Computer chips get under skin



Forgetting computer passwords is an everyday source of frustration, but a solution may literally be at hand -- in the form of computer chip implants.

With a wave of his hand, Amal Graafstra, a 29-year-old entrepreneur based in Vancouver, Canada, opens his front door. With another, he logs onto his computer.

Tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) computer chips inserted into Graafstra's hands make it all possible.

"I just don't want to be without access to the things that I need to get access to. In the worst case scenario, if I'm in the alley naked, I want to still be able to get in (my house)," Graafstra said in an interview in New York, where he is promoting the technology. "RFID is for me."

The computer chips, which cost about $2, interact with a device installed in computers and other electronics. The chips are activated when they come within 3 inches of a so-called reader, which scans the data on the chips. The "reader" devices are available for as little as $50.

Information about where to buy the chips and readers is available online at the "tagged" forum, (http://tagged.kaos.gen.nz/) where enthusiasts of the technology chat and share information.

Graafstra said at least 20 of his tech-savvy pals have RFID implants.

"I can't feel it at all. It doesn't impede me. It doesn't hurt at all. I almost can't tell it's there," agreed Jennifer Tomblin, a 23-year-old marketing student and Graafstra's girlfriend.

'ABRACADABRA'

Mikey Sklar, a 28-year-old Brooklyn resident, said, "It does give you some sort of power of 'Abracadabra,' of making doors open and passwords enter just by a wave of your hand."

The RFID chip in Sklar's hand, which is smaller than a grain of rice and can last up to 100 years, was injected by a surgeon in Los Angeles.

Tattoo artists and veterinarians also could insert the chips into people, he said. For years, veterinarians have been injecting similar chips into pets so the animals can be returned to their owners if they are lost.

Graafstra was drawn to RFID tagging to make life easier in this technological age, but Sklar said he was more intrigued by the technology's potential in a broader sense.

In the future, technological advances will allow people to store, transmit and access encrypted personal information in an increasing number of wireless ways, Sklar said.

Wary of privacy issues, Sklar said he is developing a fabric "shield" to protect such chips from being read by strangers seeking to steal personal information or identities.

One advantage of the RFID chip, Graafstra said, is that it cannot get lost or stolen. And the chip can always be removed from a person's body.

"It's kind of a gadget thing, and it's not so impressive to have it on your key chain as it is to have it in you," Sklar said. "But it's not for everyone."

Sklar's girlfriend, Wendy Tremayne, has yet to be convinced. She said she probably would not inject the computer chip into her body unless she thought it was a "necessity."

"If it becomes more convenient, I may," said the 38-year-old artist and yoga teacher. "(But) I'd rather have an organic life."

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/...of_enthusiasts/

Yeah... just in case that happens.

This is pretty awesome. Never have to worry about losing his key or such things. Hopefully he doesn't need an MRI any time soon.

Well once that has been perfected and has been shown to work I`m sure there will be quite a lot more interest in it.

Hey whoa182,

It's been a while. I agree this technology is cool, but at the same time a double edged sword.

Do you think this technology was invented to make your life easier or the elites lives easier?

This is comming sooner then later. The only reason it's been delayed is because people questions about privacy issues. You seem to love big brother, as he watches over you and keeps you safe. Do you like being tracked everywhere you go?

"The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values."

"Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance
over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities."
--Zbigniew Brzezinski- National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter and advisor to 4 other presidents, Executive Director of Trilateral Commission. From his book, Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era

"Is there a number or mark planned for the hand or forehead in a new cashless society? YES, and I have seen the machines that are now ready to put it into operation."
--RALPH NADER

Hey Whoa.

This is coming from a Christian- please don't bash me badly. But in many ways it sounds like we are at the time of " the end"

In many ways and books I read about The Mark of the Beast they speak of the chip as you describe. I think that this chip is beneficial but what if we end up not being able to feed our children or get a job without access to this chip? According to the Bible we are not to have this mark. If we do we will be with the antichrist.

It sounds bogus I know. But I thought I would just add a little tid bit.

If worse comes to worse I would take the mark to feed my daughter. I don't think I would be able to let her starve.

*I don't care* The government can track me whenever they like, but they aren't because I'm not doing anything wrong, they don't care about me and have bigger things to worry about. Maybe I want my family to be able to track me sometimes? I think it's just being paranoid thinking that the government wants to track you. It's like you think your important or something. bottom line

ThEY dont care about you untill you decide you want to blow places up or do something else bad.




I don't that anyone will be forced to have it, it will just be more convienient and more importantly, save lives. I would never want it to be forced on people. Governments are powerful but they can't make the people do anything. If it was forced on people then their would probably be riots lol. Governments wouldnt get eletcted if they supported it etc..

I know a few people with chips in their bodies, for medical reasons but I don't think i'd consider them as the antichrist They are the same as before, but happier.

It also depends how you interpret the mark of the beast thing. A chip isn't a mark and it certainly wont get placed on you forehead.

These RFID chips are no more harmful than you carrying around driving licence or NI card. Information doesn't have to be stored on the chip itself, it can just have a number that when a doctor reads it, he can look at the *SECURE* data base that holds medical records and find your more easily. Nothing has to be stored on the chip, you choose. You go onto the internet and decide what you want on it.

I'm sorry but I still don't quite understand how a RFID chip indicates the end of the world?



I believe that they want RFID technology in all notes (money). When the technology becomes cheap enough it will most likely be in almost everything.



I believe this mark of the beast is very dangerous thinking. Now just imagine I'm a surgeon and i had a chip in my hand. I save all these peoples lives everyday, yet I'd be condemned by christians because i'm the anti christ?

It makes no sense, and is dangrous for society to think like that.

Oh whoa. I did not mean you were the antichrist.

I promise. I just have read some wild books about this and such.

I guess the chip isn't really harmful. It just sounded like that in the book. Odd I know. But some Christians see things as more dangerous then ever.

It would be no different then a id implanted in the bone if we were to die. They could then track down who we were, Without dental records etc.

It is very interesting.

You are correct 101, this does parrelel what the mark of the beast represents. Of course the technology is still developing and may not be the true mark of the beast, but it deffinetly has the potential. At least you are aware of it, and that's good.

It's not just the government that wants to spy on you, it's the corporations to find out your buying habits.

Spychips make Orwell's Big Brother seem relatively harmless
By Kéllia Ramares
Online Journal Associate Editor


Jan 17, 2006, 00:44

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Spychips: How major corporations
and government plan to track your
every move with RFID
By Katherine Albrecht & Liz McIntyre
Foreward by Bruce Sterling, Wired.com
ISBN: 1595550208
Hardcover, 270 pp
Nelson Current, 2005

Marketers want to tag data to identify you and profile your possessions so they can target you with marketing and advertising material wherever you go. Government agents crave the power of hidden spychips to monitor citizens' political activities and whereabouts. And, of course, criminals can't wait to identify easy marks and high-ticket items by scanning the contents of shopping bags and suitcases at a distance. [authors' emphases]. --Katherine Albrecht & Liz McIntyre, Spychips, p 29.

RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. Organizations that promote RFID, which include companies whose names and brands you recognize, such as Wal-Mart, Gillette, Procter & Gamble, Intel, UPS and Benneton, as well as government agencies such as the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, want to implant an RFID tag on every item on earth.

Unlike current bar codes in which all similar items, e.g. 12 oz. cans of Coca-Cola, have the same number, RFID tags would give each individual item a unique identification number. Such tagging, combined with databases of purchasing histories tied to credit cards, ATM cards and supermarket loyalty cards, would create a system of universal product registration. "Spychips" explains what marketers, government agents and criminals are doing and could do in the near future with such a system.

Katherine Albrecht is the founder and director of C.A.S.P.I.A.N. (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) and Liz McIntyre is C.A.S.P.I.A.N.'s communications director. The C.A.S.P.I.A.N. web site, which asks, "Is Big Brother in your grocery cart? " and the companion Spychips web site provide a lot of information about RFID and related strategies, as well as efforts by C.A.S.P.I.A.N. and other groups worldwide to derail the effort to make everything we carry, wear or drive traceable to us. The book "Spychips" is the natural continuation of their years-long efforts to inform the public about this global threat to privacy and liberty.

In "Spychips," Albrecht and McIntyre prove that the RFID industry's claims that their tags would not be used to track people are total lies. They do so by excerpting patent applications made by the some of the biggest proponents of RFID: transnational corporations such as IBM (patent application # 20020165758 -- IDENTIFICATION AND TRACKING OF PERSONS USING RFID-TAGGED ITEMS), Procter & Gamble (patent application #20020161651 -- SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR TRACKING CONSUMERS IN A STORE ENVIRONMENT) and Philips Electronics (patent application # 6,611,206 -- AUTOMATIC SYSTEM FOR MONITORING INDEPENDENT PERSONS REQUIRING OCCASIONAL ASSISTANCE). Patents have been granted for some devices mentioned in the book.

A regimen of ubiquitous RFID does not stop at tagging things. The plans include tagging people. Already, the FDA has approved a subdermal RFID implant and, as Spychips graphically details, Persephone, Inc, a California-based company calls for surgical implantation of tracking devices in patent application # 2004174258 -- METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR LOCATING AND TRACKING PERSONS.

A major thesis of this book is that, contrary to the claims that RFID tags will make for a better world, the ubiquitous presence of spychips will only make the evils of the world worse. And in these times when we see people from Saddam Hussein to George W. Bush likened to Hitler, Albrecht's and McIntyre's imagining of what it would have been like for the Nazis to have had access to RFID is especially chilling:

In a world filled with RFID readers, the Nazis could have been far more efficient in depriving Jews of access to basic necessities and the stuff of daily life. RFID numbers encoded in their chips could mark Jews as social and technological pariahs, causing any doorway, elevator, or appliance equipped with RFID-based authentication to shut down when a Jew attempted to use it. In a cashless society where an ID swipe is required for nearly every activity, pay phones could be programmed to withhold dial tones, subway gates could remain firmly closed, and store equipment could refuse to ring up "Aryan only" foods like eggs and milk for the "wrong" kind of person. --Katherine Albrecht & Liz McIntyre, Spychips, p. 211

"Spychips" is a must read for anyone interested in preserving democracy, civil liberties, the concept of "innocent until proven guilty," and personal privacy. It is also a must read for people who want to be free from constant and intrusive marketing, and safer from criminals. The book will also be of interest to people concerned about abuse of technology, and people interested in Biblical interpretation. ("And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads. And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name." Rev. 13:16-17, quoted in Spychips, Chapter 14 Are You Next? p. 167).

That quote from the Book of Revelation reminds me of a bank commercial -- perhaps you've seen it -- where the customers stand passively in a long line after having had a barcode stapled to their foreheads. It's passivity that will make the scary world of ubiquitous RFID a reality, say Albrecht and McIntyre. Although RFID is already with us in forms such as "FasTrack" and "EZ-Pass" electronic toll collectors, the authors hope that the tagging of everything, and thus of everyone, can be stopped dead in its tracks with massive consumer action reflecting the very high level of consumer opposition to RFID. The chapter called "Pull the Plug: How you can help win the RFID war," recounts some anti-RFID victories, and lists a series of small, moderate and bold steps consumers can take to oppose RFID, as well as listing a number of "the worst of the spychippers," i.e., companies that deserve to be boycotted for their "past, present, or future plans to use -- or abuse -- RFID on consumer products."

The authors also promote their "RFID Right to Know Act," a piece of model legislation that would require the labeling of items containing RFID. Considering the federal government's promotion of RFID, well documented in "Spychips," and industry opposition to labeling legislation in other contexts, such as foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and dairy products containing growth hormones, the chances that an "RFID Right to Know Act" will be passed are probably somewhere between slim chance and fat chance. Nevertheless, the legislation is available at the Spychips web site where Albrecht and McIntyre keep news about consumer actions against spychipping companies and other information about RFID.

Interested consumers should read "Spychips" and go to the web site for more information. Then go out and rent a copy of the movie "Minority Report."

© 2006, Kéllia Ramares. For Fair Use only.

source:

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_424.shtml

I wouldn't mind wearing a device, but to have it permanantly in my skin is a wholenother ball game. I don't think I'd personally would want my body to transmit frequencies all of the time, which could quite possibly be tracked or something.

cool idea.
Although high-tech criminals follow technology, and I don't think it would be too hard to them to intercept and clone the frequencies. and you can imagine the power they then have over you - as far as the digital world would be concerned - they are you.
scary stuff

I see both sides of this. The chip could be good because it could hold life-saving medical information about yourself if you were in an emergency and couldn't make people aware of it. But on the other hand...maybe all your financial info was there too. Say you owed too much money for something. It'd be easy for a company to say, oh well, you can't have this.

I hate technology sometimes.

So what about the part where the government can track you worldwide, even underwater? Do you understand the concept of our Bill of Rights and of liberty? Do you REALLY trust our government that much?

I wonder how magnetic they are. I would hate to see what happens if you have a bunch of these things implanted when you had an MRI done. That could get really ugly.

Check that.
I would LOVE to see it!
What a show!

MRI scanners does not affect the chip in anyway and is not dangerous. FDA have approved it btw.

Darn. There goes that novel!