BTC - It has been a long year filled with ceaseless surveillance onslaughts driven by NATO, the security industrial complex and the US government. RFID, a controversial radio frequency microchip known for its broadcast surveillance ability, had fallen unnoticed by major media in recent years. 2012 saw a resurgence of RFID in the public sphere of influence and corresponding opposition flowered later in the year.
In the fall of 2012, an Anonymous Op launched a DDOS takedown of San Antonio's NISD for playing stone deaf to parental outcry for a RFID opt-out policy. The attack was pointed at a mandatory requirement that RFID badges be worn by students seeking education or face expulsion from John Jay High School. Even though Texans have answered back with legal actions and new legislations, it is becoming a very long winter for those opposed to RFID surveillance.
Shortly after legal restrictions on San Antonio's NISD went to a federal court, the Catholic Church and another major cultural institution, Disney adopted RFID in wristbands. Large scale Summer concerts like Bonnaroo and Coachella also adopted RFID this year to cue up interactions with Facebook, for the less privacy vigilant. The reasons spanned from "loyalty" to "privacy protections". There has even been a return to discussions of RFID smart hospitals and implants as part of health insurance provisions. Healthcare providers in the domestic US are considering the technology, but are being advised under strong cautions by privacy advocate groups. This has not stopped RFID marketers from approaching schools and government for an endorsement of the technology. Large marketing firms and government strongholds will continue to vie for more mass surveillance and RFID use despite opposition into 2013.
Travellers are still navigating passport requirements with or without RFID. California reconsidered RFID to expedite transport across borders in a new bill, AB 17. One family was denied travel from Denver due to a creased passport with a non-operable RFID tag. Of course, no one can forget Enhanced Drivers Licenses (EDLs) use of RFID as an equipment regulation via the Real ID Act of 2005. Real ID federal-to-state contests lost momentum completely as states extended, again, for "more time to comply" to rules for America's internal passport.
Longterm digital identity and license planners at AAMVA and Homeland Security are still piloting an optional Internet version of the EDL in Virginia, as the Cross Sector Driver Identity Initiative. NSTIC, a White House Internet ID initiative, proposes federal security infrastruture be extended to businesses, hospitals, schools, encouraging most public sectors to adopt RFID in secured ID cards. Privacy and identity advocates are finding problems scaling NSTIC's information security and identity proposals to a global Internet, without calling up Dept. of Defense handpicked contractors.
Anonymous, longtime opponent of widespread mass global surveillance, issued public advisories on RFID and onslaughts against "Netizen" privacy in 2012. The known vigilante hacktivist group are knowledgeable enough to defend themselves from deep packet inspection and other surveillance tools set against the public by the NSA and the Pentagon. In this video, an Anonymous speaker speaks to geopolitical reasons for employing RFID technologies and some previously obscured attempts to mandate internal RFID chipping for transactional surveillance. Anonymous members routinely dispatch updates and How-To guides for those who may not be able to Opt-Out of RFID in identity documents, like passports as seen below.
"We are everyone and we are no one... We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us." - Anonymous
#RFID enabled devices - what you can do bit.ly/WnzJH5 #lulzThat wraps the summary of a tense year of discovery, surveillance and incorporation of RFID in lives around the world in 2012.
— Anonymous (@OpPinkPower) January 3, 2013
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