For all the FOX News-loving Freedom Fighters who continue
to bang their war drums insisting that Iraq was invaded to spread freedom
while defending the Bush regime’s calls for Americans to be wiretapped,
thumb-printed, filmed, wanded, searched, carded, frisked, and scanned in the
name of “security” – how about this? Are you ready to be “chipped”? No, we’re
not talking computers, fingernails, or china. “Tagged” – it’s not just for
Spot and Fluff anymore. And it may be coming to a workplace near you.
A company in Ohio recently embedded silicon-tracking
chips into a couple of its employees. The two workers complied with a request
to have their right arms implanted with a glass-encased radio transmitter that
can be read by a special monitor that tracks their every move at work. It’s a
human OnStar for employers. The private video surveillance company who was
hired to test the technology claims the devices are necessary for controlling
access to company security rooms. The employer defends it by saying it is not
compulsory. Not yet, anyway. Of course, the device can also be used to track
the “wearer” any time of day and night without their knowledge.
In the name of protection and security, just how much
privacy can Americans be expected to surrender? How many more freedoms are we
willing to give up? We should not forget the words to the old Janis Joplin
song, “Me and Bobby McGee”. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to
lose.
Last week, I got a cold and needed to purchase some
over-the-counter decongestant. When I got to the colds-and-flu section of my
neighborhood drugstore, the shelves were bare. After I told a pharmacist on
duty what I was looking for, she brought the contraband to the pharmacy
window. Then things got crazy. I was told that in order to make my purchase,
a government-issued ID would have to be produced as well as the disclosure of
my full name, home address and signature in a company record book. The
purchase could not exceed three boxes for the month. After hearing my rather
acerbic remarks of protest, the pharmacist dismissively replied, “This is for
your protection.” Treating a stuffy nose will now cost us dearly.
Like most, I am well aware of the tremendous problem the
country faces regarding the use and manufacture of methamphetamines. Tennessee
has one of the most difficult situations of any state. But requiring
pharmacists and other employees to become veritable police by tracking
purchases and recording personal data of the law abiding will not stop the
meth manufacturers from getting the stuff they need. Ultimately, this sort of
violation of my privacy will only succeed in stripping each of us of our
remaining precious freedoms. Shockingly there are hundreds of millions of
“sheeple” who have either resigned themselves to these indignities or have
been deluded into thinking we are somehow safer and more protected by giving
up our personal and civil freedoms.
If the right to own and purchase a gun, which seems to be
the only freedom of concern these days, is our single remaining freedom, we
are not free. Embedded electronic tracking and monitored store purchases are
just more examples of the extreme policing that is being done under the guise
of, and in the name of, security and protection. So when right-wing idiots
start their cacophony of twaddle about spreading our freedoms in Iraq, ask
them, in your best Janis Joplin voice, just where they would like their chip
planted.
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