meters along a road, wouldn't we run into trouble with the signals overlapping and confusing the scanners?

We have two different RFID cards for the security system at my work, one for the building and one for my level. I tried sticking them together to make it more convenient and it never seemed to scan properly until I separated them again. This might have just been confirmation bias though, so I'm not convinced by my own anecdotal experience.

Not generally. Max range under ideal conditions of a passive tag is about five inches - real-world is often half that. You had issues because both cards were in-range at the same time, but that's not likely if two different people are carrying them.

This is probably just me having more optimism than is healthy, but... depending on how they're used, couldn't this monitoring system be a good thing?  For instance, let's say that when it's implemented, laws specify that it can be used to prove a suspect's innocence, but cannot be used to prove guilt or as a way to gain other information about a suspect.  In a case like that, if someone gets wrongfully accused, it's much easier to prove that they were 30 miles away from the crime scene by showing their ID tag being that far away, than it would be if they simply had an alibi with little or no witnesses.

Now I know the technology for it doesn't work that way, and that a lot of this is baseless conjecture, but if it's handled well I think something like this could improve things.  (Though admittedly, I don't think the current US government would be someone I trust to "handle it well".)

It is extremely doubtful that any country in the world would pass a law like this, and even if it did I wouldn't trust any government to abide by it. (See also: abuses of London CCTV cameras.)

[Healergirl]

Planting RFID chips in people is going to run head on into the 4th amendment.  And before you say the conservative justices will have noprobelm with that, bear in mind that RFIDs in everybody might be seen as the sort of dragnet search people like the Conservative wing of the Suareme Court take a rather dim view of.  That sort of thing is very much what the 4th amendment was aimed against, and the conservative wing  perhaps surprisingly has a rather good record against mass searches without probable cause.  Or perhaps not so surprising.  They are Constructionists, and mass searches were a particular burr under the saddle for the Founding fathers.

[Nadir]

Can someone post a larger image of the one linked in the first post? That one is way too small for me to make any sense of

[Caehlim]

Can someone post a larger image of the one linked in the first post? That one is way too small for me to make any sense of

I looked for it and based on my search I believe the original source is one of those two conspiracy theory pages I linked in my earlier reply. Unfortunately it is the same size there. I have been unable to find a larger picture that is identical to the one posted.

However if you compare it side by side with this one (link) you should be able to see that it is the same device although they are different photos.

[Nadir]

... now that is a beautiful piece of technology