Who Are You? The ID Problem

Who Are You?

Identification is going to be one of the major problems facing our planet going forward. In a world of 6,446,131,400 people (CIA estimate, July 2005) , it is becoming more and more important to be able to identify people as unique individuals. Everybody wants it:

• Advertisers and merchants want it so that you can be sold to.
• Banks and creditors want it so that you can be made to pay your bills.
• Governments want it so that you can be made to pay your taxes, vote, get retirement benefits through the social security system, medical benefits, anti-terrorism, border control & immigration, and so on.

In olden times (like when I was a tadpole), the US was still enough of a rural society overall that aside from the great cities, you could be considered whomever you said you were. The closest thing we had a universal ID system was the US Passport, but not everybody had one (didn't need one unless you were traveling outside of the USA, Canada, or Mexico). Most everyone had a Social Security card - but you didn't even need one of those unless you had a job and paid taxes. I didn't get mine until I was 12 years old, for example. And many state driver's licenses did not have photos on them. Even years later, when I was in the US military, I had friends who had driver's licenses from states like New York and New Jersey that didn't have photos on them.

But times are not what they were. Now, we have a situation where the US Social Security number has become the default ID number for all US citizens, and it is issued at birth in most hospitals. That number is used as a unique identifier by credit bureaus, the federal and state governments, taxpayer roles, banks, credit card issuers, and even (gasp) the Social Security Administration.

There was certainly a time when people were concerned with the spreading indiscriminate use of the Social Security Number as a universal identifier. In fact, my original SS card said in big, bold, letters that it was not for identification. The cards no longer say that.

Even setting aside the sturm und drang surrounding the use of the Social Security Number (SSN) as a US national unique identifier, it is only unique as it is used. There is no guarantee that the person using a given SSN is actually the person to whom the number was issued. In fact, identity theft is rampant, and the consequences of having your identity stolen are rather horrible.

So let's talk about what kind of ID is attached to you more-or-less permanently. One is your fingerprints - unique as far as anyone knows. Two is your DNA, also unique unless you are an identical twin/triplet/etc (ah, the old 'evil twin' theory gains some ground here). Both are nearly infallible - but are not fast enough for real-time use.

Weird Science

There is a budding field of scientific exploration known as biometrics which attempts to prove that this aspect or that measurement of eyeball irises, facial characteristics, walk, handwriting, etc - are unique if only we can measure them promptly and accurately. So far, most of these sound like phrenology to me. Not saying that they don't work, just that there aren't that many successes so far that are a) always right and b) fast enough for real-time identification.

In general, then, the problems are these. Government-issued numbers and ID cards, though unique (in theory), and fast enough for real-time use, are too subject to being stolen or usurped by others. Personal characteristics, such as fingerprints and DNA, though unique and probably incapable of being hijacked, are not fast enough for real-time use. Various biometric techniques are either not accurate enough, not fast enough, or both.

Up Jumps The Devil

But as it turns out, we may have a solution. If a person does not have any physical characteristics that are a) permanent, b) unique, and c) fast enough for real-time identification, then you can give 'em one.

The Nazis figured this out - they used a tattoo to put a permanent number on the arms of Jewish concentration camp prisoners, members of the SS, and others. This technique has also been used on livestock (branding, tattooing serial numbers on horse's lips, etc) and it is fast enough for real-time identification, but it is prone to tampering. Tattoos can be removed, altered, and faked. Product UPC codes used when you check out at the grocery store are a form of this kind of tattooing.

In fact, when UPC codes first became popular (historically, they had been invented and used to keep track of railroad boxcars and were adapted for merchandise), some people feared that this would be the dreaded 'Mark of the Beast' that was predicted by the Christian Bible:

Revelation 13:16-17 (King James Version)

16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name

This mention of the 'Mark of the Beast' is all over the place in the Book of Revalation. Basically, if you are a Christian, and you believe in the literal interpretation of this, if you take the 'mark', you're gonna burn in Hell and that's the end of that discussion. Strange as it may seem, a lot of people take this very seriously.

So you end up with two groups of very serious people upset over the UPC-code-as-ID concept; the heavy-duty industrial-strength Christians, and the privacy weenies, of which I proudly consider myself one, who basically resent any intrusion by the federal government into our privacy on Constitutional grounds.

Well, as it turns out, the UPC barcode is probably not the Mark of the Beast. Barcodes are just like tattoos - in fact, as applied (literally) to people, it probably would have to be a tattoo. And it is just as liable to be circumvented by the nefarious as a serial number tattoo. There was some talk about implanting a small plastic disk with a UPC code on it just under the skin and then reading it with a high-powered scanner, but nothing came of it that I'm aware of. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to get skin cancer to buy a box of Cherios, ya know?

That brings us more-or-less up to date. You see, there is a new boy in town, and he's got ever buddy excited. His name is RFID, which stands for Radio Frequency IDentification.

RFID chips are cool, from a technological standpoint. They're inert bits of circuitry that don't do much of anything until they receive a radio signal on a specific frequency. Then, the spring to life (in passive tags, the incoming radio signal actually powers them as well) and they transmit something back to the incoming device's receiver.

What do they send back? Well, whatcha want?

Retailers like Walmart have pioneered the use of the RFID chip to track inventory. The chip responds with a signal containing the information that a UPC code would carry, but it can be read at more of a distance, and without turning the box this way and that to find the blasted thing (anyone who has wondered how it takes an idiot clerk seven turns of a six-sided cube to find the side with the UPC code and wondered why they don't just print them on ALL sides would get the advantage to this).

In some cities in the US, pet owners have been required to have their pets implanted with RFID chips to facilitate tracking down their owners and verifying their shot records - in cities with large population densities, where pets can lose collars and traditional ID tags, this has worked out rather well. The biggest problem has been in getting people to have their animals implanted.

You have probably made the jump by now - if you can implant a pet, why not a person?

Well, lots of other people have twigged to that one, too.

An RFID chip implanted in a person can store and transmit all kinds of information. It can be a small data store on its own, or it can be a key to a data store that is kept elsewhere. Recently, the former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and former Governor of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson, has been implanted with an RFID chip from VeriChip:

Worldnet Daily News - Tommy Thompson Implanted with RFID Chip

This type of chip does not actually contain any medical data. Instead, it contains a special code that allows a person equipped with the right kind of RFID reader to access a special database kept at VeriChip that has the medical data within it. VeriChip believes that this addresses a number of privacy issues - the data can't be stolen from a person by some passer-by who happens to have a generic RFID reader of some kind.

Can you imagine a person being hacked?

Right now, there are people whose sole hobby in life is to drive slowly through residential neighborhoods with a hacked up laptop and wireless network card and high-gain directional antenna, looking for unguarded WiFi access points (wardriving, as it is called). Can you imagine what kind of problems would be caused if a person could drive around sniffing the RFID chips of people, for God's sake? Mona Lisa Overdrive come to life, is what.

Conclusion - No Conclusion

So we've got this problem, see. The privacy weenies and the Christian Beasties are going to moan and complain and become most agitato, but it looks like this thing is going to be born:

Implantable Chips Bear Promise, But Privacy Standards Needed

'Health Chips' Could Help Patients in US

RFID Goes to War

So here's how it is going to come down...in my Wiggy opinion...which is sadly, mostly right...

Remember, Divide & Conquer strategies often work well.
1) If you can't get a population to agree to take an implanted electronic device,
2) Try some test runs to show how well the technology works (pets)
3) Create a need for better security (ID theft, terrorism)
4) Offer a solution to a universal problem that plays on the fears of elderly (health care in emergencies)
5) Implement nationwide voluntary call for compliance.
6) Give tax breaks to citizens who have the procedure done.
7) Give all kinds of incentives (one-stop registration/voting, easy grocery check out, blah, blah, blah)
8) Mandate use (should be nearly univeral acceptance by now).
And, for the Industrial-Strength Christians:
9) Round up and kill all those who won't accept the RFID chip.

Total timeframe=20 years, give or take. We're up to #4 now, and we're about to start on #5. We'll see it through to #9 in our lifetimes (I'm 44). Number ten is up for grabs.

Hey, this RFID stuff is exciting. It could fix a lot of problems - it could cause a lot more. I'm a privacy weenie, and this worries me from that aspect. But I'm also a technology weenie, and this is hot stuff.

If RFID were all upside, we'd never have to slow down for things like toll roads, retail store checkouts, taxes, census-taking, life in general could be much simpler. The long-range implications for positive uses of this technology are staggering.

If RFID were all downside, this would represent the end of freedom as we know it. Government knowledge of what we see, read, say, publish, and so on. Corporations would know what we were buying and how much, everyone with a tiny bit of power and an axe to grind could do great damage to people.

The realistic sitation? Well, as dangerous and exiciting as it is, I count on the federal government to screw it up until it doesn't really work, because I don't believe in one big conspiracy theme. Instead, I believe in the silo mentality of a whole bunch of little conspiracies, and with ever buddy in the government fighting each other for a little bit of turf, the Mark of the Beast is more likely to be lost in the shuffle.

Hammer On,

Wiggy