New technologies are available that make it even easier to track your movements and information. Somewhat related to gps tracking is RFID technology that is used to track anything from containers and inventory to people. In this age of decreasing privacy, this issue of using it to track people can be explosive. This article talks about some of the issues with RFID.

There are movies that entertain you, frighten you, and enlighten
you. There are movies that trigger your brain of a possible
invention that might take shape. This happens every time you
watch a Science-fiction movie you wonder, THIS is something that
can be explored! There have been movies in the past that have
shown the possibilities of planting a gadget inside a human to
track his/her daily activities. If that idea has already
triggered you of a possible invention, and you are on the edge
of dismissing that as a distant dream, think again! You could be
just on your way to getting yourself identified by surgically
implanting yourself with a rice-grain sized chip under your skin
thanks to a VeriChip.

Now, whats a VeriChip?

Applied Digital Solutions Inc, a company into RFID applications,
end-to-end food safety systems, GPS/Satellite communications,
and telecomm and security infrastructure, has come up with a
unique solution called the VeriChip. This chip is a subdermal
RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) device that can be used in
a variety of security, financial, emergency identification and
other applications. About the size of a grain of rice, each
VeriChip product contains a unique verification number. When
this chip senses one of Verichip's proprietary scanners, it gets
activated and transmits a unique ID number to the scanner. If
the number matches an ID number in a database, the person with
the chip under his or her skin can enter a secured room,
complete a financial transaction, get his medical records
verified, etc.

According to Applied Digital, this technology has been around
for a while. Digital Angel, a sister concern of Applied Digital
has been selling these identification chips for about 15 years
now. but most of them have until now been used only for
identifying animals like household pets and livestock. The U.S.
Department of Energy has also been using this technology to
monitor salmon migration. Whats more these chips can last for a
whooping 20 years!

So why use it on humans?

Applied Digital says that the idea for using these chips to
identify humans came after the horrifying incidents of the Sept.
11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
While watching the post disaster coverage on TV, Richard Seelig,
Vice President of medical applications at Applied Digital, saw
how firemen were writing their badge numbers on their arm with
pen so that they could be identified in the event of a disaster.
He then inserted one of these chips under his skin and tested
their viability and was quite amazed at how perfectly they
performed. As of now, about 9,000 VeriChips have been sold, of
which about 1,500 have been inserted into humans. This number
will soon increase, since even Federal Drug Administration (FDA)
has cleared VeriChip for medical applications in the United
States. However FDA hasnt yet cleared this device for usage in
security, financial, personal identification and safety
applications. It might not be long when these chips make their
way into other parts of the world.

Well, speaking of other parts of the world, the Mexican Police
Department has already chipped all of their personnel. The
Italian Ministry of Health has also started a six-month trial of
these chips for hospitals. The Baja Beach Club in Spain has also
used them as electronic wallets to buy drinks and pay for usage
of other facilities at their club. Most sales of these chips
have taken place outside the US in Russia, Switzerland,
Venezuela and Colombia.

How do you get it under your skin?

An authorized medical practitioner or surgeon can implant this
11-millimeter RFID chip in the fatty tissue below your right
tricep. This chipping procedure lasts just a few minutes and
involves the use of only a local anesthetic followed by quick,
painless insertion of the VeriChip. Once its inserted under your
skin, not even you can tell whether you have an RFID chip
implanted there. So where does the chip get its energy? Well,
you dont have to worry about that. This chip is dormant most of
the time and wakes up only when you pass your skin over an
external proprietary scanner. When you do this, a small amount
of radio frequency energy passes through the skin energizing the
chip. The chip then emits a radio frequency signal containing
the verification number. This number is then deciphered by the
scanner and transmitted to a secure data storage site accessed
by authorized personnel via telephone or Internet. "It is used
instead of other biometric applications such as fingerprints,
says Angela Fulcher, Vice President Marketing and Sales,
VeriChip Corporation. Implanting these chips would cost about
$150 - $200 per person.

Tags: rfid - gps - technology - verichip

Pages: 1 2