The RFID technology that is widely deployed today was reaching wider adoption in the early 2000s and the AM radio conspiracy hosts I used to listen to for fun were spinning wild yarns about how RFID would be going underneath everyone's skin soon and everyone would be rounded up and put into camps.
I think there's a subterranean truth hidden in the ravings of madmen. It is a frightening prospect to empower further the people at the top who make the most impactful decisions in our society. RFID and Libra both make the global economy more efficient and that puts more power in the hands of our financial overlords. Now, it is also the case that financial overlords spend more time worried about themselves and their families than they do trying to control individual people's lives and make them worse.
So conspiracy theorists are wrong about the ultimate outcome of new technology, but I think their fears would be well served by distributing power as widely as practically possible. The principle of sharing power to put people's minds at ease is what you referred to in your second bullet point.