Microchips For Human Implantation As ID

securitas writes: "Reuters is carrying this story about Applied Digital's VeriChip -- a subcutaneous microchip (like the ones they use to tag pets, livestock and wildlife) used as ID for humans. They are radio-activated and would initially be used to store and transmit medical data via the Internet. They will be also used as tracking beacons and personal ID according to a company exec. The launch will be in Europe and South America. The company has made an FDA application and the FCC has already licensed airwaves for a similar device." We've mentioned this company's "Digital Angel" before, but there's an understandable sudden interest in such tracking technologies.

Comments

Big Brother cheers

[jpt.d]

I think this is an awesome idea, but I think governments would abuse it the first chance they got.

If it was a short range device that you would literally need to be within a few centimetres then it would be ok.

If it was a long range device (of satallite tracking ilk) then governments would be able to track criminals, and people who can't help themselves (eg. elderly people). But they could also put it on say a political foe.

It is good with certain limitations.

Re:Big Brother cheers

[LWolenczak]

No matter what, I would cut it out. In my minds eye, it would be just as bad as tatooing a person's name on their face, or a barcode on their arm.

It won't be long before they are mandatory for all

[sludgely]

I can vividly see a world in which it is mandatory for all people to have sensors in them. This day is not far off either. It will be introduced as a further measure for our "safety", but in reality it is just another advance of Big Brother as well as our loss of that scrap of privacy that we used to hold.

No one would accept this

[aoeuid]

Unfortunately people seem overly willing to give up their rights and freedoms right now, however I'm sure if western governments tried to start implanting subcutaneous devices in peoples bodies to track their movements, everyone would wake up and realize whats going on and how ridiculous its getting.

Re:No one would accept this

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they'll get this accepted like everything else. First they'll require only the group that the vast (stupid) majority of people think is OK to persecute; i.e., pedophiles and other sex criminals. "Oh they're so awful it's fine if we violate their rights." Then they'll broaden it to all felons, then all criminals. "Well they are *criminals!*" And then they'll find ways of pushing it on the rest of the public.

First: Want to travel out of the country? "It'll curb terrorism." Then: Want to get a government job? "Well, the government has to know they aren't hiring spies and fanatics." Want student loans? "I don't want MY tax dollars going to someone who might be a terrorist or fanatic!"

And continuing... Want to travel on an airline? "It's for your own safety." Want to use public transportation? "It's for your own safety." Want to get a driver's license? "It's for your own safety."

Then they have everyone.

No way...

[Mustang Matt]

I know I'm going to lose all my Karma because this is the "cool" "tech" thing to do, but out of respect for various religions and my personal beliefs I would die before I'd let them implant anything into me.

I don't know how many of you are aware of the beliefs in the Bible about the sign of the beast, whether or not you believe them it is important that you at least respect them.

What is wrong with having a card in my pocket with all this info? It can be forged? Well, couldn't a different chip be implanted? The possibilities of corruption and abuse to this system are endless.

On a technical standpoint, until they can encrypt it with your own DNA code it's not even worth considering.

Re:No way...

[acceleriter]

It's going to take a lot of mod points to mod down all the people who make this argument. Even as a non-believer, I'll be gratified to see the "religious right" scuttle the reelection campaign of any legislator, governor, or president that even thinks this might be a good idea. And if it still somehow happens, I'll be on my knees praying for my soul with a rifle in my hand to kill whatever agent of Satan that attempts to force me to accept one.

Why

[adamy]

What would be the benefit?

A central database of Retinal/Thumbprint scans can ID you just as easily. All the Info on your medical records could be stored in the central DB as opposed to in your microschips.

Unless...you could somehow control access to your own Microchips. I could see several levels of permissions:

Global: Person scans, and now knows that you are a citizen of the USA, EU, PRC ... nothing more.

Business: Person Scans, and now can get your shipping and billing info.

Medical: Person scans, and now can get you vital medical history ALA 1st Alert.

All this we be predicated on you having a public/private key hand shake, similar to the SSL setup.
1) Remote machine requests permission
2) Microchip tells chip to grant permission (I have no idea how, I am just dreaming at this point)
3) Chip grants short-lived one time key for accessing info.

If someone tried to tag you with one of these against your will, I am sure there would be many ways to distrupt it: Wear a "Diskman" that actually produces white-noise frequencies to cover the radio from the chip...replace the implanted chip with a home made one that proves that you are someone else...implant a chip that compromises a buffer override in the scanning software so that if anyone tries to ID you their machine crashes.

In other words, business as usuall

heh

[ZaneMcAuley]

Gives the term "Intel Inside" a new meaning :)

Next we will have to have that logo tatooed onto our buttocks.

A line I find disturbing:

[thesolo]

``Of course, we will do this,'' said Saffo of the Silicon Valley-based Institute for the Future ``And it won't be just for the functionality. It will also be for fashion. You've got a generation that's already piercing themselves. Of course, they're going to put electronics under their skin.''

I certainly hope that Mr. Paul Saffo is dead wrong on this subject.

First off, body piercing is NOT a new trend. It has roots in almost every other culture, and dates back hundreds of years. Just because it is a recent movement in Western Culture does not mean that every person who likes piercings is going to like having a tracking device in their skin. Not to mention that the large majority of people in Western Culture do NOT like body piercing. There is not direct link between the two.

Second, isn't anyone worried about the health risks of something like this?! Electronics are a LOT different than an inert, non-reactive metal or ink in the skin. Pacemakers cause enough problems with people in certain situations (microwaves, magnets, etc.) I for one don't EVER want electronics under my skin. I guess if it ever progressed to where you had to get an implant, some Rare Earth Magnets would take care of that problem pretty quickly.

Lastly, is this something we as humans really want to do for fashion??? If its entirely under the skin, how exactly would it be a fashion accesory? What, would they make the chips come in different colors?? "You cant see it, but mine is leopard-spotted!!" Unless they make them into actual shapes that stick up from under the skin like real implants do, they won't be a fashion accessory.

I'm slowly beginning to think the Luddites were right; technology could easily be the end of us. The last thing we need as a species right now is the ability to track everyone. Here's to hoping things like this NEVER get widely adopted.

A Modest Proposal for making ID Chips palatable

[Tsar]

The problem I see with this is that all your information can be retrieved by a variety of unauthorized (or undesired) folk without your knowledge.

How about adding a couple of things to the human version of this technology:

• Notification. include an external circuit—perhaps electrodes at each end of the chip capsule—which would emit a mild electric shock to the wearer whenever the chip was 'read.'
• Controllability. Provide a handheld device with each ID chip which would transmit a locking/unlocking signal to the chip. When locked, the chip would be rendered incapable of transmitting identifying information (similar to the Pentium III CPUID switch).
• Information Scaling. Let the wearer use the same handheld device to control the type and amount of information retrievable from the chip. For example, on a shopping trip, the user may allow only demographic information to be read, on the condition that stores and malls which read the info will give some small discount on purchases in return for the information.

If I were guaranteed this level of control, and the control was personally verifiable, I'd have no problem having such a device implanted.

Spooky stuff

[pongo000]

Other news sources have quoted the company's bigwigs as touting this technology as a means for employers to keep track of their employees. I can imagine a day down the road where job requirements will call for "willing to undergo biometric implantation" as a prerequisite for the job. Those of you who simply refuse to believe the government will never embrace this technology should wake themselves up: Things we take for granted, such as driving, intrastate freedom, and higher education are privileges accorded to us by the government. Already, we are required to surrender our fingerprints, our retina prints, our Social Security numbers, and other personally-identifying data to secure these privileges. The government won't force anybody to be digitally tatooed: They'll simply withhold these things, these privileges, from those of us who refuse to submit.

This is dangerous stuff, more dangerous than Ellison's half-baked ideas of a national ID. People who condone, support, or otherwise promote the branding of humans as cattle (whether digitally or otherwise) are very sick fucks.

Re:Spooky stuff

[pongo000]

Social security numbers are used by everybody because they are (theoretically) unique numbers everyone has, and relational databases love
unique IDs.

This is the inherent danger of using the SSN for identification purposes: The very uniqueness of the SSN allows the cross-tabulation of any data stored on any database anywhere in the world which uses the same unique key. It might be unique, but the SSN is also a ubiquitous identifier. It's what permits the state to arrest you on a routine traffic stop because of non-payment of alimony. It's what allows a city government to deny you employment because you're late paying your local taxes (maybe because of a legitimate reason).

The government is the danger, very much so. As government becomes more centralized, power is taken away from the people. Information is power, and thanks to your SSN, your fingerprints (yes, some states do require fingerprints for things such as driver licenses, concealed handgun permits, etc.), and other unique data, the government is able to touch your life in ways you might never imagine.

I worked for the US government for over a decade. During that time, I was forced, over the course of several years, to learn my way around the Privacy Act to force the government agency I was working for to expunge certain derogatory information about me from their records. You see, I was essentially "blacklisted" by the government, which made it very difficult for me to find employment after leaving government service. I was eventually successful in having the lies removed from my government files, but to this day, I find myself having to explain about "gaps" in my employment records from the deleted data in various financial and government transactions. This can be very difficult at times, trying to explain away data that isn't there without disclosing the data in the first place.

The government is far more dangerous than you can imagine. And I would hardly consider myself "complacent."

As for getting to work, I already have: I started railing against the use of SSN for personal identification purposes in 1989, and have continued to do so as time permits.

I've got a better idea.

[Happy go Lucky]

We use ear tags for cattle. They're a hell of a lot cheaper.

Let's say that I contact someone while I'm at work, wearing the icky blue polyester suit. How am I going to read this chip? With a regular driver's license, I can take it back to my car, shine a light on it, see if it's fake, run it for warrants and license status, find out if the holder is a sex offender, and copy everything onto a citation or a field interview card. And if my flashlight and my car's map light quit, I can still read them.

Oh, and did I mention I can look to see if it's been faked, maybe compare it to one of the standard references?

With these things, no. I'm a cop, not an electronics tech. I've got no way of knowing if the signal is legitimate or from a black-market home-programmed chip. It'll probably take special equipment to read these chips, and I've learned that expensive electronics have a way of failing about fifteen seconds before I need them. And six lines of data leaves no room for a signature.

So, I'm not entirely sure about the practical aspects of this, or whether there's actually anything to gain.

And how about we look at the legal aspects. I'll admit that I haven't gone through either the Federal or Colorado constitutions with a magnifying glass lately, but I don't recall seeing any authorization for government to brand people like so many livestock.

Of course, I could be wrong about the Constitition thing. However, at the academy they did say that the parts of the Constitution that were written in the margins in red crayon didn't count.

But then, a lot of the experimentation with implantable ID was overseas. And in much of western Europe and in Japan, cops are expected to know aspects of individuals' lives that I don't even tell my parents. Like who's sleeping with who. Or who lives where-there are ways in the US for that information to be pretty much completely unavailable to police, but not in Japan or most of western Europe (for some reason, France, Germany and Holland spring to mind, but I wouldn't swear to that.)

Re:I've got a better idea.

[hazem]

Even worse is the problem is that most Americans, including the people working in the government, have forgotten that the Constitution is a document that limits government by spelling out what it CAN do. Instead, they now believe that it only restricts what what the government CANNOT do - so by default, the government is free to do anything that is not specifically prohibited in the constitution.

This was one of the major arguments AGAINST the bill of rights. Many believed that it was at best unnecessary because the government was not explicitly given the ability to curtail the personal rights found in the Bill of Rights. For example, the Constitution did not give the government the right to curtail free speech, so therefore it should not have been necessary to make an ammendment prohibiting it from doing so. At worst, the Bill of Rights establishes the framework for the government to do anything it wishes, as long as it is not already prohibited elsewhere in the Constitution.

Sadly, the "worst" scenario is what we have now. The government should be permitted to do only what is spelled out in the Constitution. Instead, it does everything that is no prohibited in the Constitution. This is wrong.

I guess that makes me a libertarian.

Re:I've got a better idea.

[Animats]

Most of the enthusiasm for photo IDs is from merchants, not cops. If cops really want to know who you are, they take fingerprints. A PDA-sized gadget with a fingerprint sensor and a wireless link to a fingerprint database would be far more useful than an implanted chip.

You're absolutely right!

[Micah]

He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead,
so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. -- Revelation 13:16-17

We now have technology to make that happen!

Re:Its not going to work

[mentin]

>I think we need a National ID card to fight terrorism, theres no other way to know whos a terrorist and who isnt.

So you think the terrorists will wait to receive an ID card, and ask to print "I am a terrorist" on it? National ID card is good to help FBI and the like to spy for locals (that is why it is "National"), but will fail short of helping fight terrorist.

I have a better idea!

[HongPong]

Let's just tattoo optical barcodes on everyone's wrists!

The launch will be in Europe and South America.

Oh, starting in Europe yet again? Quiet outlying areas of Poland, perhaps?

I will never take one of these things, as long as I live. Ever.

Migrating chips

[agentZ]

There's one completely practical aspect of all of this which hasn't been mentioned yet. I volunteer with a dog rescue organization which tries to use the chipping technology to match lost pets with their owners. When it works, it's great.

But the chips, which are usually implanted in the back of the animals neck, can occasionally migrate inside the animal's body. Mostly they just slide down the back, but there have been cases where they just disappear. (I'm sure the chip is in there somewhere, I just don't want to find out...)

Either way though, if it's possible for the chips to move after implantation, I think the technology needs more work before we start putting them in people.

Of course the sheeple will accept this

[jhylkema]

Let's see here, we've already accepted:

-- Our private medical information being entered into databases and sold to marketing companies.

-- Our credit records, containing all sorts of personal and private data, being sold to marketing companies and being used to barrage us with all manner of advertisements for crap we don't need or want.

-- The Brits have accepted their every movement being monitored by closed-circuit telescreens, er, cameras, in the name of "crime prevention."

-- A de facto National ID number (the Social Insecurity number).

-- DoubleClick teaming up with Polk to personally identify and track web usage of individuals.

-- The Clipper chip. Key escrow. Carnivore. Nuff said.

What's to stop us from accepting a microship implant? "Oh, you don't want this? What are you a terrorist? A pedophile? A criminal?" is the most common refrain. Or, "If you're an honest guy, you've got nothing to worry about." And you know what? It works every time, it'll work this time too. Face it, folks, it's coming and we've done it to ourselves. We have finally gotten the government we deserve.

Oh well, call me a cynic, but I'm only surprised that it has taken this long.