Resistance Against Empire

Derrick Jensen, Derrick Jensen

• Publisher: Flashpoint Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781604863765
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Defensa política

A scathing indictment of U. S. domestic and foreign policy, this collection of interviews gathers incendiary insights from 10 of today's most experienced and knowledgeable activists. Whether it's Ramsey Clark describing the long history of military invasion, Alfred McCoy detailing the relationship between CIA activities and the increase in the global heroin trade, Stephen Schwartz reporting the obscene costs of nuclear armaments, or Katherine Albrecht tracing the horrors of the modern surveillance state, this investigation of global governance is sure to inform, engage, and incite readers.

Full list of Interviewees:

• Stephen Schwartz, author of Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U. S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940, is a guest scholar at the Brooking Institute and the director of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project.
• Katherine Albrecht is the director of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), and is widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on consumer privacy.
• Robert McChesney is the author of seven books concerned with the contradiction between a for-profit corporate media and the communications requirements of a democratic society.
• J.W. Smith is the author of The World's Wasted Wealth and is the director of The Institute for Cooperative Capitalism.
• Juliet Schor is co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream, and has written three books focused on trends in work and leisure, consumerism, the relationship between work and family, women's issues and economic justice.
• Alfred McCoy is the author of The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia and was winner of the Grant Goodman Prize in 2001.
• Christian Parenti is the author of Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis, a critique the "incipient American police state."
• Kevin Bales is an expert on modern slavery and is the author of Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
• Ramsey Clark was Attorney General under Lyndon Johnson, playing an important role in the history of the Civil Rights movement and continuing on as unstinting critic of US foreign policy.
• Anuradha Mittal is an internationally renowned expert on trade, development, human rights, democracy, and agriculture issues, and is the founder of The Oakland Institute, which works to ensure public participation and democratic debate on crucial economic and social policy issues.

KATHERINE ALBRECHT

Interview conducted
in fall 2003 and January 2004,
by telephone.

Katherine Albrecht is the director of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), an organization she founded in 1999 to advocate consumer-based solutions to the problem of retail privacy invasion. Katherine is widely credited with raising public awareness about Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) through CASPIAN’s “Boycott Benetton” and “Boycott Gillette” campaigns, and through protest organizing, public appearances, and countless media interviews.

Albrecht is also widely recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on consumer privacy. She has testified before the Federal Trade Commission, the California state legislature, the European Commission, and the Federal Reserve Bank, in addition to giving over a thousand television, radio and print interviews. Her efforts have been featured on CNN, NPR, the CBS Evening News, Business Week, the London Times, and many more. Executive Technology Magazine recently called Katherine “perhaps the nation’s most outspoken privacy advocate,” and Wired magazine has called her the “Erin Brockovich” of RFID.

Albrecht holds an undergraduate degree in international marketing and a master’s degree in instructional technology. She is currently completing her doctorate in education at Harvard University, where she is writing her dissertation on consumer psychology and privacy issues.

Derrick Jensen: What is RFID?

Katherine Albrecht: RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification (“RF” for Radio Frequency and “ID” for Identification, as in “ID card”). RFID is a new consumer goods tracking system that consists of tiny computer chips—the size in some cases of a speck of dust—hooked up to miniature antennas that can transmit information remotely. Industry wants to call them Smart Tags or “improved bar codes.” We call them Spy Chips.

The international consortium that developed this technology wants to use these tiny chips to number and track every physical item on the entire planet. Obviously, this plan has profound implications for privacy.

DJ: How do these chips work?

KA: The typical RFID tag gets its power from energy sent to it through the air by reader devices in the environment. By itself, a passive RFID tag doesn’t really do anything until it is contacted by a reader device that beams out electromagnetic energy (what you and I would call “radio waves”). The energy is picked up by the tag’s antenna and transmitted to the chip, which then beams back its unique identifying number. It says, “Here I am. I am chip number 304862,” and so on.

The numbering system they want to put on these chips is called the EPC, which stands for electronic product code. It’s related to the UPC, or Universal Product Code, currently used as the bar code. The chip itself will contain ninety-six bits, which will provide enough unique combinations to number every product produced on the planet for at least a thousand years. Depending on which mathematician you ask, this is enough numbers to uniquely identify every grain of rice or every speck of sand on the planet.

The stated purpose is to enable every item to be identified and tracked at any point along a supply chain. The system could be applied to almost any physical item—from ballpoint pens to toothpaste to anything else. Each item would carry its own unique information coded into an embedded chip.

DJ: You’re not talking about every can of Coke having the same identifying Universal Product Code, right?

KA: No, this is different. Today all cans of Coke have the same bar code number. But with RFID, every can of Coke would have its own unique, trackable code, different from every other can of Coke. So would every sweater, every pair of shoes, every tire, every dollar bill. Which means that anywhere there are reader devices, the item …

DJ: … and by extension anyone wearing or carrying it …

KA: … can be tracked. Right. And the plans for reader devices are pretty far-reaching. Proponents envision, in their words, a “pervasive global network” of millions of receivers along the entire supply chain—in airports, seaports, highways, distribution centers, warehouses, retail stores, and in the home. This would allow for seamless, continuous identification and tracking of physical items as they move from one place to another, enabling companies to determine the whereabouts of all their products at all times. An executive at International Paper put it bluntly, “We’ll put a radio frequency ID tag on everything that moves in the North American supply chain.” The ultimate goal is for RFID to create, as those behind it say, a “physically linked world” in which every item on the planet is numbered, identified, catalogued, and tracked.

The technology already exists to make this a reality. Creating this global system is described by its backers as “a political rather than a technological problem.” Supporters are aiming for worldwide acceptance of the technologies needed to build the infrastructure within the next few years.

This technology is slated to replace the bar code, so we should talk a little more about that. There are three fundamental ways RFID is different from a bar code. As I said, unlike a bar code, where the UPC numbers on your can of Coke would match the numbers on my can of Coke, each can of Coke rolling off the assembly line will be issued its own unique identifying number. The concern here is that when you pay for that can of Coke, its unique ID number will be linked up with your name in the store’s database. This is already happening today. Any time you pay with a credit card, ATM card or check, the store records who you are and every item you bought, and that information gets consolidated into giant multi-store databases. Now imagine that instead of recording that you bought Coke, like they do today, the store records which exact, specific cans of Coke you bought. Store databases will become giant registration systems that can cross reference the owner of any physical item purchased on the planet. Everything you own could be linked specifically to you in a database.

If you take that to the next step it means that any item in the world can be picked up and scanned and its owner identified. So if a can of Coke falls off the garbage truck on the way to the dump and someone picks it up, they could scan it and you could get an automatic littering ticket in the mail. Or someone could steal the can of Coke and plant it at a crime scene and you could get a knock on your door asking what you were doing last night. It means that when you give someone a gift, the ownership trail could be tracked. If you’re wearing a watch given to you by your ex-girlfriend, as you walk through a doorway you could be identified through things you bought and her connection with you could also be inferred based on your carrying something registered to her.

DJ: So if I had any purchased consumer item on me, if I wore clothes that were manufactured, I could be tracked at every moment?

KA: Right. You could be tracked by the things you carry. Once we move away from anonymous cash, which will happen very soon if we are not careful, it will be impossible to make a purchase without being identified. And the reason they want you to be identified is because they want to track the things you buy, and ultimately they want to track you.

The second way RFID tags are different from bar codes is that they can be read from a distance, right through the things we normally rely on to protect our privacy, like a backpack, or a shopping bag, or a suitcase. Radio waves travel through virtually any material but metal or water. This sets on its head a basic, fundamental, common sense, human body notion of what creates privacy—that if you can’t see it, you don’t know about it. If I have something private—a book I don’t want you to know I’m reading, a package of condoms, a spare pair of underwear, or anything else I don’t want to advertise to the world—I can put it in my purse or my pocket. And people won’t know what’s in there. RFID changes that, because in essence it creates a form of X-ray vision so that anyone with access to the technology can know what I’m trying to hide. That’s so counterintuitive that people sometimes have a difficult time understanding it could be done to them.

It also entirely throws out the notion of consent. These things can be read at a distance, through fabric, without your knowledge or permission. It’s possible that every doorway you walk through could be equipped with a reader device that would take a full inventory of everything you’re wearing and carrying. And you would never know it was happening. It is possible that every park bench you sat on—they’ve actually talked about embedding these in furniture—would be able to identify you and what is in your lunch bag.

At this point people always ask, who would want to do this and why? The researchers at MIT who developed this technology were working for a consortium of multinational corporations and government agencies that funded them. It took them three years and millions of dollars. And of course now that RFID exists, uses quickly start springing into people’s minds. Look at who is interested in these technologies. Does the Defense Department have your best interests at heart? How about Wal-Mart?

There’s a third way RFID is unlike bar codes. To the best of my knowledge there’s no serious health impact from exposure to bar code readers and laser scanners unless you stare at the laser. But there may be quite worrisome health problems associated with being continually bombarded by RFID electromagnetic energy from the reader devices. Even today if you go into certain Target stores to buy DVDs with RFID tags attached you could be standing next to a shelf that’s bombarding you with electromagnetic energy.

The proponents of this technology say there are no health risks, that it’s no more dangerous than being near an FM radio. Well, they’re being disingenuous there, too, because their internal documents reveal that they contacted scientists and government committees from countries all over the world to ask for their latest research, opinions, and laws on electromagnetic energy. What emerges is a widely diverging set of opinions over whether or not this technology is safe. The basic conclusion of the Auto-ID center scientists was, “We don’t know, and maybe we should do a little more research.” That’s great. I think they should do a little more research. But that’s not the standard industry line, and in the meantime they’re proceeding full-steam ahead. Even with their self-confessed need for more research, they want to put these things literally everywhere. What effects will this have on pregnant women and growing children and the elderly? What about the rest of us? Do we want to be constantly probed by electromagnetic waves looking for anything that could provide them with information about us? It’s not only creepy, it’s quite possibly dangerous.

DJ: Who is behind this?

KA: In 1999, a group called the Auto-ID Center (and that’s “auto” for automatic, not automotive) was formed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to make RFID small enough, efficient enough and cheap enough to tag everything. It was a partnership between Gillette, Procter & Gamble, and MIT, and later counted one hundred of the world’s biggest corporations and government departments as “members.” These include product-manufacturing companies like Philip Morris, Coca-Cola, Kimberly Clark, Johnson and Johnson, and Kraft; and retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, and the British chain Tesco. International Paper, which packages a huge percentage of the goods sold in this country, is a sponsor, and so is UPS. Within the government you’ve got the Department of Defense and the U.S. Postal Service, and more recently, Homeland Security. Very big players are behind this technology.

In 2001 this gang wired the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, to see if they could track objects tagged with RFID. Gillette, Wal-Mart, and Tesco have installed shelves that can read RFID tags embedded in razor packages. The shelves take shoppers’ photographs when they pick the items up off the shelf. The European Central Bank and the government of Japan are both working on plans to imbed bank notes—cash—with RFID tags to make it as traceable as credit cards, and no longer anonymous. Hitachi Europe has already developed a chip small enough, at 0.3 mm square and thin as a human hair, to fit inside a banknote. Mass production of these chips has already begun.

DJ: How did this RFID get started?

KA: Proponents like to claim that RFID technology has been around since World War II, when it was used to distinguish enemy warplanes from friendly planes. “It’s an old technology, nothing to see here, move along folks,” they say. It’s funny how technologists will try to make even the most outrageous thing seem commonplace—or permanently entrenched—by saying “oh, that? It’s been around forever.” And a lot of us buy into it.

It’s an important phenomenon. I remember a few years back seeing a photograph of a perfectly formed human ear growing out of the back of a living mouse. I was so horrified that the room spun. I immediately called a friend of mine saying we had to do something about it. How could we allow scientists to create such monstrosities? When I reached him, my friend said, “I can’t believe you are just now seeing that photo. It’s been around for ages. Where have you been?” Amazingly, that response shut me right up; all my fury fizzled on the spot. Instead of feeling angry, I felt stupid—stupid, then crushingly defeated. Why? How does our society get us to replace acute, healthy outrage with a chronic, there’s-nothing-we-can-do-about-it, soul-killing ache?

My experience watching the RFID industry has clued me in to part of the answer. The technologists’ dirty trick is to convince us that we can only fight things that are new. If something has been around for a while, the implication is that other people have already accepted it (or so they want you to think). At that point, anyone opposing a particular development can be dismissed for being “behind the times” (though that’s rarely the case), or for arguing about something that’s already been settled in the court of public opinion (though it rarely has been).

This is dangerous because it means that industry can quietly slip something into the world and not mention it for a year or so, outside of a few esoteric industry publications. When regular people eventually find out about it, their outrage is siphoned away as industry reps stifle a yawn and say, “Oh, please, that old technology? It has been around for ages. Where have you been?” Then suddenly you’re the one on the defensive.

This has not been the case with opposition to RFID. We found out about it in the earliest planning stages a few years back, when I attended meetings at the Auto-ID Center and heard firsthand, behind closed doors, what they were developing. It must have been frustrating to the RFID folks that the standard “oh, please, let’s not rehash that old thing” line wouldn’t work in this situation, which is why I think they later tried to paint it as having been around for sixty years.

When that didn’t work, they reversed tactics and started saying that opposition to RFID is premature since the technology is too new to judge. It’s hilarious. When you respond early you’re “jumping the gun,” but if you wait even a fraction of a second after that, you’re “beating a dead horse.” They’ve rigged the game so there is never a good time to criticize technology.

And in the case of RFID, it’s nuts to say it dates back to World War II in any meaningful sense. The first commercial application of the kind of small, efficient, passive EPC tags we’re talking about now came in November, 2002, when Gillette announced it was going to buy 500 million of them from a company called—and I’m not making this up—Alien Technology.

DJ: I’m a little confused about the technology. What’s the difference between a chip and a tag?

KA: That’s a good question, since a lot of people get them confused. An RFID tag is a combo unit consisting of an RFID chip and the antenna it’s connected to. When you’re talking about RFID, you’re nearly always talking about a tag, since neither a chip nor an antenna alone can do much. The chip is the tiny piece of silicon, the little wafer, the computer chip that can be as small as a speck of dust. Currently the smallest one is Hitachi’s mu chip at only 0.3 millimeters square. Hitachi’s website has a picture of a magnified grain of rice with a tiny black speck on it—the mu chip. So they can get quite small.

The chip contains data, but in order to communicate the data at a distance it has to be hooked up to an antenna. The antenna is typically made of a flat strip of metal (although they’re experimenting with various other materials). It’s designed to pick up and amplify any ambient electromagnetic energy beamed at it by an RFID reader. The readers emit a continual stream of energy on the chance that an RFID tag might be within range. If the reader pings an RFID tag, the tag’s antenna picks up the energy and stimulates the chip to beam its data back to the reader device. That’s how it all works. And that’s where their “pervasive global network of reader devices” comes in. A reader device can be placed almost anywhere. They can be installed in doorways, woven into carpet, an...