History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.
I posted this out on the main board. My take, "A Chip Off Old Big Brother's Block," is here: http://tinyurl.com/2z6o66
I'm glad to hear it.
I haven't
We shouldn't forget that the power to enforce a government law prohibiting this sort of contract would rely on the barrel of a gun.
Thanks to those who took the time to respond to my question.
My reason for asking it was to get a better sense of how libertarians now handle issues of power that does not come (directly) out of the barrel of a gun. To me that is the weak point in contemporary libertarian ideology. But I don't want to discuss that question unless others do - I just wanted to get a sense of the current breadth of perspectives, and I did.
Again, thanks.
Gus
In the first place, biometrics do a better job of identifying people, say, for the purpose of letting them into a secure room. They have to put their hand onto the scanner plate, or look into a retina-scanner device, otherwise the door doesn't open. The biometric measurement is intrinsic to the person, not something which could always be cut out. Implanted chips work on the assumption that the thing which bears the chip is suspect, eg. anti-shoplifting tags in a store, which are neutralized when the merchandise is sold. Something which does not have a chip is presumed harmless. By that reasoning, a bank robber who abducts an employee and uses him to get the door open would be considered harmless. He does not have a chip saying "bank robber" implanted in him, you see. Chipping people is basically a kind of corporate power fantasy. I think it says something about the corporate mind's existential anxiety, or something like that.
------------------------------------------------
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-scan31aug31,0,2715647.story
"Senate blocks mandatory ID implants in employees: The bill would prevent employers in the state from requiring workers to have the devices," By Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, August 31, 2007
------------------------------------------------
http://www.nysun.com/article/27551
"Ohio Company Implants Security Chips Into Employees,"By ALEC MAGNET
Staff Reporter of the Sun, February 14, 2006
------------------------------------------------
Incidentally, the idea of "chipping" employees has been floating around for some time. Look at the following:
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-10526192_ITM
FEEDBACK.(Letter to the Editor), The Futurist, Jan-Feb, 2001, [cites: John Challenger, "24 Trends Reshaping the Workplace" (The Futurist, September-October 2000)]
http://www.wfs.org/futcontso00.htm
The editor stuck in a note, which I do not believe is reproduced here, along the lines of "we were just encouraging discussion, we weren't 'teaching and advocating.'" The original article contains a short passage (about a paragraph, shorter than the letter in reply) about how all employees will be "chipped" with a device containing their complete personal records, so that an employer can find out all about them automatically. The Futurist is a little bit backwards about putting stuff on-line, so if you want to look at the sources, you will have to retrieve the paper copies. My impression at the time was that it was surely something in the nature of a practical joke of the type since developed by The Yes Men, eg. posing as a government official, and telling a bunch of employers that their employees ought to be their slaves, that kind of thing.
At the time, the Futurist was in a rather odd collective mental state, almost mentally ready for something like 9/11 to happen. They got very, very upset about the nonexistent "Y2K Threat," and started talking borderline-totalitarian nonsense. It is as if there was a kind of unconscious awareness of "the rottenness in the state of Denmark," rather like those lunatic street-preachers who sometimes herald political revolutions. The madman can see things which sane men filter out.
--------------------------------------------
I plan to write about this issue for at the FEE website Friday.
It is right to make ID chip implantation by employers unacceptable, as it is an attack on one's right of privacy. That being said, I am still against government "law," and would of course support the voluntary implantation of such chips in other contexts.
1. Under common law, this is a matter for employers & employees. I notice that one company which uses the chip, uses it only where employees have to enter highly secure areas.
Employees need not work for companies where they might have to be 'chipped'. Companies who require it may find they do not get the type of employee they want. Or perhaps not. Under common law, there is flexibility, there are options.
2. The interference is _legislative_. It is therefore unwarranted, by definition. Legislation is an order to a subordinate. It is rigid, inflexible, gives power to officials over their subjects. It does _not_ grow out of people's actions.
I agree with Sheldon and Mark. If the fear is a state-like or state-allied workplace, the answer is not the state. The answer is worker liberation.
Thanks, Sheldon, this addresses both of my questions.
Mark--
The last LA Times story is here: http://tinyurl.com/2tuub8
I can find no indication that Schwarzenegger has signed it or says he will. Does anyone know?
I'm with Sheldon (and the Wobblies) on this one.
Gus, would you be kind enough to provide one or more links to the news stories on this proposal? And I'd be interested to know why firms would want to do this?
Imagine the state proposing to protect privacy! What a concept! I oppose the law. But I want to know why employees aren't threatening some kind of job action against any company that imposes the requirement. A little old-fashioned labor radicalism is in order here for sure. Where are the Wobblies when we need them?
I'm of two minds. I agree with Anthony Gregory that this is an invasion of mutual contracts. A bit like a law prohibiting employers from requiring tatoos or ear rings.
But on the other hand we live in a corporate state where governments and their attendant state managed capitalism, not free contract, reigns supreme.
In all probability the risk of abuse of this kind of technology, and surveillance technology generally, by the state is a greater threat to liberty than the prospect of state interference with voluntary insertions. So a pragmatic and limited libertarian support for the legislation may make sense.
That being said, and being the deep fried cynic that I am, I question why any government would propose legislation of this type. My guess is that few businesses (if any) would want to apply this sort of thing anyway; and for those that may have a legitimate commercial reason, there are substitute technologies that are probably as (or nearly as) effective. So why the fuss?
Maybe it's the old switcheroo at work.
The surveillance society has made great strides world wide since 9-11 and it's the security technology business has been the real winner in the war on terrorism. (Leftist commentator Naomi Klein has got this mostly right.) So maybe the State of California's new found concern with protecting privacy is really a means of protecting politicians from electoral blowback as the surveillance blanket gets ever more heavy.
This kind of "bait and switch" tactic is not uncommon in politics, not Senator Clinton's loud calls for a law banning human cloning whilst giving the go-ahead for stem cell research.
I also agree that government should not interfere. However, no self-respecting person should work for an employer that wants to put a chip in them and no one should do business with that firm either.
Based on what's here, I agree with Anthony. How is this different than an employer requiring a potential employee to submit to a drug test or a sports team requiring a player not to engage in physically dangerous activity in the off-season? Both, like the chip, affect the worker outside the place of employment.
If that is what the law does, then I could not endorse it. People have a right to rent their bodies to others according to mutually agreed upon terms. Even if we find it distasteful, a prohibition would be indefensible.