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Companies Start Implanting Microchips Into Workers' Bodies (latimes.com)
A Swedish start-up called Epicenter is offering to implant its employees and start-up members with microchips that function as swipe cards, allowing them to open doors, operate equipment or buy food and drinks with a wave of the hand. While these microchips have been available for decades, the technology has never been implanted in humans on such a broad scale. "Epicenter and a handful of other companies are the first to make chip implants broadly available," reports Associated Press. From the report: [A]s with most new technologies, it raises security and privacy issues. Although the chips are biologically safe, the data they generate can show how often employees come to work or what they buy. Unlike company swipe cards or smartphones, which can generate the same data, people cannot easily separate themselves from the chips. Epicenter, which is home to more than 100 companies and roughly 2,000 workers, began implanting workers in January 2015. Now, about 150 workers have the chips. A company based in Belgium also offers its employees such implants, and there are isolated cases around the world in which tech enthusiasts have tried them out in recent years. The small implants use near-field communication technology, or NFC, the same as in contactless credit cards or mobile payments. When activated by a reader a few inches away, a small amount of data flows between the two devices via electromagnetic waves. The implants are "passive," meaning they contain information that other devices can read, but cannot read information themselves. Ben Libberton, a microbiologist at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, says hackers could conceivably gain huge swaths of information from embedded microchips. The ethical dilemmas will become bigger the more sophisticated the microchips become. Epicenter workers stage monthly events where attendees can receive the implant.
Can they scan the real-time position of the chip? Because very morning they'll measure about 30 minutes of rapid wrist motion on the right arm and slow finger movements on the left...
A bracelet with the chip in it would be a much better alternative, with no need to implant anything, cause tissue scarring, risk infection, etc.
Seriously, it could be a silicone band. Or a ring. Or a little sticker you could apply to any piece of jewelry you want.
As long as the implants are completely voluntary and offer to remove them when no longer wanted, I don't see a problem here.
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
Problem solved!
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
almost 20 years ago. blood type/serial number/etc. voluntarily, mostly. inevitable.
"Sorry, but you're being let go. These two gentlemen will escort you from the building, with a stop at the nurse to yank your chip."
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
It's a stupid idea. People work for a couple of years in a company and move on, yet they're suppose to have a foreign object inserted into them that remains for the rest of their life? Sane companies issue swipe cards, key fobs or similar to their employees.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/... Perhaps double duty as a wearable Faraday cage.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
As long as the implants are completely voluntary and offer to remove them when no longer wanted, I don't see a problem here.
Then you aren't thinking hard enough about the problem. There are all sorts of serious problems.
There is voluntary and then there is "voluntary" where your choice is to do it or lose your job. Once the infrastructure gets set up in such a way that it is
inconvenient/impossible to function effectively without them then they no longer are voluntary in any meaningful sense of the word.
If it is voluntary then there is little advantage in such a system, especially if few people opt-in. The cost alone will make it prohibitive and virtually all the advantages reside with the employer not the employee.
The privacy issues involved in this sort of thing are legion. Too numerous to even enumerate here.
There is the creepy factor. Do you really want to be micro-chipped like the family pet?
There also are problems of infection, maintenance, removal, etc. If the system gets compromised then the users potentially get to have surgery. Fun!
I hope it's a late April fool
At long last, we can figure out which jerk is using all the toilet paper and clogging the plumbing. As a bonus we can improve employee health!
Dear employee: We have noticed that you are using an average of 9.8 squares of toilet paper per wipe, and wiping an average of 19 times, 3.2 seconds per wipe, four times per day, and yet only spend an average of 6.4 seconds at the sink. And by the way, using your right hand for that is just nasty. Please report to the Employee Wellness center for voluntary tips on how to wash your hands and increase your fiber intake.
"Epicenter workers stage monthly events where attendees can receive the implant."
Especially on April 1.
Just saying.
If you are afraid, just wear a metal butcher's glove on that hand.
If you decorate it with a bit of leather and diamonds, people might think they saw Michael Jackson at the gas station.
Nothing personal, but the only way any company/government busybodies are putting a meat tag on me is over my lifeless corpse.
And they are opening themselves to litigation if employees feel coerced into getting such an invasive and demeaning tracking method.
Sometimes I think that corporations watch Black Mirror for ideas.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
I had a RFID chip implanted in my hand 3 years ago, just for self-interest. ( I have no desire to enslave the human population in end-times )
It was inserted by a friend who's a registered nurse, with some Lanacane. (highly recommend the Lanacane!)
I chose my non-dominant hand in case something went horribly wrong, but there haven't been any complications.
It is very convenient and I use it daily. My house door locks, garage door opener, car door locks and safe are all accessible by a swipe of my hand, as well as a rfid reader by my bed that turns off all my house lights and lowers the house temperature for overnight.
I can understand the concerns people have about implanting chips - chipped bracelets/rings could all do the same thing and I haven't been able to convince my girlfriend to get one implanted yet -- but I just love the convenience of always having it with me.
Sadly, my workplace won't let me use my chip with their swipe access system. Which would have been super handy today, since I forgot my ID card, and had to walk around to the front entrance in the pouring rain.
RFID chips can be made as impossible to clone as smart cards.
No, gaining access to the smart card contact pads won't help you in any way, neither will MITMing it.
IOW you're full of shit.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Glad I don't work for that company. I'd rather be unemployed than have anyone put something like that in any part of my body. I know it's not mandatory, but still..
* It would be good for governments to work out a legal framework for acceptable use of these kinds of chips. For example, can a company force its employees to have a chip like this implanted? How much pressure, and what kind of pressure, can a company put on its employees (or possibly customers) to accept a chip? What kind of information is legally allowed to be gathered using this chip?
* It would be good to have this chip be standardized. If we're going to head down this road, you know a lot of people are going to want to use it for a lot of purposes. Given the way things work these days, I wouldn't be surprised if every company wanted you to use *their* chip that only works for *their* services. Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook will each come up with their own completely incompatible chip technologies. You'll end up with a chip for your work, a different chip for your apartment building, and yet another just to log into your email account. Yes, I think we are that stupid. If people are going to be implanting chips for this purpose, it should just be one chip that can be used to authenticate your identity, and that authentication should be able to be used anywhere.
* Therefore, you'd want to have a standards body to decide how it should all work, and everyone needs to get on board.
* That standards body should have unbiased, non-political security experts to advise them. Those security experts should not only evaluate the technical design for the chip, but also how easily the chip could be cloned, removed, used for surveillance, or otherwise compromised/abused. They should also look at how significantly the implantation improves security over a carried token, and whether the technology can be future-proofed to prevent people from needing to swap it out excessively due to emerging security vulnerabilities.
I don't know what else. That's just off the top of my head. I'd assume that real experts with time to think about it could have quite a bit to think about.
Okay, I'm not really religious, but for this I'd convert! Enemy of the enemy.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Basically it's like branding cattle. Of course this could be done through rings, bracelets, or even simple rfid's in wallets, but the point is you CAN'T remove it when you want. I suspect this is a test/beginning in getting people to be branded just like livestock. The trouble is, like livestock, we'll have zero privacy (see the movie "Minority Report": the possibilities there (knowing what to market to you while passing through a mall) are similar to what is already happening now to quieter degree). People need to recognize the purpose of a design, and when they see it it works against them, say "no". People aren't vocalizing their concerns enough on this one. We all want to be a part of the A future. The question is, which future do we really want long term.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
This technology has been available for dogs & cats for years. Most dogs and outdoor cats are "microchipped" so the local ACO (animal control officer) or shelter can identify the owner. I've even seen it used with fish and other marine animals at the aquarium.
Not a new technology, and well proven.
Whether it's a good idea is another question.
So when the gig economy fires up and we all start working for 100 companies over our careers, we have to get 33-34 chips in our arms if 1/3 of them decide they are 'secure' enough to use this? Who pays to have these removed surgically when the number of chips in the arm gets ridiculous for anyone?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It will make the layoff or firing that more pleasant when they want it back.
I'll take the implant, you got it. Just show me a lifetime contract.
So what happens when you switch jobs? You have your current employer's chip removed and your new employer's chip installed? The firmware gets updated? How exactly does that work? If the firmware can be updated what's to stop a hacker from doing something to a device inside of one's body? Nothing could possibly go wrong. I doubt this idea will ever see the light of day.
We'll make great pets
16 And the second beast required all people small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, 17 so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark—the name of the beast or the number of its name.
Fuck that Swedish startup! This should be outlawed right quick.
It should include a little dose of cyanide to enforce a non-disclosure agreement clause in case of termination.
The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. - Marcus Aurelius
Has anybody asked Logan about this?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I guess it all depends on your definition of 'biologically safe.' I bet it wouldn't be very safe if the chip were to get an overloaded electromagnetic pulse at its operating frequency. Gives DOS attack a new meaning.
On a positive note, it might get hot enough to cauterize the area around it thus preventing infection.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Because ID Badges with the same RFID's are sooooo inconvenient, lets resort to permanent tagging.
The corporate overlords are smiling.
Boss: Could you hand me those pliers, please?
You: Sure. Here you go.
Boss: Thanks. There has been some cutbacks in our department, so I'm going to have to let you go. Now hold still please (if you want to get your severance check).
This would never fly in America. Evangelicals would think it was the mark of the beast, and begin quoting Revelation chapter 13 again and again, especially verses 16 and 17.
How ya like dat?
... when applying for a job. "Do you inject foreign objects into your employees?"
I've been hanging out on the Internet long enough to remember the Usenet thread "The Great Usenet Piss Test"--on misc.jobs.misc, IIRC--which listed companies that had drug testing policies ranging from the "yeah this makes some sense" to the absolutely ridiculous. Now we can, I guess, expect to see a host of web sites popping up listing companies that want to implant transponders in their workers. (Retirement can't come soon enough.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Oh yeah? Fuck you, companies. I'm an Atmel man.
#DeleteFacebook
http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki...
#DeleteFacebook
RFID chips can be made as impossible to clone as smart cards. No, gaining access to the smart card contact pads won't help you in any way, neither will MITMing it.
IOW you're full of shit.
RFIDs are far simpler than Smart Cards, and a lot easier to clone. The RFID protocol just extracts a single integral value - what length of data, what is in the data, etc is completely up to whomever programmed the chip and determined by the chip used too. But in the end, it's not very secure, and often they're passively powered - meaning you just apply power and the RFID chip starts transmitting the number where actively might be able to do some other stuff too, but even then that's really just for when you don't have time to passively power the chip before reading it.
Once read, the chip value doesn't change, and can therefore be easily cloned. IOW - you could (in theory) use a rifle with a directional antennae to read an RFID chip from a fair distance away - this was proven years ago at a quite distance from the chip - https://www.theregister.co.uk/..., in part due to security concerns with RFID data being implanted into passports. Once you read the data, cloning is generally easily to do - just program a similar chip to emit the same value.
RFIDs are rather stupid in terms of data security and complexity. Typically the value is aligned with a value in a database somewhere - the RFID value being just an lookup in a column in the database; so minimal data is transferred and allowing the system to otherwise track it using other means.
So yes, copying RFID is trivial and by itself provides no means of verifiable authentication as a result; combined with other data (f.e a PIN number), however, it can work pretty well.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Boss: You are required to have a chip implanted in your body. Me: Go fuck yourself. Boss: You're fired. Me: I'll remember you said that when I own the company after the lawsuit.
The RFID protocol
I think you're talking about one particular application/protocol, while i'm talking about a class of devices.
There's nothing stopping you from using RFID in more elaborate ways. Once you have something that knows sort of a private key, but without the ability to reveal the actual key, you're on smartcard-level security. And that was my whole point when saying
RFID chips can be made as impossible to clone as smart cards.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
RFID chips can be made as impossible to clone as smart cards. No, gaining access to the smart card contact pads won't help you in any way, neither will MITMing it.
IOW you're full of shit.
RFIDs are far simpler than Smart Cards, and a lot easier to clone.
Yes, and no.
There are multiple standards here. There is one set of standards which define devices that work like you say, and that set of standards is properly called RFID. However, there's also the contactless smart card protocols, which are often called NFC. Chips which implement those standards can come in virtually any form factor -- including implantable chips. That wasn't always the case, but antenna technology has advanced. The summary says these chips do NFC, which means that they technically are not RFID chips, though you'll never convince the press not to call them that.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Alright, so he can't buy food or a place to stay for the night and it would be a waste of time to mug somebody, unless he rips someones hand off, so lets hope he doesn't figure that one out.
The RFID protocol
I think you're talking about one particular application/protocol, while i'm talking about a class of devices.
There's nothing stopping you from using RFID in more elaborate ways. Once you have something that knows sort of a private key, but without the ability to reveal the actual key, you're on smartcard-level security. And that was my whole point when saying
RFID chips can be made as impossible to clone as smart cards.
If you're using the RFID as a seed into something else (e.g a seed to generate a decryption key)...then yes, you're correct - you can use it in more elaborate ways; however, Smart Cards are not RFID; they're more akin to NFC - a separate standard that allows a lot more to take place for communications. RFID is a dead simple tech and extremely limited too; move beyond that and you're no longer doing RFID.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)