To use technology to enrich, empower, heal or improve people is transhumanism and essentially is a good thing.

To use technology to use people as a resource, abuse, coerce or demean them is the worst kind of technofascism I can think of, no matter how convenient or practical the reason for doing it.

I am abhorred by this. Implanting RFID tags in humans is still too  conceptually similar to tagging cattle. It is endemic of the revolting class structure unfolding worse and worse every year in the United States and indicative of a society decaying from a formerly marginally humane one into a bestially exploitative one. Especially if it involves human beings who are de facto slaves.

I know very well that very few rich world humans have the inclination to sacrifice even a small percentage of their wealth to improve the state of affairs of people in the third world. Additionally sentiment for the occasionally primitive and unenviable beliefs and culture of people in the third world is at an all-time low.

But if we are to hope that a time of abundance can come and improve what is happening with those people we better prepare ourselves for a culture of sharing, helping and nourishing, rather than a culture of paranoia, protectiveness, siege mentality, hoarding, excluding, exploiting and loathing. There is a lot of stuff that can and should be fixed and implementing a new slave age isn't it.

I have to agree.  As much as I like people pushing tech, this has the antigovernment conspiracy nut in me wishing I had tinfoil on hand to make a hat.

Not knowing all the details, my first reaction is that this is an ill-concieved quick fix that won't increase security. The real criminals who want to evade such a system already know now to evade it. I don't think there is anything to gain by this idea.