Just a quickie roundup of TWAT news buzzing around the blogosphere.

British schoolchildren are being fingerprinted without parental approval, and on pain of suspension for non-cooperation. So Guido was late to it; I’m later than anyone, but not too proud to post!

Ah yes, and they’re being fingerprinted by the same corporation that trains interrogators for Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. We all love a strong corporate culture, don’t we? Mind you, this isn’t the same company that’s being sued by all those war widows for the wrongful deaths of their husbands. I know, it’s just so hard to keep them straight!

A Florida company is looking for permission to stick RFID chips in all service personnel in the US. Look for legislation making it an offence to remove these chips, if such legislation’s not on the books already. And don’t expect an out when you retire. We’ve already covered in this blog the fact that there IS no meaningful retirement anymore.

VeriChip Corp, based in Delray Beach, Fla., and described by the D.C. Examiner as “one of the most aggressive marketers of radio frequency identification chips,” is hoping to convince the Pentagon to allow them to insert the chips, known as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips under the skin of the right arms of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen to enable them to scan an arm and obtain that person’s identity and medical history. The chips would replace the legendary metal dog tags that have been worn by U.S. military personnel since 1906.

And if they can’t get your children or yourself, they’ll at least get your garbage cans. Fighting TWAT in the back alleys, in the Rubbermaids…Churchill would be so proud.

 Half a million household wheelie bins have been secretly tagged with hidden electronic “bugs”, it has been reported.

The tiny devices identify each bin so that records can be kept on the waste disposal habits of its owners, and up to 500,000 bins in council districts across England are thought to have already been fitted…

A similar controversy also emerged in Ryde, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, earlier this week.

Residents accused the local authority of acting like “Big Brother” after workers suddenly began fitting the devices to the rims of an estimated 90,000 bins.

The devices use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology which have also been used to identify objects as diverse as animals, vehicles and expensive goods.

Like cannon fodder units.