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Georgia state legislature apes Babette Josephs, comedy ensues!
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Georgia state legislature apes Babette Josephs, comedy ensues!
Last year, you may recall, state Rep. Babette Josephs went on a privacy-rights campaign writing a bill (which unanimously passed the House) that would ban anyone from injecting microchips into anyone else. Said the researcher who helped her draft the language:
Despite the technology’s potential usefulness, Sultzbaugh said, some Christian groups liken the identification devices to the “mark of the beast,” a Satanic mark described in the Book of Revelation and represented by the number 666.
Yes. The Mark of the Beast, etc. (Of course, the bill exempted any Gitmo detainees who might end up in Pennsylvania someday, because, clearly, they're already on the devil's team.)
Well, the fine folks of the Georgia House Judiciary Committee took up this same heady  issue this week. Hilarity ensues.
Three states have instituted bans, and others have considered the legislation. In Virginia, a bill supporter declared microchips to be the “666? mark of the beast referred to in the Book of Revelation.
Pearson has said his motivation isn’t biblical or religious – that he is simply working in advance of technology’s next assault on personal privacy. Not unlike limiting the uses of DNA testing by health insurance companies, he argues.
[snip]
At the House hearing, state Rep. Ed Setzler (R-Kennesaw), who is shouldering the legislation in the House, spoke earnestly for better than a half hour on microchips as a literal invasion of privacy.
He was followed by a hefty woman who described herself as a resident of DeKalb County. “I’m also one of the people in Georgia who has a microchip,” the woman said. Slowly, she began to lead the assembled lawmakers down a path they didn’t want to take.
Microchips, the woman began, “infringe on issues that are fundamental to our very existence. Our rights to privacy, our rights to bodily integrity, the right to say no to foreign objects being put in our body.”
She spoke of the “right to work without being tortured by co-workers who are activating these microchips by using their cell phones and other electronic devices.”
She continued. “Microchips are like little beepers. Just imagine, if you will, having a beeper in your rectum or genital area, the most sensitive area of your body. And your beeper numbers displayed on billboards throughout the city. All done without your permission,” she said.
It was not funny, and no one laughed.
“Ma’am, did you say you have a microchip?” asked state Rep. Tom Weldon (R-Ringgold).
“Yes, I do. This microchip was put in my vaginal-rectum area,” she replied. Setzler, the sponsoring lawmaker, sat next to the witness – his head bowed.
“You’re saying this was involuntary?” Weldon continued.
The woman said she had been pushing a court case through the system for the last eight years to have the device removed.
Wendell Willard (R-Atlanta), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, picked up the questioning.
“Who implanted this in you?” he asked.
“Researchers with the federal government,” she said.
“And who in the federal government implanted it?” Willard asked.
“The Department of Defense.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
The woman was allowed to go about her business, and the House Judiciary Committee approved passage of SB 235.
(h/t TPM)
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