How about RFID readers stealing your credit card information for Christmas?

Just what is RFID? That stands for “Radio Frequency IDentification.” Chips embedded in any number of items may actually broadcast, from a limited to a longer range, select information contained within those various items. Things you might have on your person utilizing RFID technology would include credit/debit cards and American passports issued after 2006. RFID technology is also commonly utilized for electronic toll payments on bridges and causeways.

The RFID chip contained within certain credit cards are of the passive variety: they have no power source and require an external electromagnetic field to initiate a signal transmission. RFID “readers” (also known as interrogators), portrayed in the video above, can in fact be utilized covertly to capture information on passive chips.

As you can see, RFID is very popular in terms of selling and marketing. It is also very popular in businesses and venues that need to keep track of inventory. In that vein, the RFID concept has been in use for many years — first enabled and utilized on American railroads to keep track of vast trains. RFID tags, placed on cars and locomotives, run past an RFID reader and the markup of a train is instantly captured for reference and archival by dispatchers, yardmasters and railroad personnel.

And if the above video isn’t enough, Boing Boing TV shows you, on this video, just how to hack information from RFID-encrusted credit cards.

How can you tell if you have a card with an RFID chip? Look for the small logo of curved broadcast waves on its face.

What can you do to attempt some measure of security, since it’s estimated that over 100-million customers might be at risk? I might start with the suggestion made in the first video: check into a shield pouch from Identity Stronghold. Hint: the US government is a customer.

Forewarned, ladies and gentlemen, is forearmed. And this problem / “solution” will not stop with credit cards. Some entities and concerns would like to see you implanted.

Of final consideration: who and or what will make RFID chipping mandatory?

Merry Christmas.

After you’ve been given your very own personal federal colonoscopy and groping, think of this:

The TSA clearly states that the concomitant technology makes us much safer.

Experts tell ABC News that every year since the September 11 terror attacks, federal agencies have conducted random, covert “red team tests,” where undercover agents try to see just how much they can get past security checks at major U.S. airports. And while the Department of Homeland Security closely guards the results as classified, those that have leaked in media reports have been shocking.

And if you enjoyed that, you’ll enjoy this as you stand in queue awaiting your radiative and philangitized “close up,” so to speak:

According to one report, undercover TSA agents testing security at a Newark airport terminal on one day in 2006 found that TSA screeners failed to detect concealed bombs and guns 20 out of 22 times.

Aaah, comfortable now, are we?

Merry Christmas!

BZ

I was Conservative, with a bent towards Libertarianism.

Where are you?

BZ

In those intervening days the bill has been bastardized and bloated to the point that it resembles an Obaka Porkulus submission. If one would object to that, why is it that so many Republicans seem to be interested in voting for the BTC “deal”?

Let us speak and me write plainly: the Demorats have, as we well know, hijacked much of our current political language. The so-called “Bush Tax Cuts” are NOT cuts at all. These are nothing more than our current tax rates. There are NO “cuts” involved. A failure to extend the current tax rates means a massive tax hike. Those are the facts.

Labeling the current rate as “Bush Tax Cuts” is akin to the Demorats — traditionally — calling a failure to increase a given federal department’s yearly budget a “cut.”

First, in re “the deal” — who has actually read the thing?

Second, the cost: $1.1 TRILLION and over 1,900 pages.

As Politico writes:

You read that correctly. And here are but a few:

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit this as nothing more than clear proof that DC politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle did NOT receive the recent transmission from the American People, broadcast in the clear, this past November during the mid-terms:

STOP SPENDING.

These bastards simply cannot contain themselves. Your money isn’t really yours; it belongs to them. You are simply a Money Factory with a limitless production line and the temporary holder of cash that must be funneled to DC.

Yet, some Republican senators are actually thinking about supporting it (Bennett of Utah, Bond of Missouri, Voinovich of Ohio and Collins of Maine).

Luckily, John Thune (R, South Dakota) speaks the obvious:

The attempt by Democrat leadership to rush through a nearly 2,000-page spending bill in the final days of the lame-duck session ignores the clear will expressed by the voters this past election,” Thune said in a statement. “This bill is loaded up with pork projects and should not get a vote. Congress should listen to the American people and stop this reckless spending.”

This is the time to take a stand, Republicans, right out of the gate following the November mid-terms.

But are you more interested in “going along to get along”?

Just another day in “Political Exclusionary Paradise”?

So, dearest readers: how would YOU vote?

Because, after all, if you vote this bill down then you allow the current tax rates to expire. And they won’t go down; oh no no no. Tax rates will go up come January 1st.

What’s your strategy then?