Slashdot Mirror
More Companies Plan To Implant Microchips Into Their Employees' Hands (engadget.com)
"British companies are planning to microchip some of their staff in order to boost security and stop them accessing sensitive areas," reports the Telegraph. "Biohax, a Swedish company that provides human chip implants, told the Telegraph it was in talks with a number of UK legal and financial firms to implant staff with the devices."
An anonymous reader quote Zero Hedge: It is really happening. At one time, the idea that large numbers of people would willingly allow themselves to have microchips implanted into their hands seemed a bit crazy, but now it has become a reality. Thousands of tech enthusiasts all across Europe have already had microchips implanted, and now a Swedish company is working with very large global employers....
For security-obsessed corporations, this sort of technology can appear to have a lot of upside. If all of your employees are chipped, you will always know where they are, and you will always know who has access to sensitive areas or sensitive information. According to a top official from Biohax, the procedure to implant a chip takes "about two seconds...." Of course once this technology starts to be implemented, there will be some workers that will object. But if it comes down to a choice between getting the implant or losing their jobs, how many workers do you think will choose to become unemployed?
Engadget provides more examples, pointing out that in 2006 an Ohio surveillance firm had two employees in its secure data center implant RFIDs in their triceps, and that just last year 80 employees at Three Square Market in Wisconsin had chips implanted into their hands. Their article also hints that "no one's thinking about the inevitable DEF CON talk 'Chipped employees: Fun with attack vectors'"
Dr. Stewart Southey, the Chief Medical Officer at Biohax International, describes the technology as "a secure way of ensuring that a person's digital identity is linked to their physical identity," with a syringe injecting the chip directly between their thumb and forefinger to enable near-field communication. But what do Slashdot's readers think?
Would you let your employer microchip you?
An anonymous reader quote Zero Hedge: It is really happening. At one time, the idea that large numbers of people would willingly allow themselves to have microchips implanted into their hands seemed a bit crazy, but now it has become a reality. Thousands of tech enthusiasts all across Europe have already had microchips implanted, and now a Swedish company is working with very large global employers....
For security-obsessed corporations, this sort of technology can appear to have a lot of upside. If all of your employees are chipped, you will always know where they are, and you will always know who has access to sensitive areas or sensitive information. According to a top official from Biohax, the procedure to implant a chip takes "about two seconds...." Of course once this technology starts to be implemented, there will be some workers that will object. But if it comes down to a choice between getting the implant or losing their jobs, how many workers do you think will choose to become unemployed?
Engadget provides more examples, pointing out that in 2006 an Ohio surveillance firm had two employees in its secure data center implant RFIDs in their triceps, and that just last year 80 employees at Three Square Market in Wisconsin had chips implanted into their hands. Their article also hints that "no one's thinking about the inevitable DEF CON talk 'Chipped employees: Fun with attack vectors'"
Dr. Stewart Southey, the Chief Medical Officer at Biohax International, describes the technology as "a secure way of ensuring that a person's digital identity is linked to their physical identity," with a syringe injecting the chip directly between their thumb and forefinger to enable near-field communication. But what do Slashdot's readers think?
Would you let your employer microchip you?
Those aren't "security measures" -- this is most like intrusive techbros being techbros. "Security" would involve biometric authentication, possibly multi-factor. This is no better than an ID card, other than the fact it's implanted -- it can still be cloned or otherwise spoofed.
First, chips are often obsoleted. The bits on HID proxy cards go up to handle attacks and business needs. I would not want something implanted where my next employer would demand version 1.0.0.0.1b of the chip and I have 1.0.0.1a.
Plus, look at IoT vendor reputation as a whole. I wouldn't trust these people to make a secure Wi-Fi light bulb that wouldn't get pwned. Would I trust them with something that I'm stuck with for life? Nope.
We already have biometrics. Why do we need some startup's chip, other than to give that startup a windfall profit?
I hope we can do better than that. I really wanna see the unions say no! No union? Time to make one. This behavior should not be tolerated.
It's past that time, alas.
We've accepted selling ourself into indentured servitude for long enough that it's expected already - this is just one more example.
Work demanding to know your cell phone number, you having to wear a step tracker and heart rate monitor to get full insurance benefits, having to give HR your username/password to any social networking sites you use, fingerprint and eye scanners, scanning your network drives and reporting the content when you VPN in...
It should all have been protested a long time ago. But it's the proverbial lobster pot. One tiny temperature increment at a time, and you won't throw a fit and try to clamber out, until it's too late. Which it already is for many.
Work demanding to know your cell phone number, you having to wear a step tracker and heart rate monitor to get full insurance benefits, having to give HR your username/password to any social networking sites you use, fingerprint and eye scanners, scanning your network drives and reporting the content when you VPN in...
I don't doubt that this isn't going on right now, but .. can you provide examples of such behavior?
It'd be nice to know so I don't accidentally find myself working in such nasty places.
Right now, none of of my employers, present or past, have done any of these things. (and if you VPN to work with your PRIVATE computers, well... you deserve whatever happens. They issued you one, use that one.)
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Pets get chipped.
I am not my employer's pet.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
demand lifetime healthcare if they want to implant one
First, chips are often obsoleted. The bits on HID proxy cards go up to handle attacks and business needs. I would not want something implanted where my next employer would demand version 1.0.0.0.1b of the chip and I have 1.0.0.1a.
Plus, look at IoT vendor reputation as a whole. I wouldn't trust these people to make a secure Wi-Fi light bulb that wouldn't get pwned. Would I trust them with something that I'm stuck with for life? Nope.
We already have biometrics. Why do we need some startup's chip, other than to give that startup a windfall profit?
You're unemployed. Your savings is about all gone. Your bank called and they are sending John next weekend to repo your car if you don't make payments. Your wife is flirting with another dude who is employed and ready to leave. The bank also wants to know when you can hand over the keys to your home as you are now 90 days out and have a lawyer ready to take you to court and serve papers to get you homeless.
SHitty company A is here with a way out. Just sign and agree to this and all your problems will go away.
Not everyone is a hot shit top developer worth $175,000 a year and has the kind of bargaining power you possess in terms of employment. The average American Salary is still $58,000 if you believe that.
http://saveie6.com/
Real question: is "how the fuck is this actually better than biometrics?" Biometrics are relatively difficult to clone or spoof. A chip is just an ID card implanted in a person -- it can be cloned or otherwise spoofed more easily than the alternative.
In the early days of security theatre, when being told to remove your shoes at the airport was a new thing, a friend of mine used to say that it had nothing to do with security, and everything to do with conditioning people to do ridiculous and unreasonable things reflexively when directed to do so by people in authority. I think this chipping idea is more of the same - not in the sense that the people initiating it are conspiring to brainwash people, but in the sense that our culture is (d)evolving to minimize individual freedom and autonomy.
As far as the employers, I agree with other posters' sentiments. Requiring employees to modify their bodies in such a way should be grounds for a massive lawsuit, or simply hanging from the nearest lamppost.
Anything short of the latter will be utterly ineffective. I believe the only way to reverse society's march toward universal fascism is through full-scale bloody revolution. I also believe that such revolution is no longer possible. I've literally lost sleep and cried tears over what I foresee for humanity in the coming decades. It's been one of my great sorrows that I never had kids, but that regret is now tempered with relief that I don't have any offspring who will be thrown into the bonfire that is mankind's future.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Ah screw you. You can be an abject coward and just put up with whatever bullshit people want to visit on you, but some of us actually fight for our basic human and civil rights. I pity you, try to improve.
Don't believe anything you read on Zerohedge. It's basically the Daily Stormer with stock numbers
You're full of shit. Daily Stormer is a neo-Nazi site. Zero Hedge is an anti-establishment site. That said, Zero Hedge tends to extrapolate beyond the facts, so cross-check anything they claim with other sites. But we all know by now how partisan every news site has become, so cross-check any site with alternative points of view.