Back in June Sneak blogged about the idiots allowing a Spanish beach bar to stick RFID tags in their arms, presumably so that bar staff could charge them for drinks even after they became too sozzled to sign their names. Now the surveillance-obsessed US authorities have given the nod to the same technology - in this country still happily reserved for identifying dogs, cats and bunny-rabbits - for medical-record keeping and related purposes. Where will it all end? The steady march of system-on-a-chip development means that sooner or later the rice-sized implant will possess enough processing power to put a Centrino laptop to shame. Then the authorities will be in a position to record, encrypt and transmit data about a chipped person’s every action. Don’t laugh, it could happen. At which point, two common phrases from today’s IT could take on ominous new meaning. Sneak, for one, will not allow Intel Inside, lest it unleash the Blue Screen of Death on Sneak’s core processes.

15 Oct 2004