Congress is moving quickly to put into motion measures that will ensure airport employees are subjected to stricter security checks. Everyone from Restaurant employees to airline mechanics could soon be forced to provide biometric finger and iris scans and may even face the possibility of being implanted with a microchip. Currently all airport employees must pass a police and FBI background check, however this may soon be upgraded to include credit checks, routine searches of bags and property and the use of biometric readers with the possibility of microchip implants on the table

The measures are still under Congressional discussion.

Local News Channel KENS5 broadcast a report on the proposals from San Antonio airport.

Source: Technology News
In yet another example of the Japanese obsession with keeping track of people and telling them what to do at the same time, AP reports that the government communications ministry is planning to blanket one of its islands with a Wi-Fi- and RFID -saturated monitoring network. The vague scheme, which has yet to be confirmed officially, will see a remote part of the country serve as a test-bed for a combination of wireless schemes we’ve seen before. Of these, the idea of tagging goods in shops with IC chips to send information about products to shoppers’ mobile phones and using tags for push advertising are most likely to succeed in the mainstream.

Source: Times Online
If your child could wear an implant – a microchip that could tell a computer where he or she was at any time to within a few metres – would you buy it? After the horrific snatch of three-year-old Madeleine McCann from her bed in Portugal, the answer from many parents seems to be “yes”.

Professor Kevin Warwick, who developed the technology that made it possible for the first child in Britain to volunteer to be “chipped” in 2002 – after the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman – has been bombarded with e-mails over the past few days from parents desperate to keep tabs on their children. As we talk, another e-mail drops into his inbox from a mother of two young children who says that she is deeply anxious about Madeleine’s disappearance and wants to know more about the chip technology. [more]

Source: Stuff (NZ)
Privacy advocates fearful that RFID tags may be used by consumer goods companies to track our every move can sleep easily for a while longer, now that two initiatives to speed up the introduction of the technology in New Zealand appear to have become bogged down.

However, there are fears that RFID tags could be scanned secretly once consumers have taken goods home from shops, raising the possibility the technology could be used to snoop on the contents of people’s handbags, for example. Overseas, RFID champion Wal-Mart has scaled back its goals for the technology. Only 600 of the retailers’ 20,000 suppliers are tagging their shipments to Wal-Mart with RFID chips, four years after it issued an edict announcing that RFID tags would be mandatory. Information Week reports that the consensus among businesses in the US is that the technology will find a place.

Source: Wired
Bermuda, the tiny island nation in the North Atlantic, is the latest country to come under electronic surveillance. Every vehicle in the country will be fitted with an RFID tag to track and punish citizens throughout the 138 islands. There will be mobile and fixed detectors and they will automatically send out tickets and fines for speeding and red light jumping as well as parking offences.

Source: NZ Herald
Legislation setting up a “Super Gold Card” for superannuitants will let the cards carry a microchip for easy scanning of personal information. MPs worried about the possible misuse of the card and identity theft will make a determined attempt in Parliament today to remove the microchipping clause from the legislation, but the Government is expected to have enough support to pass it. The Super Gold Card was a New Zealand First initiative, accepted by Labour, to provide senior citizens with access to discounts and benefits at various businesses or government services. The contentious clause in the Social Security (Entitlement Cards) Amendment Bill would also permit microchips in other social services cards.

Jim Harper takes a look at the Real ID Act in an article that start off saying that “U.S. policymakers have long rejected a national ID as inconsistent with American freedom. Ordinary people, it has long been believed, should not have to carry a card as if they are criminal suspects and they should not be asked to account to authorities for their whereabouts or activities. Nonetheless, as the federal government has grown in size and scope, its desire to track and monitor citizens has increased. To administer increasingly complex tax laws and expanding entitlements, the government has come to need more and more information about citizens and more and more assurance of who is who”.

Ain’t that the truth, indeed. When it comes to RFID, Jim wrote that “Plans are underway in some states to embed licenses with computer chips that will communicate information about the bearer by radio. The use of radio frequency identification (RFID) to track people is controversial, but RFID-chipped identity documents are being established, such as the U.S. State Department’s new e-passport”.