Liz McIntyre (writer)

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Liz McIntyre is a consumer privacy expert and founder of CAMCAT - Citizens Against Marking, Chipping and Tracking, an organization that works to prevent forced human tracking technologies like implantable microchips. She and co-author Katherine Albrecht wrote the RFID privacy book Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move. At one time, McIntyre was the Communications Director for CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), an organization that advocated free-market, consumer-based solutions to the problem of retail privacy invasion.

Contents

She and Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of CASPIAN, made the term "spychips" synonymous with RFID, and started the anti-RFID website http://www.spychips.com.

McIntyre continues to write and speak out on privacy issues and works as a privacy consultant.

Publications

Books

McIntyre co-authored the book Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with Katherine Albrecht. The book, winner of the 2006 Lysander Spooner Award for advancing the literature of liberty, lays out the privacy and civil liberties implications of RFID. Not surprisingly, RFID industry representatives have criticized the work, claiming it exaggerates some RFID privacy threats. McIntyre and Albrecht have rebutted such criticisms. [1] [2]

McIntyre and Albrecht's second book The Spychips Threat: Why Christians Should Resist RFID and Electronic Surveillance explores how RFID could bring about a world that resembles the one described in Revelation—a world in which people cannot buy or sell without a number.

The book includes a disclaimer that it explores the connection without calling RFID the "Mark of the Beast," but McIntyre says it hasn't kept some from reading far more into her beliefs. [3]

At the Spychips website, McIntyre states the following: "Could a technology like RFID enslave us? Theoretically, yes. Is the RFID implant the prophesied method of controlling humans and forcing beast worship? I don't think so. Could I be wrong? Yes. I don't believe anyone here on earth knows definitively what the future holds and exactly how events will unfold." [4]

She adds, "There are many smart people--people much smarter than myself--Christians and non-Christians--who hold very strong contradictory beliefs on most matters of religion. I take this as a clue that I should remain humble and reverent when it comes to the mysteries of the universe. It's one thing to explore possibilities and keep a watchful eye. It's quite another to claim a hotline to God and infer that others have an inferior connection to the Almighty." [5]

The authors use public documents and the words and deeds of the industry to support their arguments.

Articles

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Surveillance</span> Monitoring something for the purposes of influencing, protecting, or suppressing it

Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as closed-circuit television (CCTV), or interception of electronically transmitted information like Internet traffic. It can also include simple technical methods, such as human intelligence gathering and postal interception.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder, a radio receiver and transmitter. When triggered by an electromagnetic interrogation pulse from a nearby RFID reader device, the tag transmits digital data, usually an identifying inventory number, back to the reader. This number can be used to track inventory goods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Home automation</span> Building automation for a home

Home automation or domotics is building automation for a home, called a smart home or smart house. A home automation system will monitor and/or control home attributes such as lighting, climate, entertainment systems, and appliances. It may also include home security such as access control and alarm systems. When connected with the Internet, home devices are an important constituent of the Internet of Things ("IoT").

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital Angel</span>

Digital Angel, Corp. is a developer and publisher of consumer applications and mobile games designed for tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices, as well as a distributor of two-way communications equipment in the U.K.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microchip implant (animal)</span> Implant used in animals

A microchip implant is an identifying integrated circuit placed under the skin of an animal. The chip, about the size of a large grain of rice, uses passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, and is also known as a PIT tag. Standard pet microchips are typically 11–13 mm long and 2 mm in diameter.

ISO 11784 and ISO 11785 are international standards that regulate the radio-frequency identification (RFID) of animals, which is usually accomplished by implanting, introducing or attaching a transponder containing a microchip to an animal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ambient intelligence</span>

In computing, ambient intelligence (AmI) refers to electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. Ambient intelligence is a projection on the future of consumer electronics, telecommunications and computing originally developed in the late 1990s by Eli Zelkha and his team at Palo Alto Ventures for the time frame 2010–2020. This concept is intended to enable devices to work in concert with people in carrying out their everyday life activities, tasks, and rituals, in an intuitive way by using information and intelligence that is hidden in the network connecting these devices. It is theorized that as these devices grow smaller, more connected and more integrated into our environment, the technological framework behind them would disappear into our surroundings until only the user interface remains perceivable by users.

Katherine Albrecht is a consumer privacy advocate, Vice President (VP) of Startpage.com and spokesperson against radio-frequency identification (RFID). Albrecht devised the term "spy chips" to describe RFID tags such as those embedded in passport cards and certain enhanced United States driver's licenses. Katherine Albrecht holds a Doctor of Education degree from Harvard University. She is a resident of Nashua, New Hampshire.

The ID Sniper rifle is an art project, a fictional, hoax weapon devised by artist Jakob Boeskov and industrial designer Kristian von Bengtson. The rifle supposedly shoots GPS chips, and the police force may tag persons with this rifle for later easy retrieval. It was produced by the fictional company Empire North.

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Mark N. Gasson is a British scientist and visiting research fellow at the Cybernetics Research Group, University of Reading, UK. He pioneered developments in direct neural interfaces between computer systems and the human nervous system, has developed brain–computer interfaces and is active in the research fields of human microchip implants, medical devices and digital identity. He is known for his experiments transmitting a computer virus into a human implant, and is credited with being the first human infected with a computer virus.

Wireless identity theft, also known as contactless identity theft or RFID identity theft, is a form of identity theft described as "the act of compromising an individual’s personal identifying information using wireless mechanics." Numerous articles have been written about wireless identity theft and broadcast television has produced several investigations of this phenomenon. According to Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, wireless identity theft is a serious issue as the contactless (wireless) card design is inherently flawed, increasing the vulnerability to attacks.

Location awareness refers to devices that can passively or actively determine their location. Navigational instruments provide location coordinates for vessels and vehicles. Surveying equipment identifies location with respect to a well-known location wireless communications device.

Real-time locating systems (RTLS), also known as real-time tracking systems, are used to automatically identify and track the location of objects or people in real time, usually within a building or other contained area. Wireless RTLS tags are attached to objects or worn by people, and in most RTLS, fixed reference points receive wireless signals from tags to determine their location. Examples of real-time locating systems include tracking automobiles through an assembly line, locating pallets of merchandise in a warehouse, or finding medical equipment in a hospital.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Toumazou</span> British academic

Christofer "Chris" Toumazou, FRS, FREng, FMedSci, FIET, FIEEE, FCGI, FRSM, CEng is a British Cypriot electronic engineer.

A human microchip implant is any electronic device implanted subcutaneously (subdermally) usually via an injection. Examples include an identifying integrated circuit RFID device encased in silicate glass which is implanted in the body of a human being. This type of subdermal implant usually contains a unique ID number that can be linked to information contained in an external database, such as identity document, criminal record, medical history, medications, address book, and other potential uses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evercookie</span> JavaScript application programming interface

Evercookie is a JavaScript application programming interface (API) that identifies and reproduces intentionally deleted cookies on the clients' browser storage. It was created by Samy Kamkar in 2010 to demonstrate the possible infiltration from the websites that use respawning. Websites that have adopted this mechanism can identify users even if they attempt to delete the previously stored cookies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saraju Mohanty</span> Indian-American computer scientist

Saraju Mohanty is an Indian-American professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and the director of the Smart Electronic Systems Laboratory, at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. Mohanty received a Glorious India Award – Rich and Famous NRIs of America in 2017 for his contributions to the discipline. Mohanty is a researcher in the areas of "consumer electronics for smart cities", "application-Specific things for efficient edge computing", and "methodologies for digital and mixed-signal hardware". He has made significant research contributions to security and IP protection of consumer electronic systems, hardware-assisted security and protection, high-level synthesis of digital signal processing (DSP) hardware, and mixed-signal integrated circuit computer-aided design and electronic design automation. Mohanty has been the editor-in-chief (EiC) of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine since 2016. He has held the Chair of the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee on Very Large Scale Integration since September 2014. He holds 4 US patents in the areas of his research, and has published 220 research articles and 3 books.

Cyborg data mining is the practice of collecting data produced by an implantable device that monitors bodily processes for commercial interests. As an android is a human-like robot, a cyborg, on the other hand, is an organism whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical/electronic device that relies on some sort of feedback.

In communication engineering, Ultra NarrowBand (UNB) systems are those in which the channel has a very narrow bandwidth.

References

  1. "AIM Global Rebuttal - Liz McIntyre". Archived from the original on 2006-03-28. Retrieved 2006-03-02.
  2. "Rebuttal to Mark Roberti's review of Spychips". Archived from the original on 2006-11-17. Retrieved 2006-11-17.
  3. "Liz McIntyre - bio". Archived from the original on 2017-01-22. Retrieved 2017-01-27.
  4. "Liz McIntyre - bio". Archived from the original on 2017-01-22. Retrieved 2017-01-27.
  5. "Liz McIntyre - bio". Archived from the original on 2017-01-22. Retrieved 2017-01-27.