What's that you say? Those of us who fuss about the loss of privacy in the digital age are just a bunch of technophobe, fuddy duddy luddites?
Consumer appliances are now becoming activated and “smart.” RFID chips and wireless internet connections enable devices like televisions, refrigerators, printers, and computers to communicate with each other and generally make life easier for us. This comes at a price, however. Your privacy is eliminated.
A detailed multi-dimensional image of our daily lives will be built with this system. Individuals to entire group dynamics will be tracked. It will be unparalleled in history. Everything from daily travel routes to eating habits will be traceable. Every day objects will be transmitting data 24/7.
Now, insurance companies are anticipating this hyper-connected future. Will they spy on your eating habits and hike your health insurance costs?
As Mike Adams reported in March of this year, grocery store loyalty cards are being tracked by insurance companies to deny claims and raise health insurance rates.
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With the internet of things, spying on “unhealthy” habits will be a cinch. Wi-fi enabled refrigerators will read RFID tags on grocery products that are placed your fridge, and in turn send that data to the internet cloud. Are you eating a government approved diet? Taking your meds? If not, you will be paying a price for it in this nightmarish science fiction future that is soon to be science fact.
I once chuckled at people so paranoid about their privacy that they wouldn't even give their ZIP codes to stores that asked for them so they could track buying trends. Now it doesn't seem so funny. The less they know about me, the better. In "1984," it was an all-powerful government that controlled the populace by controlling the technology. But as we are learning, knowledge is a powerful weapon in anybody's hands.
