on the topic...slightly not sure how true these are:

DRONES FLY OVER CITIES

CELL PHONES AND GPS

I have heard many call the implanted RFID the Mark of the Beast. May be a crude beginning, but ...

The full story is that it will become a requirement to buy/sell anything, even food, and to obtain work.

Like I said, it would only take another significant act of terrorism to set it all in motion, under the Patriot Act.

Bob:
Despite the dire predictions of science fiction writers in the 50's and 60's, the future has come and it's not as bad as was reported. There is no 1984ish separation of people from their emotions, there is no Big Brother watching, there is no fear of machines taking over our society.

The mundane truth is that no one, and I mean NO ONE, is going to force anything upon us that we (as the masters of our own destiny) don't want.

So, while I understand your concern about personal freedoms, I think you should keep in mind that the people have a say in what happens to them too. And, so, I think you can probably put your hard earned money on betting that the only people who get some sort of RFID device put on them would be dangerous people who need to be tracked like convicted arsonists, child molesters, home grown terrorists like Tim McVeigh, and the like.

That is, I think you're not taking into account that people will not willingly have electronics implanted in their bodies. But, I myself can see the need to have a locking RFID bracelet on someone who's been granted bail for a serious crime so they don't skip the country or just take off to avoid justice. Ditto for child molesters so they don't go near school playgrounds, and I wouldn't be against having one of those on people who have a restraining order against a former wife or girlfriend.

That is, we as a people are going to make intelligent decisions on what to do with this technology, not foolish ones.

Yes, I agree that in our present society the chance of having an implanted chip forced on me is essentially zero.

But then, 20 years ago we would never have conceived of anything like the Patriot Act.

The Jews in Germany didn't think much about being forced to wear a yellow Star of David - at first.

What we do as individuals or what we do collectively as a society has to be considered in terms of the circumstances it was done under. A person speeding at 90 mph through a city is normally breaking the law, until it's determined that he's transporting a severely injured person to a hospital. That's just one example.

There was a time when the Patriot Act would have seemed totally unreasonable. The circumstances of 9/11 made us rethink whether or not the "freedoms" afforded by your US constitution are compromising your national security. In the frame of mind that the nation was in at the time, the Patriot Act seemed reasonable to most people at the time, and it was passed into law. Since then, the frame of mind that the nation is in has mellowed somewhat, and the need for the Patriot Act is increasingly coming under review.

It may well be that circumstances may arise in which the mood of the nation is such that implanting certain people, or implanting everyone with RFID chips may seem reasonable at the time.

But, rest assured that we as a people are not going to change, and if it doesn't seem reasonable to us now, then there will come a time that it won't seem reasonable to us anymore either.

I simply feel that you're predicting a future that has little to no chance of materializing, and even less chance of having any permanence in a democratic society.

Not to be sarcastic, but one possible scenario where having an RFID implant in everyone, and that becoming a permanent aspect of our culture and society would be a scenario as portrayed in the movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".

That's where aliens invade the Earth and replace people with identical copies of them, but of alien origin.

In that case, I'd certainly want to know for sure who I'm dealing with, wouldn't you? After all, you'd want to make darn sure that the man, woman or otherwise that you elected to be President of your United States was genuine, and not just a reasonable facsimile.