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Wealthy Mexicans Getting Chipped in Case of Abduction
Because the number of abductions in Mexico has jumped almost 40% in the past 3 years, the wealthy are getting subcutaneous transmitters so they can be tracked when kidnapped. Xega, the Mexican security firm which makes the chips, has seen a sales jump of 13% this year. The company injects the crystal-encased chip, the size and shape of a grain of rice, into clients' bodies with a syringe. The chip then sends radio signals to a larger device carried by the client with a global positioning system in it. A satellite can then be used to find the location of the missing person. Things must be a lot worse in Mexico than I thought.
My guess is that if the implant can no longer communicate with the larger device, a trigger goes off to notify the service to start looking for that person in the last known location. After that, you're really working with a perimeter that grows by time.
Mij
I think the story is wrong. This company, "Xega" (website, in Spanish) seems to be offering two different products. One is the "Verichip", which seems to be a subcutaneous RFID chip intended for identification. Like for (very paranoid) access control, or medical emergencies.
The other product is called "VIP" and seems to be a GPS + GPRS device. You press a button on that thing and it transmits your current position to some server.
I see no indication that both gadgets are related in any way. Well, the website is all fluff, so I can't really say, but I think the story is mixing them up.
Still, that "VIP" thing does strike me as rather useless, since the first thing a kidnapper does is point a gun at you and make sure you stay still, with your hands in view. And the second thing is emptying your pockets.
And yes, I live in Mexico, and I've been kidnapped... well, just a couple hours, while I was being mugged. See I got off from work around midnight, hailed a cab in the street and boarded it. The driver took off, I even chatted with that fucker. But once we were in a dark-ish, lonely street, he suddendly stopped the car, pointed a gun at me, and two men from another car that was following us quickly got into the cab. One of them pressed a knife against my stomach and ordered me to "act naturally". They took me for the "ATM ride" (cash withdrawals from different ATM machines all over town, until all the cards were dry). They also got the cash I was carrying on me, of course, as well as my laptop (powerbook 5300... shit, I miss that ugly brick). They gave me back my wallet with my IDs, and some papers from work I asked them to take out of the laptop case. They dropped me off at a Metro station.
This was back in '97 I think, in Mexico City. A month later I was living in Guadalajara, and haven't had any such experiences since.