Human Chips
 

Microchip Implants Raise Privacy Concern

CityWatcher.com, a provider of surveillance equipment, attracted little notice itself - until a year ago, when two of its employees had glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennas embedded in their forearms.

The "chipping" of two workers with RFIDs - radio frequency identification tags as long as two grains of rice, as thick as a toothpick - was merely a way of restricting access to vaults that held sensitive data and images for police departments, a layer of security beyond key cards and clearance codes, the company said.

"To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques," Sean Darks, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based company, said. He compared chip implants to retina scans or fingerprinting. "There's a reader outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it opens the door."

Innocuous? Maybe.

But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their ability to erode privacy in the digital age.

more:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070721/D8QH34P80.html

Mmmmm, human chips. Do they come barbecue or cheddar/sour cream?

Seriously, it sounds a bit obtrusive. The implications of other uses are what's scary.

How many years before the studies showing these chips cause cancer?

That or that we find the hospitals are implanting them into newborns...

:D

On a more serious note, I could see the value in having them put into military persons in a war theater. If anyone is kidnapped they would be able to find them. They would be able to monitor specific operations by the individual, vs the current method of real time video, usually IR. They could put them in the people who feared being kidnapped, like high value targets, and then immediately find and capture the kidnappers, hopefully before the individuals were injured or killed. It would pretty much eliminate that form of terrorism. Make it voluntary and have the device removed when they left the area of operation.

All that from an implanted RFID chip that can transmit inches, possibly even feet?

There are different kinds, apparently ... short distance and long distance broadcast. Digital Angel was supposed to have one that would allow you to monitor your teen's movements via a website.

It's the mark of the beast, I tell you.

No corporation would ever own my ass to the extent that I'd permit them to chip it.

edit to add: Digital Angel does have a GPS "solution".

According to the rfid journal
So I was wrong about my snarky inches to feet comment. A RFID tag will transmit about as far as a shouting human voice.

Whew!! You all had me worried there for a bit.

You could worry about your cell phone being used as a listening device...

Great - the paranoia may now return

:::Looks over shoulder:::

Witness Protection woes? Yeah, me too.

I assure you that we are talking only about a technological glitch would could be overcome by some very smart people in high places.

Perhaps a very long range RFID will be invented in the future. You may be right, you may be wrong.

But...

You're either going to have a lot of low powered transmitters like we have today, or a few high powered ones. You're not going to have an army of high powered transmitters all broadcasting simultaneously. The interference would be too overwhelming.

I can't wait, and I am going to be the first to be fitted with my very own subcutaneous RFID.

I am sure the benefits will outweigh the negatives.

My dog has one already.

So does my car.