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Social Consequences and Effects of RFID Implants?
kramdam asks: "Even with all the talk about privacy and security, there seems to be a growing community of people who are implanting themselves with RFID chips. Being a developer myself, I am intrigued about building applications and solutions that will open my doors, unlock my car, log me on to my computer and control home automation. I'm seriously considering jumping into this head first, being on the bleeding edge, and going with an implant. I have looked at resources like Mikey Sklar's site, and Amal Graafstra's site, since they are two pioneers on this subject. For research, I have started TaggedLife to document my own journey. I was wondering what the Slashdot community think about this. What do you think are the social, security, privacy, and health risks associated with this? What are the pluses? Would you do it?"
And no I'm not a Christian fundie but implants creep me out to the max. Frist post?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Inplantable RFID tags are just not for me. Sounds a little to, well, end-times-ish. I would rather have an RFID watch or something. Sure, it could be stolen, but what about a central control website where if it was stolen, I just deactivate the code from it and put in the code for my new watch. Problem solved.
Why exactly do you need an implant for this? This reads more as an attempt at resistance-numbing the public to the concept of implants themselves, because franky there's no viable reason you can't have all the features you listed in your keychain or wallet instead. I don't see the threat of lost or stolen hardware to be worth it.
Sorry,but there is no way in hell I would EVER allow one of those put in.Mark of the beast..Government and corporations are NOT gonna be able to track my every movement.If it makes them nervous,good.It'll keep the bastards on their toes.
Geek Hillbilly
How about skipping the implant and using the keys like normal human beings. Oh I get it, CNN doesn't interview normal human beings. No way I'm pulling the chip out of my BMW key and implanting it into my body because I want to get into my car 0.001 second faster. /no tattoos or piercings, either
What is the need to implant something like this? You would be equally well suited in all those tasks to carry an unmarked gray card in your wallet with an RFID chip in it. I suppose it just seems cool and bleeding edge to want to mutilate your body with one of these things...
I certainly won't even consider it. Nazi Germany comes to mind, marking folks for reasons of ID'ing them for whatever reason is not a good idea. SS is another thing that creeps me out, a system of identification, now illegally used all the time to limit people's freedoms. Business all the time limit doing business with someone if they don't provide a SS, yet that is illegal. When will it come down to the same with a RFID? I suspect sooner than later, especially if the government gets involved in the process, and it already has... FDA anyone?
Since it seems security devices are always being compromised, I'd hate to have to cut myself open every time one of these things had been likewise compromised.
I agree - an RFID watch would be much better - perhaps an RFID watch that can identify the person wearing it biometrically, even.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
You could just carry the tag. Or wear it. Would that be too hard?
It's like saying "Homeland Security, here I am! Track my every move!"
I think hardware upgrades should not involve needles, scapels and sutures. Call me crazy.
- Pluses
* You're in a car accident or you collapse and you have to go to the hospital and they need a medical history.* You're child is lost and they need to find his address/phone number (this sounds incredibally pet like, I know. But the kid should be allowd to have it turned off/removed @ age 18 or younger if parents consent)
- Minuses
* Let's say someone finds a way to sniff the signal, and can open your car/house what have you* You want to take a job in the covert business..
* Anyone can track you
* If this takes off and business impliment it and you don't want to do it then you can't buy goods and what not. I personally would never do this. It's just wrong in sooo many ways, religiously and ethically.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Nice.
Remember how the early breast implants were all "bleeding edge" and awesome? Then we found out a few years later they may oh.. kill you? Same thing here I suspect. The people who decide to "be first" quite often find out 5-10 years later it harmed the body quite alot..
Now maybe it's just me but we hear a lot of stories about cancer being connected to various signals from things like mobile phones or microwaves. The RFID technology is still rather young and we don't know if it will have any sort of effect like this on the human body. Now would you implant a cell phone in your face with the current warnings?
You basicly sound either extremely lazy or just trying to be cool.. Neither of which is good for your health long term. Sit down and think about the next decade, consider what may or may not happen, how much it will cost and all these important things. Because once you've got it done it maybe too later to reverse it or any side effects you get.
I like muppets.
... Of having a small bump under my skin that sends out radio waves when close to a transponder, but I'd rather have it on a keychain or in a cellular phone - And of course, I'd rather have it used only in the situations I want it used in.
Of course, anyone with the money to implement this kind of thing should probably just give it to me instead. I'll open your doors the old fashioned way, with no need for a costly renovation or painful RFID implant! Yours for just $200,000 tax-free per year. As an added bonus, I'll even chew your food for you! What value for the price! Act now! I'm not sold in stores, and quantities are limited!
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
It seems that this is one of those cases where the crazy science fiction authors have pegged it.
On the one hand, there's this notion that crime will be a thing of the past because at any moment we can see where everyone is. Want to go hiking and then swimming and don't want to carry around a wallet? No problem since every store can immediately verify your ID and credit as you enter the building. Super conveniet. When you step in your car it will automatically adjust the seats, tune your 6 presets, adjust the volumes, load your phone number list into the car phone, queue your MP3s. Online shopping will be a breeze since your computer will have scanners to verify your ID point-to-point. Identity theft? No longer possible. And crime will be down. Want to figure out who graffitied a wall? Just check the perimeter logs and find the ID. Want to see who should/shouldn't be in a building? Check the entrance and hallway logs. After all, if you've got nothing to hide, why should you worry?
Then there's that other side... No implant? Then no credit for you. No purchases, no vending machines, no access to the school. Or maybe it will be an onerous process... Fill out a form, wait a day or two. In the clubs the twenty-somethings will politely turn away when you bring out *cash* to pay for a drink. What sort of freak pays with cash anymore?
But more than likely we'll accept the intrusions into our privacy because it'll be do damned convenient. We pay for our groceries and medications with credit cards, shop online for books (ohmygod!) with credit cards, attend subversive movies such as Jarhead or Fahrenheit 911 or Narnia and pay with credit cards, we book hotels, rent cars to travel to Omaha and Key West and pay with credit cards... RFID is just the next logical step.
(I just saw Gattaca so I'm in that sort of mood)
You did say nothing, right?
I am however worried about ubiquitous tracking. How can that possible be good? Britain for example wants to track EVERY car on the roads and then store the data for 2 years.
e 334686.ece
"Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.
Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years."
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/transport/articl
Don't they make the kiddes read 1984 anymore? How much more blatant do things have to get before there is some sort of real effective reaction?
Oh I forgot it's for the children, and against the terrorists and pirates, nevermind.
When I read stuff like this, off the grid survivalist/back to the land hippies don't sound tin foil hat crazy, they sound like smart forerunners of an underground resistance to tyranny.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
You mean like to your home? How is this secure? I mean, truely, how? What your RFID only will respond to certain readers? Someone won't be able to have a portable reader connected to say a laptop that reads your RFID and uses that to program the correct response code to other readers?
...unlock my car...
I take it you didn't read the LA Times lately. For reference, go read this article and when you are done, do you REALLY think they won't be able to do something similar? In fact it will be even easier, they just watch a place that gets a lot of expensive cars, place a few RFID readers around, wait for you to leave and then walk up to your car and drive away. They wouldn't even need to spend several minutes "cracking" your car's code since they got it from you when you drove into the lot.
...log me on to my computer...
Get a fingerprint reader, or a smart card reader. Heck Sun has an entire system based on this for years, it will even move your active session from computer to computer (i.e. the applications you have open and running, your connections to other computers, the mozilla window on slashdot, the code you have compiling, etc...)
...control home automation...
Wow, you need to have a RFID "implanted" to do this? Why not a card or a chip, or widget that fits in your wallet? Why not that for ANY of the above? All you do with the implant is tag yourself for everyone else to see and track. A card/chip/widget can be easily changed. Same reason why you need to change passwords ever few weeks, it make it harder for someone to compromise and continue compromising your security.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Last I saw, you could get these the size of a grain of rice. Why not just pierce your ear and stick it in the hole, or superglue it to your fingernail (which you'd have to redo periodically)
Here's a reason no one thought of for these... If there's any ferrous metal in the device, you cannot go into an MRI machine. Additionally, even though there may not be ferrous metal in it, the MRI can still cause inductive heating on the device which can burn you. This is fine, when you're coherent enough to tell the docs what you have. What happens if you are in a car accident or have a stroke, and they need to stick you in an MRI machine?
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Obviously, you have no sense of how quickly technology becomes obsolete.
Otherwise, you wouldn't want to implant that technology into you.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
However, let's assume that this person WANTS the most high-tech solution imaginable. RFID tags are dumb devices with no meaningful logic, which means you can't do encryption key negotiation - or, indeed, any form of encryption at all. Anyone with a scanner can lift ALL of your keys with a simple RFID reader and can then impersonate you with impunity with ALL electronic devices.
If someone wants an implant - genuinely, truthfully, absolutely would die without one - then they should implant an intelligent device, preferably a small embedded general purpose computer. General purpose? Yes, then you only need one implant, which you can then program for ALL of your devices you want to control, rather than having one implant per device.
Strong, crypto would utterly defeat the RFID attack on cars mentioned in an earlier Slashdot story. It would also make the computer "unscannable" the way an RFID tag is, because it's no longer just a passive device. Further, an intelligent device could do ANYTHING you wanted, whereas an RFID tag could not. An embedded computer could monitor your temperature and control the thermostat accordingly, for example. An embedded tag could do nothing more than get crushed as the blood vessels expanded.
Personally, I would avoid implants. Implants can be thought of as deliberate splinters or deliberate cysts, depending on size. Both of these, when they occur naturally, can potentially turn nasty. The body really doesn't take kindly to foreign objects, if it detects them. When you've any kind of device that was probably not assembled in a clean-room environment, sterilized and completely clensed, there's a good risk that implants could carry unwanted hitchhikers. Even when it's all done properly, a good bruise near the implant could turn nasty. That's ignoring any chemical reactions between the implant and the body, which may have other unexpected consequences.
(You should also be aware of materials used. Materials that have a higher-than-normal level of alpha-particle emitters could seriously screw things up. The skin is thick enough to absorb alpha particles, in typical real-world conditions, which is just as well - soft tissue tends not to react too well to such things.)
The embedded computer shares ALL of the health problems of an RFID tag, though scaled up because it is more complex and involves more components. It also needs a power source, so you'll occasionally need to rip yourself open to replace the lithium batteries.
Now, there ARE ways to embed a computer in a person in a way that would minimize hazards on a day-to-day basis. However, there you're talking major surgery for the implant plus for each recharge. Surgery is, itself, extremely dangerous and not something you'd normally do just to add a gadget to your life.
It's possible to imagine surgical implants that COULD be recharged with less effort - such as enlarging the skull and using some of the space added, with a power outlet the bone can grow around - but we're talking serious sci-fi medical techniques here. Sure, there have been experiments involving wiring EEG devices directly to the human brain. Sure, even Stone Age medics could drill holes large enough to run a power outlet or an ethernet port. Sure, there are societies even today that deliberately reshape the skull. But to combine all of this AND enlarge an adult skull, not just reshape a child's... That is probably too complex for existing technology.
However, were implants to be a useful thing for society as a whole, a deep implant (such as in the chest cavity - if you can staple a stomach in half safely, you can wedge a matchbox-sized motherboard in there with absolutely zero impact), or a skull implant would seem to be far more resistant to damage, far more powerful, far more useful, far less toxic and far less likely to trigger an immune response.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Sure, go ahead, treat yourself like a cheap pallet of goods at walmart, or like human cattle with an ear tag and a chip (mandatory by 2009, new law, all livestock get chipped).
I personally think it is nuts, and so obviously a big brother wet dream model as to make it a "line never to be crossed" issue with me. You really can't see this, the implications? Just extrapolate a little, use your imagination, think of the "bad" that eventually will come of this. And it will, bet your salary on it.
And voluntarily??? You actually find it difficult just to unlock the front door and get into your car that you need to do it with an implant? It's bad enough we have government jerks hinting at making this eventually manadatory, that they are seriously working on behavioral modifications to go along with implants (command and control in other words, eventual electronic slavery so you know and keep your place, epislon drone) but to help them along by "volunteering" and promoting the idea that it is "cool" is...well...
Eventually we will be sorting this chip implant business out and it will not be pretty. I know I will be on the "pure human" side, the one not connected to the borg hive mind.
I typically wear pants everywhere I go, and the places I don't wear pants, I don't think I need to be uniquely identified...or at least, I think I'm pretty well recognized just by my physiognomy, yuh?
So, please, instead of putting the proprietary and easily-obsolesced technological bolus UNDER MY GOD-DAMNED SKIN can I, yuh, just stick it in my pocket?
That'd be brilliant. Cheers.
Good news, It's a suppository!
You can't get an MRI once you've been tagged, so the nipple ring would be an improvement in the case you want a MRI for some critical thing instead of it having to be cut out of your arm.
--- As to make my comment seem, by comparison, more intelegent... doodie doodie doodie poop poop poop!
Breast implants
The FDA pulled silicone implants to study them in detail. The claims of killing people were thoroughly debunked. Silicone breast implants that leak need to be removed, but about the worst thing that happens after a leak is having little lumps of silicone under the skin that move around.
This is psychologically disturbing in the extreme. Naturally, women who had this happen and then got sick for other reasons blamed the leak.
Saline breast implants are a genuine health risk if something grows in them because they aren't properly sterilized, but this is true of any surgical implant. Surgery isn't a walk in the park.
Silicone is essentially a neutral substance for biological processes. It just doesn't do anything. Silicon, like the casing on an RFID chip, is *completely* neutral. We've been putting things made out of glass in people for decades.
In an unusual circumstance, like a shattering blow to the area where the chip is implanted, the chip might break or be forced through the deep fascia, causing injury. Any such blow would cause far more serious damage anyway. The chip wouldn't be a major factor.
The radiation involved is lower than environmental levels were before humans evolved. No problem there.
The point I'm making here is that for both breast implants and these chips, the risks of the implants are no greater than the risks of surgery in general. You could have your arm cut open and stitched closed, with nothing else done, and you'd have about the same rate of dangerous complications. That's the best you can hope for with any surgical procedure.
Think about it this way:
When email started, the challenge was just to make it work -- get the bits from one machine to another. Now the challenge is making it useful in a sea of spam.
The same is true for what Sklar and Graafstra are experimenting with; they're just trying to make the technology work.
There's a big difference between making a technology work and making a technology work usefully in a world of nasty, exploitive, corrupt people.
Take care,
brad
Being a developer myself, I am intrigued about building applications and solutions that will open my doors, unlock my car, log me on to my computer and control home automation.
I don't see how this offers any practical security benefits. Let's explore a possible holdup situation involving a standard punk and an "early adopter":
Punk: Gimme your keys or I'll cut you!
You: Sorry, no keys, I start my car with a microchip in my hand.
Punk: What the hell? Don't fuck with me! Gimme your keys!
You: I told you, I-... Urrghhrgh *Sounds of dying*
Nope, doesn't look too promising. Nope, not too promising at all... But maybe if you're reeeallly lucky he'll know about RFID tags and just saw off your hand instead!
Sendou Wave Kick!!
OK so you don't need keys, what happens when their is a power failure?
You're locked out.
To prevent this, you have to have keys stored somewhere to avoid the problem, the same thing you do when you use keys to avoid being stuck when you loose your keys, so there is no safety advantage.
For me this looks like a stupid thing to do, the only "real" advantage is the 15min of fame of having implants, it would be much more intelligent to use watch or mobile phones to do the same thing..
Noo, there's plenty of ways you can charge it, such as magnetically, which is how middle ear implants are charged (if people had to cut inside their middle ear each time they wanted those charged, I doubt anyone would have 'em).
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
there are some people who believe RFID chips are the mark of the beast. and it almost fits for the most part: And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a MARK in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the MARK, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. Rev. 13:16-18 although it also mentions that you can also name the beast or know his number, so I don't know how accurate this is, but I've read about a computer system that stores all kinds of information from bar codes and stuff named Bavarian Economic Accounting Statistics Terminal (B.E.A.S.T. for short) There are a few other tie ins such as the bible mentions those wearing the mark will have blisters and sores on the skin where the mark is. This is possibly caused by the body rejecting the RFID chip. I know it may sound alittle crazy, but just think about it before you put these in your skin, don't wanna unleash the wrath of God on yourself because you didn't heed a fellow slashdotter's warning ;-)
I'll go for a fully specified and documented chip that comes with OSS software. I'll also hope that the impantable "chip" will be a bit more than a plain passive RFID tag (come on, there's room in there!) and so i'd want it to be able to "shut off" to maybe be flashable, to have some sort of memory, etc...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I use to sell RFID. The implantable IDs have a tendencey to migrate. You cannot control where they go and could end up in your heart. If you are truly concerned with universal access I would suggest looking at a Bluetooth Headset, or having the RFID device mounted in a ring or other jewelery. To the poster that suggested that you could mount it in an earing hole, The read distances for the implantable devices is typicaly less than 3" and you would look funny putting you ear to every lock. The RFID devices are a chip with a small copper winding for an antenna encapsulated in a glass tube I dont think it would explode in an MRI but there is enough airspace between the glass and the tag itself that it is easily crushed.
Really? I thought I had read that the number of crazy people has has actually stayed pretty constant for the last 2,000 years.
In other news, the next DARPA grand challenge is probably going to be "design a robot that hunts RFID-carrying humanoids" ;-)
Implanting a RFID is relatively easy - just a large sized needle to place it under the skin - and also fairly easy to take out that way too. The ones that have been used in pets without problems for YEARS! are covered with an inert plastic that also has been used for years in people, without allergic reactions. Yes I guess that if you did develop a large bruise,AND it became infected that the implant could get infected too, but you'd prolly' need medical attention anyway if you had an infected bruise.
Alpha particles!? WTF? - these implants are passive - they need a radio beam to power them, so that they can broadcast back. They don't need a power supply If you did implant a computer that needed a power supply, like a pacemaker, , maybe you could charge it via induction. An Alpha Nuke source emitter would generally have it's alpha particles stopped by the inert casing. Alpha particles are generally stopped by a piece of paper.
No, putting an implant deep into the abdominal cavity is a bad idea. Yes it would be more protected, but any surgery in the abdom cavity can cause adhesions, bowell obstruction, etc. There's a reason why all pacemaker batteries are placed under the skin by the chest/armpit - it's safe.
Having said all that, I still think an implantable RFID is a stupid idea, and wouldn't get one, but for security reasons, not for health ones.
..........FULL STOP.
Some might argue that the security is greater because a theif can't remove it the implanted RFID. Violence and robbery go hand in hand, theives already stab and shoot on occation for the contents of your wallet. I recall reading an incident in my local paper years ago where a mugger used a steak knife to torture an ATM card pin number from a person. Already, theives have removed finger tips to obtain the goods they want.
While such a device, barring electronic exploits, will increase the security of your possessions, they decrease your corporeal security. Robbery depends on personal intimidation, the victim is being offered a choice between the loss of a possession or the loss of their physical well being. An external device, be it a traditional metal key, an RFID wrist watch, sticker, nose ring or whatever leaves this choice intact ... you can surrender your RFID nose ring, and control of your possession or take your chances with offered violent confrontation
An implantable device differs only in that it can't be readily removed. Totiltarian state slippery slope type arguements aside, when confronted with the choice "your money of your life" what are you going to say ... "nope, you can't have it, its buried in my forearm!" Somebody who wishes you enough malice to point a weapon at you and actively consider taking your life in exchange for your possession might not see this obsticle in the same light as you.
Cutting out an implant, or amputating the attached limb might seem to be excessive escalation to you and I. A person who considers taking your life a realistic option might consider walking off with your forearm a more paletable alternative. Even if they just cut it out, do you really want the disfigurment, injury, the risk of catching whatever diseases the knifes last victim had, the pain?
In short, the point of security isn't to be ultimately secure. I don't want my car to be 100% impossiable to drive away without my involvement, I only want it to be hard enough that it might not be worth the effort. The old fashioned metal key in my pocket is the ultimate security measure for me ... its possession secures my car when I'm away and its surrenderability secures my person when I'm near it.
For some it may be cool to have a light turn on when they walk by, or have their computer log log them in automatically. Not for me. Cool to me is knowing the tomato in the spaghetti sauce I just made, was vine ripened in my back yard, rather than sitting in the back of a truck for a week. Cool is knowing that my well insulated house, with solar and geothermal heating and cooling reduce my energy consumption and help out Mother Nature. Cool to me isn't the gadgets I own, it is the love and joy in my life.
Besides, the soviets banned cell phone use due to potential effects from having a radio transmitter so close to your head. Meanwhile we of the western world loved them. Reports have since started coming out about the negative effects of the radiation from cell phone on peoples brains - increased frequency of tumours and the like.
If that doesn't hint at my answer to putting an RFID in my body, I'll be blunt. No - not me!
Don't they realize how easy it is to walk by one of these implanted persons with an RFID reader; then with your copy of their transmitted ID, make your own and impersonate implanted wearer? It doesn't stop there; you could re-program their device with another ID, perhaps with the ID of a known felon or such. All this can be done a few feet away from the carrier. It has even been proven possible to re-program an RFID to arrange a buffer overflow against the reading application, or just attack the reading system from the start. Sounds like a bit of trouble for a non-secure ID system; cachet zero.