If someone proposed injecting a computer chip in your arm and said it could save your life, would you do it? As Orwellian as it sounds, VeriChip is betting this will be a billion-dollar business. The firm’s parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, won FDA approval last year for what it bills as the “world’s first human implantable microchip.” A radio-frequency identification (RFID) transponder the size of a grain of rice, the VeriChip contains a 16-digit personal ID number that can be scanned like a bar code, providing health-care workers access to your medical records online.  That could be lifesaving in an emergency, cutting the likelihood of medical errors for accident victims, Alzheimer’s patients–anyone who can’t communicate or lacks ID. So far, only about 60 Americans have been chipped, mainly Applied Digital employees in Delray Beach, Fla. But the company says 58 hospitals are adopting the technology, a number it expects will expand to 200 by 2007.

Dr. John Halamka, chief information officer of Harvard Medical School, got chipped last year and says he hasn’t experienced negative side effects. He acknowledges that colleagues find the chip dehumanizing. Security experts are worried that the system can be hacked. And there are concerns that chips could one day be used to monitor the movement of those with implants. And the chip isn’t cheap: the suggested retail price is $200 and isn’t covered by insurance.

Applied also sees an opportunity in the security business. It has shipped 7,000 chips worldwide and figures about 2,000 have been implanted. Applied CEO Scott Silverman hopes to sell chips to the Pentagon, the CIA and the FBI–feeding into X-Files-type fears of biochipped government agents lording over the citizenry. A novel use: Baja Beach Club, a European nightclub chain, is offering “VipChip membership” to speed patrons through the ropes in Barcelona and Rotterdam. Some 430 clubgoers have signed on–at $1,300 apiece.

With reporting by Siobhan Morrissey/Delray Beach

Find this article at:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1118348,00.html

Julia Scheeres /Wired Magazine/

The VeriChip has a unique number for the implanted person. The actual chip is about the size of a grain of rice.
A Florida company has announced plans to develop a service that would allow consumers to pay for merchandise using microchips implanted under their skin.

Applied Digital Solutions CEO Scott Silverman said he believes the company’s VeriChip — a subdermal microchip that uses radio frequency signals to broadcast an identification number to a scanner — could someday replace credit cards. Under Silverman’s plan, rather than swiping a bank card to make purchases, micro-chipped customers would scan themselves using special readers.

Although the biochip payment plan may strike some people as a bit X Files-ish, financial transactions using radio frequency identification, or RFID, are already commonplace in some areas.

ExxonMobil’s Speedpass, for example, is a key-chain fob containing an RFID tag that is linked to the holder’s credit card; users wave the fob in front of a scanner integrated into a gas pump, and their fuel purchase is charged to their credit card account within seconds. Recently more than 400 McDonald’s restaurants in the greater Chicago area started using the Speedpass system to allow customers to more conveniently buy their burgers and fries.

Meanwhile, MasterCard is testing an RFID-enabled credit card called PayPass. Like the Speedpass, the revamped card uses RFID to access the user’s financial information and obviates the need for signatures or interactions with store clerks. In an interview with USA Today last week, a senior MasterCard executive said the company is considering integrating its RFID technology into other items, such as pens or earrings.

“Ultimately, it could be embedded in anything — someday, maybe even under the skin,” the executive said.

Which is where the VeriChip folks come in. RFID-enabled pens or jewelry could be easily lost or stolen, but RFID-enabled humans are bit harder to tamper with.

“We are the only ones out there offering implantable ID technology,” said Silverman, who announced the “VeriPay” service during a speech Friday at ID World 2003 in Paris. “We believe the market will evolve to use our product.”

Although he acknowledged that a final product may be a few years away, Silverman invited banks and credit card companies to collaborate in developing commercial applications using VeriPay. In the near future, Silverman said, the chip could be used as an added antifraud device in financial transactions — ATM users could enter their PIN and get scanned, for example.

Richard M. Smith, a privacy and security consultant, said one of the biggest hurdles facing the VeriPay system might be the squeamishness of potential users.

“VeriPay will offer some conveniences over RFID credit cards, but I think most people will be creeped out with the idea of putting little radio transmitters in their bodies,” Smith said.

Meanwhile, Applied Digital has attracted scorn from some fundamentalist Christians, who believe that VeriChip is the fabled “mark of the beast” of biblical lore. According to the book of Revelation, Satan will someday force people to “receive a mark” on their hands or foreheads in order to buy or sell.

“This is a gigantic step toward the mark of the beast, ” said Gary Wohlscheid, whose website, These Last Days Ministries, keeps tabs on what many Christians believe are the signs of a coming religious Armageddon. His site is one of dozens that link VeriChip to the apocalyptic prophecy.

Applied Digital officials say such concern is unfounded because people are chipped voluntarily.

The VeriPay service is one of several the company has launched to promote its product. Applied Digital has positioned its microchip as an anti-kidnapping device (VeriKid), emergency ID system (VeriMed) and as a way to control access to secure buildings (VeriGuard).

For those of you who have had heard me run my mouth, I’d like to ask: “Didn’t I tell you so?”  I told you elderly people with Alzheimers will be prime targets for implantable tracking devices!  Well … here you are. (see the video below). 

Oh, and don’t worry; with all of the little children who are being snatched up by all of the crazy people in the news lately … they will be next to have implantable technology sold to them.

Sure, this all sounds great; practical even.  But trust me, the information collected by this technology will be co-opted by our benevolent Federal government and then used in ways that will make us easier to watch by ‘big brother’. 

That is how it’s done.  If this type of technology was pitched by the government, the average person would balk, touting ‘invasion of privacy’.  But this is presented by a private company.  People are more comfortable giving private companies this kind of access, as oppose to giving it to government.  But of course, the Feds can just ask for it, buy it, or subpoena it if they want it bad enough.        

From correspondents in Washington*Agence France-Presse*June 06, 2009

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25596210-5014239,00.htmlA shoe-maker and a technology company are teaming up to develop footwear with a built-in GPS device that could help track down “wandering” seniors suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.

“The technology will provide the location of the individual wearing the shoes within 9m (30 feet), anywhere on the planet,” said Andrew Carle, an assistant professor at George Mason University who served as an advisor on the project.

“Sixty per cent of individuals afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease will be involved in a ‘critical wandering incident’ at least once during the progression of the disease – many more than once,” he said.

The shoes are being developed by GTX Corp., which makes miniaturised Global Positioning Satellite tracking and location-transmitting technology, and Aetrex Worldwide, a footwear manufacturer.

Carle said embedding a GPS device in a shoe was important because Alzheimer’s victims tend to remove unfamiliar objects placed on them but getting dressed is one of the last types of memory they retain.

He said a “geo-fence” could be placed around a person’s home and a “Google Map” alert sent to a cell phone, home or office computer when a programmed boundary is crossed.

“The shoe we intend on developing with Aetrex should help authorized family members, friends, or caretakers reduce their stress and anguish by enabling them to locate their loved ones instantly with the click of a mouse,” said Chris Walsh, chief operating officer of GTX Corp.

The companies said they plan to begin testing the product by the fourth quarter of the year.

 http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25596210-5014239,00.html

From correspondents in Washington*Agence France-Presse*June 06, 2009

All of the cool kids are doing it, so why not; right? 

Is this a “slippery slope”?  I think so.  The host (narrator) says:  “Some think that soon everyone will have a chip that will identify them and allow a new form of surveillance”.  The club manager believes in 20 years, it’ll be a normal thing.  “When you get born, you’ll get a chip.”  Wow, that sounds so convenient.  And he does have a point.  But, doesn’t he downsides outweigh the upside; or does it?   

The narrator goes on to mention the coupling the technology of ID chips with GPS technology; which makes it pointless for a cop to ask you for your license and registration.  I mean, what if “long range” scanning devices were developed.  Then you could be scanned without your knowledge … from a distance? How would it be possible to keep your 4th Amendment Rights (look it up) in tact?  It’s hard enough now. 

Once scanned her picture and information is on the laptop

 Make no mistake, this is the future and you will be face with it in your lifetime.  This technology will become acceptable by all merchants very soon.  Tell me, are you old enough to remember a time before credit cards were common?  They were not trusted.  People wanted money, and they didn’t trust the new technology.  Merchants were leery too.  Well, now credit cards are common place and not using cash is a status symbol.

How many times have you peeked over a person’s shoulder to see what kind of credit/debit card they were using … and then began to make judgments about their credit status?  I know it’s not just me!  Well, this will be introduced in the exact same way … as a sign of status.  You see how the club featured in the video clip makes it available for the VIP’s! 

How long will it be before you say: “Ooh, I want one of those.” -K7S      

Note the Hegelian key points in this article:

Thesis:

·         The first volunteer test subjects for a new, implantable computer device called VeriChip.

·         Could the airlines or government really require pilots to get chipped?

Antithesis:

·         “People have been worried about Big Brother for years,”

·         “Here [in the U.S.] we’re still dealing with FDA and privacy and civil-liberties issues,”

Synthesis:

·         In the early ’90s several states considered laws that would have required female child abusers and women on welfare to wear birth-control implants.

·         Applied Digital Solutions signed a deal to distribute VeriChips in Brazil, where kidnapping has become epidemic, especially among the rich and powerful.

·         Warwick will put a companion chip in his wife Irena and let the two implants communicate with each other. “If I move my finger, she’ll feel something,” he explains. “We’ll be closer than anybody’s been before–nervous system to nervous system.”

·        “But we’re not stopping. We’re going into South America right now!”

With his school uniform and his plump, pinchable cheeks, Derek Jacobs of Boca Raton, Fla., looks like an ordinary youngster. But looks can deceive. When he was 12, Microsoft certified Derek as a qualified systems engineer, one of the youngest ever. At 13 he was running his own computer-consulting company. Now he’s 14, and what’s Derek doing for an encore? He’s becoming a cyborg–part man-child, part machine.

Derek, his mom Leslie and his dad Jeffrey are the first volunteer test subjects for a new, implantable computer device called VeriChip. Later this spring, pending Food and Drug Administration approval, doctors will load a wide-bore needle with a microchip containing a few kilobytes of silicon memory and a tiny radio transmitter and inject it under the skin of their left arms, where it will serve as a medical identification device.  It sounds like science fiction. (Remember the Borg on Star Trek? Resistance is futile!) But VeriChip is quite real. The Jacobs family could be the first in a new generation of computer-enhanced human beings. 

In some respects Derek is a regular eighth-grader. He’s quiet and polite. He plays the drums. He used to be on the swim team before he quit to make time for his computer business. He remembers vividly when he first saw VeriChip on the Today show. “I thought it was great technology,” he says. “I wanted to be a part of it.” And when Derek sets his mind to a problem, he generally solves it. “Derek stood up and said to me, ‘Mom, I want to be the first kid implanted with the chip,’” remembers Leslie Jacobs, an advertising executive at Florida Design magazine. “He kept bugging me to call the company until I finally broke down.”

Leslie set up a lunch with Keith Bolton, vice president of Applied Digital Solutions, the company behind VeriChip. At first Bolton (who jokingly refers to the Jacobses as “the Chipsons”) was skeptical. Since the first wave of VeriChip publicity, he has heard from roughly 2,500 would-be cyborgs. But the Jacobs family is particularly well suited to test VeriChip for use in medicine. If a patient with VeriChip were injured, the theory goes, a harried ER doc could quickly access the victim’s medical background by scanning the chip with a device that looks like a Palm handheld computer.

In the case of the Jacobses, that could be a lifesaver. Derek has allergies to common antibiotics, and Jeffrey is weakened from years of treatment for Hodgkin’s disease. A few years ago, he was in a serious car accident; and when he got to the hospital, he was in no shape to explain his condition to the staff. “The advantage of the chip is that the information is available at the time of need,” Jeffrey explains. “It would speak for me, give me a voice when I don’t have one.”

The operation to insert the chip is simple. “It takes about seven seconds,” says Dr. Richard Seelig, the company’s medical-applications director, exaggerating only slightly. An antiseptic swab, a local anesthetic, an injection and a Band-Aid–that’s all it takes. Once the skin heals, Seelig says, the chip is completely invisible, and the Jacobses will hardly know it’s there. “The chip is fully biocompatible,” Bolton says. “No body fluids can get in, and nothing can be loosened or come out.”

Applied Digital Solutions–which is trademarking the phrase “Get Chipped!”–has big plans for its little device. In the next few years, it wants to add sensors that will read your vital signs–pulse, temperature, blood sugar and so on–and a satellite receiver that can track where you are. The company makes a pager-like gadget called Digital Angel that does both those things, and its engineers are doing their darnedest to cram Digital Angel’s functions into a package small enough to implant. Once they do, VeriChip will be very powerful indeed. That’s one of the reasons the Jacobses want to get involved. “There are endless possibilities,” says Derek. “For me it’s marvelous,” says Leslie. “Every day I worry about my husband. We definitely feel it will make us all feel more secure.”

Security is part of the VeriChip business plan. The company has already signed a deal with the California department of corrections to track the movements of parolees using Digital Angel. Seelig believes VeriChip could function as a theftproof, counterfeit-proof ID, like having a driver’s license embedded under your skin. He suggests that airline crews could wear one to ensure that terrorists don’t infiltrate the cockpit in disguise. “I travel quite a bit,” he says, “and I want to make sure the pilots in that plane belong there.”

Could the airlines or government really require pilots to get chipped? “I think we have a right to demand that,” says Seelig. “Our lives are in their hands.” It sounds extreme, but there are precedents. In the early ’90s several states considered laws that would have required female child abusers and women on welfare to wear birth-control implants. The proposals were not very popular. “There’s a feeling that technology has outpaced the policy process,” says Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. “We aren’t in a position to apply these new devices with the wisdom and prudence that is needed.”

Prudent or not, implant technology is racing ahead with bionic speed. Kevin Warwick, a professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading in England, is working on the next step. In a few weeks, he will receive an implant that will wirelessly connect the nerves in his arm to a PC. The computer will record the activity of his nervous system and stimulate the nerves to produce small movements and sensations; such an implant could eventually help a person suffering from paralysis to move parts of the body the brain can’t reach. If all goes well, Warwick will put a companion chip in his wife Irena and let the two implants communicate with each other. “If I move my finger, she’ll feel something,” he explains. “We’ll be closer than anybody’s been before–nervous system to nervous system.”

There are plenty of skeptics, but Jeffrey Jacobs is not one of them. “People have been worried about Big Brother for years,” he says. “The three of us want to be part of not just this new technology but an evolution of humanity.”

The FDA is expected to approve the Jacobses’ implants within two months, and there are other ways to speed up the evolution. Two weeks ago, Applied Digital Solutions signed a deal to distribute VeriChips in Brazil, where kidnapping has become epidemic, especially among the rich and powerful. Government officials hope that VeriChips implanted in people considered at high risk could be used to track victims via satellite. “Here [in the U.S.] we’re still dealing with FDA and privacy and civil-liberties issues,” says Bolton. “But we’re not stopping. We’re going into South America right now!” Technology has a way of moving faster than legislation, and if it comes down to a race between cyborgs and Senators, guess who will win? Resistance is futile.

Find this article at:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,214099,00.html

Local News!  How about that?  Now, are you concerned?  Now local news is doing a story!  Funny thing, when it’s national news people tend to distance themselves from the subject with: “Oh, that’s “them” over there.  I’m glad that’s not “here”.  Well … here you are.  What do you think? -KS 

In this clip from the documentary: “From Freedom to Fascism”, Katherine Albrecht explains in a very short time, but with very clear detail RFID technology.  She is someone who I very easily consider an authority on RFID technology.  This video clip is so eye-opening and so poignant, everyone should see it.  Notice how the technology began as a tool to track merchandise.  Katherine then goes directly into how the very same technology will be used to track people.  ~K.S.

RFID chips, which have found a home in applications ranging from toll road passes to smart retail shelves, may be close to taking up residence in the human body.

A Florida-based company has introduced a passive RFID chip that is compatible with human tissue, and the developer is proposing the chip for use on implantable pacemakers, defibrillators and artificial joints. The company, Applied Digital Solutions, also said that the chip could be injected through a syringe and used as a sort of “human bar code” in security applications.

Called the VeriChip, the device could open up a broad new segment for the $900 million-a-year RFID business, especially if society embraces the idea of using microchips for human identification. Applied Digital executives ultimately believe that the worldwide market for such implantable chips could reach $70 billion per year.

“The human market for this technology could be huge,” said Keith Bolton, senior vice president of technology development at the company.

Futurists agree that the idea of using microchips inside the body could ultimately represent a large market opportunity, but they doubt whether this initial effort will have a significant effect on the RFID market.

“Are we going to see chips embedded in the human body? You bet we are,” said Paul Saffo, a director of The Institute for the Future. “But it isn’t going to happen overnight.”

Pacemaker helper

Still, Applied Digital Solutions’ executives are preparing to sell between $2.5 million and $5 million worth of VeriChips in 2002. The company initially plans to sell the chips in South America and Europe for use with pacemakers and defibrillators. In that application, it could be attached to the outside of the heart device or implanted nearby in the body.

Doing so would enable medical personnel to identify and monitor a patient’s implanted devices merely by running a handheld scanner over the patient’s chest.

“If you’re a pacemaker user and you’re in an accident and in shock, an ambulance attendant could scan the body and retrieve information about the device,” Bolton said. “The chip could provide information about the [pacemaker's] settings, who its manufacturer is and whether you have any medical allergies.”

The company said it is working with makers of implantable pacemakers and defibrillators to incorporate the chip during the equipment-manufacturing process.

Applied Digital Solutions is awaiting approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and does not expect to sell the chips in the United States until that approval is granted. The company’s engineers said they expect approval later this year.

The announcement of the chip’s availability created a media stir, howevernot because of its potential use with pacemakers but because of its science-fiction-like potential application in human identification systems. Because the microchip and its antenna measure just 11.1-by-2.1mm, Applied Digital Solutions said the assembly can be injected through a syringe and implanted in various locations within the body.

The tube-shaped VeriChip includes a memory that holds 128 characters of information, an electromagnetic coil for transmitting data and a tuning capacitor, all encapsulated within a silicone-and-glass enclosure. The passive RF unit, which operates at 125kHz, is activated by moving a company-designed scanner within about a foot of the chip. Doing so excites the coil and “wakes up” the chip, enabling it to transmit data.

The chips are said to be similar to those that are already implanted in about a million dogs and cats nationwide to enable pet owners to identify and reclaim animals that have been temporarily lost. Applied Digital Solutions, which has made the pet-tracking chips for several years, says that the human chips differ mainly in the biocompatible coating that’s used to keep the body from rejecting the implanted chip. The VeriChip is believed to be the first such chip designed for human identification.

Inspired by Sept. 11

In September, Applied Digital Solutions implanted its first human chip when a New Jersey surgeon, Richard Seelig, injected two of the chips into himself. He placed one chip in his left forearm and the other near the artificial hip in his right leg.

“He was motivated after he saw firefighters at the World Trade Center in September writing their Social Security numbers on their forearms with Magic Markers,” Bolton said. “He thought that there had to be a more sophisticated way of doing an identification.”

Applied Digital said Seelig, who serves as a medical consultant to the company, has now had the chips implanted in him for three months with no signs of rejection or infection.

Ordinarily, the company said, the chips would be implanted in a doctor’s office under local anesthesia.

Applied Digital’s executives said the ability to inject the chips opens up a variety of RFID applications in high-security situations, as well other types of human identification systems. The chips, they said, could be implanted in young children or in adults with Alzheimer’s disease, to help officials identify people who can’t identify themselves.

But the company is backing away from involuntary identification applications, such the tracking of prisoners or parolees. “We are advocating that this technology be totally voluntary,” Bolton said.

Whether the technology will boost the market for RFID chips remains uncertain. Industry analysts had assumed that by now RFID would constitute a far larger market than its current, $900 million annual tally.

A consortium of major manufacturers has sought to push the technology as a replacement for bar codes in everyday products ranging from cereal boxes to shaving cream cans, but the cost hasn’t dropped low enough to make that feasible. More recently, a group led by the European Central Bank began work on embedding RFID chips in the Euro bank note, but the chip category has yet to find its killer app.

Applied Digital nonetheless has high hopes for its RFID technology. The publicly held company’s stock did not fare well last year, plummeting from a high of $3 a share on Feb. 7 to 11 cents per share on Sept. 17. But its per-share stock price jumped to 50 cents from 38 cents after the company announced the VeriChip.

Eventual adoption

Analysts expressed confidence that the concept would eventually be adopted but were skeptical about its immediate future. “For this to work, you are going to need a standard that everyone agrees to,” said Saffo of The Institute for the Future. “Then you have to convince people to buy reading devices that may be fairly costly.”

Applied Digital’s engineers would not say how much the chips or handheld readers might cost. The company’s reader is a proprietary unit that is required for use with the VeriChip.

Some further suggested that the chip might be too large for easy adoption. Veterinarians who have implanted the chips in dogs and cats say that the techniques used in animals are unlikely to be embraced by humans. “The needle is huge,” said Dean Christopoulos, a veterinarian in Des Plaines, Ill. “It’s almost as thick as your pinky.”

Some engineers suggested the technology might ultimately be scaled down, making the chip’s acceptance more likely. At Alien Technology Corp., engineers have already discussed using that company’s ultrasmall RFID chips in human applications. Alien, which uses a process known as fluidic self-assembly to create chips measuring 0.35-by-0.35mm, has demonstrated its 900MHz technology on everyday products such as soap and shampoo bottles. The coded information can be detected and read across distances measuring almost 914.4mm.

“There are companies making RFID tags that are much smaller than a couple of millimeters,” said Andy Holman, director of business development for Alien Technology.

Analysts also suggested that human identification technology would be more likely to be popularized when engineers are able to integrate more memory and other features, such as global-positioning satellite units and induction-based power-recharging techniques. GPS might help find lost children and adults, they said, while larger memories would enable doctors to store vital patient information.

The concept “goes all the way back to the 1960s,” said Jerry Krasner, vice president of market intelligence for American Technology International Inc.’s Embedded Forecasters Group. “What’s new is the ability to store a lot of data.

“As soon as you can do that, you’ll see more applications for this type of technology,” he said.

 Charles J. Murray

EE Times