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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?"
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.
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
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.
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)
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.
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 ;-)