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Wisconsin Company Will Let Employees Use Microchip Implants To Buy Snacks, Open Doors (theverge.com)
A Wisconsin company called Three Square Market will soon offer employees implantable chips to open doors, buy snacks, log in to computers, and use office equipment like copy machines. The chips use near field communication (NFC) technology and will be implanted between the thumb and forefinger of participating employees. According to The Verge, around 50 people are supposedly getting the optional implants. From the report: NFC chips are already used in a couple of workplaces in Europe; The Los Angeles Times reported on startup workspace Epicenter's chip program earlier this year. In the US, installing them is also a form of simple biohacking. They're essentially an extension of the chips you'd find in contactless smart cards or microchipped pets: passive devices that store very small amounts of information. A Swedish rail company also lets people use implants as a substitute for fare cards. 32M CEO Todd Westby is clearly trying to head off misunderstandings and paranoia by saying that they contain "no GPS tracking at all" -- because again, it's comparable to an office keycard here.
This has been going on for roughly 5-10 years. ...implements this, some dodo who has never heard of this, posts this here as 'news'.
Each and every time a company, a club a resort
It's not.
What more can be said ;)
I think it's good to remind us of these Orwellian nightmare plots and schemes. IMHO this is an idiotic thing for anyone to do. Anytime it gets promoted people do, and should, push back.
Burke "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Sure, this company may not be evil. Who else can use these chips though? Are you sure they are all going to be altruistic?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
What happen if health complications exist after implantation? Employer pay for that?
how many bags of Fritos I've purchased in the last six months.
So what happens when you're fired, quit, retire, or otherwise leave this company's employment? Surgery to remove the implant? Who pays for that?
Injecting something under the skin seems a lot less temporary than a henna-type tattoo that you could (eventually) wash off.
Why not formulate an RF sensitive ink? You could 'print' IDs like in all those post-Apocalypse Christian stories about marks of the beast. Bonuses if it looks like the company logo under black-light. It would be like cattle branding 2.0. Or a Neil Stephenson novel.
Present:
Most of us: alright then, we'll continue to use keycards instead.
In the near future:
Companies/governments: if you still use keycards you are terrorists.
#DeleteFacebook
Who in their right mind would let their employer implant them with a microchip of any kind. or implant them with anything at all
Grocery store application. On their lil Facephone gadget, or whatever.
Yesterday, it was this baby-looking cartoon game that brought out like 20000 pedophiles to some massive lonely faggot gathering. What a disgusting world.
Don't forget to wrap your hand in tinfoil mittens to stop people from remotely stealing the code in your bio implanted chip.
https://news.fastcompany.com/that-company-microchipping-its-employees-is-owned-by-a-major-prison-vendor-4044282
They really need to have a way to turn these implants off.
It's great opening a door without reaching for keys and stuff like that. It's not so great is if EVERY SINGLE device that can read RFID (from doors to ads) knows you've been near it and what you were doing - especially since we can be sure that data will be bundled and uploaded to marketers as well as the spooks.
When people figure out it's not all wonderful, what then? More surgery to get it out?
"I am not a number. I am a free man!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW-bFGzNMXw
Not news, indeed.
Three Square Market just got a lot of free advertising (for only the cost of injecting some garbage between the thumb and forefinger of some of their disposable employees).
Well, maybe not all of that free advertising will bring complements though.
This will cut down on the company's health insurance premiums because the employees are no longer eligible for expensive MRIs.
They are optional now, but in 5-10 years they will be mandatory. And "they" will track everything you do.
This has been going on for roughly 5-10 years. ...implements this, some dodo who has never heard of this, posts this here as 'news'.
Each and every time a company, a club a resort
It's not.
+ no ones quoted the Bible yet.
Revelation 13:16 (Remember, this was written 2000 years ago)
It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.
46137
because only a idiot or a fear-laden authoritarian would let an employer do this
This really is not newsworthy, as others have mentioned. Now, if a government intends to force citizens to have a chip implanted, THAT will be news.
A revolution would follow shortly afterward, and THAT would be news.
Why not just start using some simple, common piece of jewelry as a housing for the device? Most people are fairly good at avoiding losing them permanently, and they're easily replaceable if they're lost/stolen/compromised. Before getting into "slippery slopes" and other played out debates, doesn't it make something resembling sense to not make such a thing permanent? Do they have some massive overstock of pet chips to get rid of or something?
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Jeez, just put it in a small ring I can wear. Why would you voluntarily implant something in your skin that you could just carry around?
what about temps / contractors / etc that you don't have full control over.
cards have site ID's / different groups. In some systems you can't just add any card # range / other stuff that makes recusing them not that easy.
We could place these RFID chips in something called a "company ID badge" and then we could attach them to a piece of jewelery. I don't know what we'd call it but "lanyard" sounds like a good word. You would think someone would have come up with this idea already in 2017
There's no need to remove it.
That depends on what your next job is. If it involves working in an environment which may contain strong magnetic fields e.g. NMR/MRI, particle accelerators etc you need that thing removed. Also, depending on how paranoid airport security becomes, travelling with it in the future may be problematic.
And let it open the assholes of the CXXs who think this is a good idea.
// not that there's anything wrong with that
/// except sticking my dick in a dude's asshole gives me the heebeejeebees
/ not gay
"CEO Todd Westby is clearly trying to head off misunderstandings and paranoia by saying that they contain "no GPS tracking at all" -- because again, it's comparable to an office keycard here"
This is the marketing spin coming from security companies or the government in hacker movies, books, and video games, where the hacker ties everything together and can trace anyone. Watchdogs for instance.
I'm just "this guy", you know?
Are people becoming so lazy that they can't log into their own computer, open their own door, push a button or two on a vending machine? Hasn't anyone else seen the movie I, Robot? The human capacity for stupidity will never cease to amaze me.
If you want RFID on your hand rather than a badge, what about using a ring instead? You just slip it on as you get ready for work and slip it off when you get home. Why doesn't anyone come up with this?
I completely approve of subcutaneous embedded RFID technology for authentication! Four automatic votes here! (raises both hands, each grasping two severed arms) BLIP. BLIP. BLIP. BLIP.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
The motion sensor will tell when the hand gets very "Busy" in the bathroom during the work day.
Productivity will go up, but morale will go down.
I've had an RFID implant chip in my hand for 4 years now, and love it.
The doors on my house and garage door opener are all controlled by RFID, as are the doors and trunk on my vehicles. (I'm currently working on installing RFID locks/servos on the glove boxes and center console compartments)
Beyond never getting locked out, it's just incredibly convenient, such as when I'm outside doing yard work, and need something from my garage, I don't have to enter my house, take off the dirty shoes/gloves, to open the garage to grab a shovel. Just wave the hand and the garage opens.
I also hooked up my house safe to work on RFID. That was a fun conversation with my executor. "In the event of my death, you'll need to ask the mortician to dig the chip out of my hand, to open my safe."
I realize it's not for everyone, but it has been wonderful, and I haven't regretted it. I have no desire to take over the world, or enslave the population and force chips to be implanted in everyone. I did ask my employer to register my chip's ID in their security system so I didn't need to wear their RFID badge, but they declined.
This is not just some random company where the boss thinks this is a good idea.
The company, Three Square Market, is a vendor of self-service vending kiosks. They'd like this to become standard to promote their way of doing business. They're trying it out on their employees first. https://32market.com/public/
It's also worth noting, and entirely unsurprising, that this company is part of the for-profit prison industry. See http://tkc32m.businesscatalyst.com/ and find that they're also this company: http://www.turnkeycorrections.com/
Turnkey Corrections sells video-chatting for inmate visits. States are turning to stopping in-person visits in favor of for-profit video calls.
Time to learn CRISPR, so I can engineer a deadly virus to take out this company's owners and their families in perpetuity.
A few other 1%er targets come to mind as ideal candidates (Putin, Trump, etc.).
Airborn HIV+Ebola tailored to dickwads anyone?
How long before this is used against the employees
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
Wisconsin is largely known for dairy farming, and animal tracking. Why not humans too?
I'm fairly sure our temp agency has contracts with their workers to return company property.
But I work in IT, not in HR, so I'm not really sure how that all is handled.
From my end of things, over a decade of working here I've only had two individuals come to me asking for replacement badges.
In one case the badge was snapped in half nearly all the way through, although this was after 12+ years of use.
In the other case the person lost their badge, and this was after a couple years of employment as well.
In both cases I just issued new badges and deactivated the old ones.
We didn't charge the employees anything. Seems a bit petty for an honest mistake over what is in essence a $2 badge we order 100 at a time of.
If someone made a frequent habit of losing their card we might invoke the replacement fee clause, but it's never been an issue yet.
well putting an implant into temps / contractors may be hard and the temp agency may really over change for an removal fee
I was speaking of badge cards being issued, not implants.
Generally companies in the US don't tend to define temps or contractors as employees, but I can't say if that's the case here.
Neither the article nor the article in the article is too clear, but it does say "offering ALL employees"...
Seeing as it only costs about $50 or less to have the same chip implanted in your cat or dog, even with the insane US healthcare prices it's not like the process is a huge investment of money.
Either way though, the solution is no different than for employees not wanting an implant.
Just issue them a NFC badge like before.
not like the process is a huge investment of money. but if the temp place has to change X2-X3 the temps hour rate for the doctor visit time to remove it + maybe an fee to make up for lose of use of the temp that could be on a different job.
Should I get it on my forehead or arm? Which place would be the most convenient for the convenience I am conveniently getting? Quality measured by subjective quantity. First World problems: Don't count your blessings, count your conveniences. Remember, KJV says the mark is "in," not "on." Moo you plebs! The boss won't be getting one.
That's exactly why I said a temp worker shouldn't consider this an option, even if the current company was paying for the implant.
As for removal, and this applies to anyone thinking about getting one of these, one should keep in mind installation is much simpler all around than removal is.
Installation is fast (~15 minutes), being injected under the skin by a tool looking like a novelty sized needle, done under local anesthetic at a doctors office.
Removal would require cutting the skin open, and then stitches or an equivalent, along with the proper after care to prevent infections.
I guess it could be done under local anesthetic. That's how guys get their tubes tied after all, which IMHO is far more horrible to think about...
Basically it would be FAR better to think of this as a one-way trip for the chip: in, not to come out again.
If you aren't squeamish, you can do a google image search on "rfid chip implanting"
*shiver*
Now that's out of the way, this is degrading and completly unessecary.
A removable wrist band or an old fashioned RFID card on a lanyard works just fine, and anyone who can't properly handle those items is probaly too stupid to live.
So we're normalizing this now. This is sick. The company will let them. Every worker doesn't see it as a choice. There is no other option if any human doesn't want to play the wealth game. The relationship is not one of equality. The reward is not distributed equally. But, slashdots new evil overlords choose to frame the discussion as though the 'option' is not horrifically misguided.