Journalism Research and Random Meanderings

Monday, April 05, 2004

RFID Tracking the Homeless in the U.S. and by that we mean hoaxing the media 

I was listening to a 'View from Space' on Mojo Radio (AM 640) hosted by local conspiracy theorist Spaceman (AKA Gary Bell (sic?)) and he started talking about how the U.S. government is planning on tagging the homeless with Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) chips to track their movements in real time.

I called him and talked with him on the air about how it probably wasn't practical because most RFID readers need to be pretty close to the chip to read it as RFID tags don't have their own power source. The tags re-use the power from the radio waves transmitted by the reader to transmit their response. He just went on about how it was in the news implying, I suppose, that it must be true.

While no mainstream media (and by that I mean professionals that actually fact-check their stories) picked it up a quick Google Search on the terms; homeless rfid track UPI shows several hits like this story by thunderbay.indymedia.org who seemed to have bit the hardest given that their dateline is April 3.

Several of the hits ascribe the original story to this post on Declan McCullagh's technology and politics mailing list. In defense of Mr. McCullagh, who is journalist, photographer and chief political correspondent for CNET's News.com, he prefixes the post with "This is a joke... I hope!"

Contacted via e-mail Mr. McCullagh said "Yes, of course it was a hoax -- I sent a note a few hours after the original one on April 1 saying just that. As for the origin, I think it's fair to say that I may have been one of the first to recirculate the faux UPI story, but beyond that its provenance remains unknown."

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA) spokesperson Kay Garvey stated by phone that while the HRSA person 'quoted' in the article does exist the story was a complete fabrication, an April Fool's hoax.

Phillip Mangano, director of the U.S. federal Interagency Council on Homelessness first heard the story from an HHS deputy assistant secretary at a meeting of cabinet secretaries and other high-level people on the topic of homelessness that takes place every four months in the White House.

"We're busy trying to put children in houses not chips in heads." Mr. Mangano said. "The farfetchedness [of it] is just out of this world."

The story carried a United Press international (UPI) dateline and copyright notice but the UPI web site doesn't seem to be responding well today so I can't check out a tip that they have put out a disclaimer.

There are several U.S. government initiatives to 'track' data on the homeless as can be seen in this collection of reports and materials to provide communities with direction and technical assistance resources on strategies to collect information on homeless persons from Housing and Urban Development (HUD). A quick scan shows they seem to be taking precautions regarding privacy.

Given the bizarre litiginous and contingency fee allowances of the U.S. legal system can you imagine the lineup of lawyers that would appear to sue the U.S. government on behalf of some homeless person whose privacy has been violated?

Copyright (C) 2004 Patrick Boake All Rights Reserved