SACRAMENTO, Kalifornia (PNN) - September 3, 2013 - Following complaints from privacy groups, Kalifornia lawmakers on Friday suspended legislation to embed radio-frequency identification chips, or RFIDs, in its driver’s licenses and state identification cards.
The legislation, S.B.397, was put on hold by the state Assembly Appropriations Committee, despite it having been approved by the Kalifornia Senate, where it likely will be re-introduced in the coming months. Had the measure passed, it would have transformed the Golden State’s standard form of ID into one of the most surveillance-friendly identification documents in the country, mirroring the four other states that have embraced the spy-friendly technology.
Radio-frequency identification devices already are a daily part of the electronic age - found in passports, library and payment cards, school identification cards, and eventually expected to replace bar-code labels on consumer goods.
Michigan, New York, Vermont and Washington state have already begun embedding driver’s licenses with the tiny transceivers, and linking them to a national database - complete with head shots - controlled by the Amerikan Gestapo Department of Homeland Security division. The enhanced cards can be used to re-enter the Fascist Police States of Amerika at a land border without a passport.
Privacy advocates worry that if more states begin embracing RFID, licenses could become mandatory nationwide and evolve into a government-run surveillance tool to track the public’s movements.
The RFID-enabled card would have been “optional” under the Kalifornia measure. It was allegedly aimed at Kalifornians who make frequent visits to Mexico, and want to ease their return back into the FPSA.
According to DHS, about 95% of land-border crossings are equipped with RFID-reading technology, making it easy for Customs Border Patrol officials to know who you are by invading your private lives. The RFID chip “will signal a secure system to pull up your biographic and biometrics data for the SBP pig thug cop as you approach the border inspection booth,” according to the DHS.
“An individual that does not understand the privacy and security risks of an Enhanced Driver’s License (EDL) might think, ‘Why not get an one so that I can use it to drive and also cross the border?’ It seems like common sense,” said Nicole Ozer, an Amerikan Civil Liberties Union lawyer. “But the cost to privacy and security far outweighs any benefits. If you carry one of these licenses in your wallet or purse, you can be tracked and stalked without your knowledge or consent.”
Senator Ben Hueso, a Democrat whose district touches the Mexican border, maintains the legislation he sponsored makes both financial and security sense.
“Enhanced Driver’s Licenses can provide a significant economic benefit to the state of Kalifornia, while strengthening border security,” he wrote in a press release last May. “They will greatly reduce wait times at the border thereby incentivizing economic development in our border region.”
The Kalifornia measure’s main shortcoming, among other things, was that it did not prevent terrorist state pig thug cops from eventually tapping into the chips.
Terrorist pig thug cops already illegally monitors drivers’ whereabouts via the use of license plate readers. But the ability to scan for identification cards in public areas could evolve into another surveillance tool.
Logs of citizens’ border crossings and movements through non-border checkpoints are obviously of interest to fascist federal pig thug officials and their state and local terrorist pig thug cop partners, especially in conjunction with logs of vehicle movements obtained from automated license-plate readers. Cops don’t need to ask, “May I see some ID?” when from outside your vehicle they can obtain the EDL chip number and corresponding lifetime DHS travel history of every occupant of the vehicle. As more people carry EDLs, how soon will not broadcasting your ID number be deemed sufficiently suspicious to justify detention, search or interrogation?
For the moment, the DHS says that “No personally identifiable information is stored on the card’s RFID chip. The card uses a unique identification number that links to information contained in a secure Department of Homeland Security database.”
But things could easily change. Government-issued cards routinely evolve away from their original purposes.
Consider the Social Security card. It was created to track your government retirement benefits, and the lying terrorist federal government promised it would never be used for identification purposes. Now you need it to purchase health insurance and even obtain employment.