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I see RFID and HAARP (just learned about that one this morning, so my knowledge base is pretty flimsy) as the next generation of science that allows us to live in the society we currently live in with the ability to chat online with people all over the globe, watch 1000's of channels of TV, carry an Ipod with 1000's of pieces of music, allows 911 to locate me immeidately if I have a heart attack, and allowed my daughter to call us at 2:30 this morning from halfway around the globe to tell us she found a great bargain on a dress. Yes, she's blonde.

I really think unless I want to live in a Montana cabin and wrestle bears for my food supply, I'm pretty much stuck in this century and I'll take the good with the bad. As it is today, I'm trackable 24/7 since I carry a cell phone, and if I lived in a toll-road city, I'd sure as hell have a speed pass in my car to allow me to skip the lines at the toll booth.

I do agree that manditory RFID implanted in people crosses a boundary of personal freedom and I'd hope most congressmen would agree with that.

I sway towards pinruT's attitude, for the same reason. I don't want to be a hermit. And bears are godless killing machines and I will not wrestle them either.
I finally accepted that anyone can track me during an interview with the Social Security Administration for my disability claim. They knew everything about me. It was all in their database.

But I too draw the line at tracking devices in my clothes. It's just creepy. Why did I not know about this? Do most retailers do it?

Yeah,my cat is chipped. And while I might be uneasy about it now I probably will be glad to get a chip with all my medical info on it when I am old and frail so in case I collapse in the street the paramedics will know what to do with me. Of course it's subject to abuse but so are a lot of other things. I think the anti-government streak is sufficiently healthy in our country to prevent mandatory chipping (after all, it's prevented a national ID card, which many non-totalitarian nations consider a matter of course).
I know there's a chip in the label of most clothes I buy (there's usually a helpful dotted line and a message telling me to cut that label off after purchase). I do, of course, but it doesn't bother me that much.

I'm always afraid if I cut the labels off the mattress police will show up.

But doesn't the tag say only the consumer and remove it? So if you buy it, can't you cut it?

Maybe, but I'm always afraid to take that chance.

(mattress police was a joke)

Oh, I know. I was trying to be funny (plus, I really wasn't sure about the tag).

BTW, TeslaNewton, I saw our old buddy Nikola Tesla referenced at the end of the HAARP article.

Unusual Contrails over Cleveland

Yesterday afternoon, there was a flurry of activity in the sky over the Greater Cleveland area. I witnessed these planes/jets/aircraft moving about the sky, and many of them were not regular airliners. A good majority of the contrails were from multiple aircraft that moved across the sky at speeds over four times that of normal airliners which were also visible in the sky. There were also sharp turns, ascents, and descents that you don't see from regular airliners.

Local media has shrugged the story off as normal weather phenomenon, probably because a local talk-radio personality fueling wacko conspiracy theorists. If it was just squads from Wright-Patterson or Selfridge conducting practice manuevers - why would officials not just say that?

Fofanna - what was your vantage point from the west side of town?

Wow, this has the potential to be the most fascinating thread yet!

mambru, you say the national ID card was prevented -- sadly, I'm not as up on that as I should be, and it's not for lack of interest. Was it really defeated? Last I heard, the effort was still gearing up.

If Copsss would quit sunbathing topless on the roof of her house, you wouldn't have that sort of thing!

The national ID isn't really dead -- it's kind of climbing in through the back door via state driver's licenses. An avowedly opinionated take on the subject is here. I like EPIC -- they usually seem to have a pretty level-headed take on things and steer clear of a lot of conspiracy-type theorizing while doing their best to peer around corners that most of us haven't thought about yet.

I totally get opinions like pinruT's, and I don't think they're wrong. But I'm also a firm believer in the old quote -- I thought it was Jefferson or Franklin, but this site (provenance unknown, no endorsement implied) suggests it was actually the little-remembered Wendell Phillips -- that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." It doesn't make me a wingnut, I don't think, to question exactly how new technological innovations are being deployed and whether the way they're being used is really in the best interests of individuals. But I also try to keep a sense of perspective about things, which is one reason I like to mix it up with conspiracy theorists from time to time.

If they're properly implemented, I don't think we have much to fear from RFID tags. The real question, though, is whether the folks who are busy sewing them into our clothing and pasting them into our passports and -- if reports are to be believed -- implanting them into hospital patients and nightclub patrons, are actually thinking through the security angles and doing their best to ensure that the system can't be compromised, that personally identifiable information is firewalled and dumped regularly instead of being stored forever, etc. The original passport standard, for instance, had chips capable of being interrogated at any time, albeit from a relatively close distance. So that would have made it possible for a cheap scanner to identify you and pinpoint your location, just because you happened to walk by with your passport in your pocket. (The latest standard has the chip shielded when the passport is closed, I believe; it sounds good, but I haven't read anything about whether it actually works as advertised.)

One of the best thinkers on these subjects I've ever come across is Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer and security expert who also blogs regularly here. If you've got any interest at all in these subjects, Schneier's blog or the EPIC site are excellent places to start.

Thanks to PMK for breaking this off as a separate subject, and I promise to stop gasbagging shortly. Meanwhile, though, is there any chance we could get another "c" into the "conspiracy" in the thread subtitle? Unless that's just to throw off Big Brother, in which case I'm all in favor ov mispelings.

I almost choked on my Jelly Belly. BWAH. Conspirary.

How exactly do they get into the nightclub patrons? I assume this is voluntary, because no matter how hard you pregame, I think you'd notice a chip being slipped under your skin at the door.

Sadly, I have to credit EarthMomma with making me look this up, but supposedly a Barcelona nightclub offers regular patrons the ability to pay for their drinks with an implanted RFID chip. I guess I don't see the point, given that I always thought the point of a nightclub was to make other people pay for your drinks, but the world is full of odd sorts.