"Chipping" Away At Freedom

Courtesy of Big Brother, UK (George Orwell was, after all, British):

Human beings may be forced to be 'microchipped' like pet dogs, a shocking official report into the rise of the Big Brother state has warned.

The microchips - which are implanted under the skin - allow the wearer's movements to be tracked and store personal information about them.

They could be used by companies who want to keep tabs on an employee's movements or by Governments who want a foolproof way of identifying their citizens - and storing information about them.

The prospect of 'chip-citizens' - with its terrifying echoes of George Orwell's 'Big Brother' police state in the book 1984 - was raised in an official report for Britain's Information Commissioner Richard Thomas into the spread of surveillance technology.

The report, drawn up by a team of respected academics, claims that Britain is a world-leader in the use of surveillance technology and its citizens the most spied-upon in the free world.

It paints a frightening picture of what Britain might be like in ten years time unless steps are taken to regulate the use of CCTV and other spy technologies.

The reports editors Dr David Murakami Wood, managing editor of the journal Surveillance and Society and Dr Kirstie Ball, an Open University lecturer in Organisation Studies, claim that by 2016 our almost every movement, purchase and communication could be monitored by a complex network of interlinking surveillance technologies.

Who is leading the way in such draconian, freedom-hating technologies?

Why, we are!

However, its use in humans has already been trialled in America, where the chips were implanted in 70 mentally-ill elderly people in order to track their movements.

And earlier this year a security company in Ohio chipped two of its employees to allow them to enter a secure area. The glass-encased chips were planted in the recipients' upper right arms and 'read' by a device similar to a credit card reader.

In their Report on the Surveillance Society, the authors now warn: "The call for everyone to be implanted is now being seriously debated."

How nice.

Last century saw America as a pioneer of eugenics laws that later came to be used more effectively in places like Nazi Germany.

Leading the way in freedom-denial apparatus does not bode well for us or any other freedom-loving people. We must be vigilant, and take reasoned measures to ensure our security, but turning over the burden of protection to surveillance cameras, microchips, and police-state measures will target the very citizens they are designed to protect. Who would avoid gun-control laws? Thugs and criminals, not law-abiding citizens. Who would thwart such overreaching policing tactics? Terrorists, illegal immigrants, criminals. Who would be forced to comply? Peaceful, law-abiding citizens.

Instead of rationally targeting those elements that pose a threat to society, governments suggest making EVERYONE a suspect. Gun-control, surveillance cameras, and microchips represent the type of slippery slope measures that lead to Orwell's dystopia. Submitting to such outrageous proposals meant only to "provide security" represents the type of thinking that we fought in WWII and the Cold War, and now global jihad.