Midterms are over; time to focus on everything else that's been piling up. Like renewing my now-expired passport. The application has been sitting on my desk for months, but I really need to get off my butt & do it before I get RFID'ed.
I've posted previously on the problems with putting RFID chips into passports. As this recent article notes, DHS is "dealing" with the problem not by looking for a better solution, but by engaging in an Orwellian re-naming of the technology involved.
Conspiracy theorists and civil libertarians, fear not. The U.S. government will not use radio-frequency identification tags in the passports it issues to millions of Americans in the coming years.Instead, the government will use "contactless chips."
The distinction is part of an effort by the Department of Homeland Security and one of its RFID suppliers, Philips Semiconductors, to brand RFID tags in identification documents as "proximity chips," "contactless chips" or "contactless integrated circuits" -- anything but "RFID."
The Homeland Security Department is playing word games to dodge the privacy debate raging over RFID tags.
So very typical of this administration.
