Warning Book against RFID Released In Latin America

Filed in archive Privacy and Security on June 8, 2006

Latin American people would be getting a bad taste of RFID with the release of Spanish language version of the award winning book titled: "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID". The book would be released in Colombia, Chile, Panama and Venezuela. It would be initially distributed to Christian bookstores and later on general distribution would take place. This book was originally produced in English by American authors Katherine Albrecht and Lis McIntyre and it generated a lot of heat.

The authors wanted to get their word across to Latin America as they believed that the RFID industry was targeting Hispanic people with this technology as they were not well informed about its dangers for privacy and civil liberties. They expect that this book would raise an alarm about spychips in Latin countries.

Lis McIntyre pointed out to the fact that Latin Americans were being used as human guinea pigs by U.S. companies for testing RFID. One of the examples which were quoted was the tagging conducted by Levi-Strauss Company in Mexico. It is also being vied as a potential market for human implantable RFID chips marketed by the VeriChip Corporation and recently there were talks of chipping Latin Americans who were willing to work in States.

The author is expecting that many Hispanics would connect implantable RFID technology to biblical prophecies which warn against marking and numbering human beings. With most of the people in Latin America being devout Christians they would see this as much more than a privacy and civil liberties concern.