Wisconsin and North Dakota already banned the forced implementation of RFID chips and California is soon to join them if a bill passed last September is signed by Governor Schwarzenegger.

No one’s quite sure how real a threat these forced implants might be, or why states are feeling compelled to protect their residents from being physically tagged. Lawmakers are calling the legislation pre-emptive, while the industry that produces the technology sees the states’ action as fear mongering.

Gee, I wonder why people are paranoid about these things.  It’s not like they’re tracking anyone with them already.

State Sen. Joe Simitian (D), who authored California’s bill, said he first looked into RFID legislation after grade schools in Sutter County, Calif., required students to wear IDs containing the chips to help monitor attendance. The move prompted privacy complaints from parents, and the school eventually stopped using the technology.

In humans, they have been used to store medical information, to track movement and to gain access to locked rooms. To date, 2,000 RFID chips have been sold for implantation in humans, says VeriChip Corp., the only manufacturer with a Food and Drug Administration-approved implantable chip.

The company is focusing its technology on medical patient identification, and about 400 patients, including those with Alzheimer’s disease, have RFIDs implanted. Other VeriChip human implants have been used by a Spanish nightclub to allow VIPs with implanted chips to bypass entrance lines and by the Mexico attorney general’s staff to safeguard identity information at a time when the kidnapping of government officials there is not uncommon.

Still, we don’t have to worry even if we have to wear one of these because they’re secure right?  Not exactly.  State Senator Simitian got a grad student to build his own reader to prove how insecure these chips really are.

The student…wandered the state Capitol one afternoon with the reader in his briefcase. In the process, he stole the security numbers of nine representatives. The reader could send out any of those numbers, getting him past any locked door a state senator would have access to. And he would appear as the senator in the electronic records.

Manufacturers and industry representatives say that no cases of such identity theft have been documented. But depending on the desired level of security, cameras and guards should be used in addition to RFID tags, says the AeA (formerly the American Electronics Association).

Just because it hasn’t been documented officially doesn’t mean that it can’t happen.  Several people, from Australia to the United Kingdom to the USA to this grad student have showed how poorly the RFID tags are designed.

If the RFID tags are supposed to be used in conjunction with CCTV cameras and security guards, then how accurate and secure can they really be?

For once, state legislators should be applauded for taking a pre-emptive strike on such a delicate matter before waiting for there to be problems with forced implantations.  It is a fact that an incredibly large amount of information could be stored on these tags and, if you cannot turn them off when you leave work, it is highly likely that your employer will end up abusing the information within the tag and use it against you.  Is that the kind of world you really want to live in?