US Group Implants Electronic Tags in Workers
by Richard Waters for the Financial Times - February 13, 2006
An Ohio company has embedded silicon chips in two of its employees - the first known case in which US workers have been “tagged” electronically as a way of identifying them. CityWatcher.com, a private video surveillance company, said it was testing the technology as a way of controlling access to a room where it holds security video footage for government agencies and the police. Embedding slivers of silicon in workers is likely to add to the controversy over RFID technology, widely seen as one of the next big growth industries.
RFID chips – inexpensive radio transmitters that give off a unique identifying signal – have been implanted in pets or attached to goods so they can be tracked in transit. “There are very serious privacy and civil liberty issues of having people permanently numbered,” said Liz McIntyre, who campaigns against the use of identification technology. But Sean Darks, chief executive of CityWatcher, said the glass-encased chips were like identity cards. They are planted in the upper right arm of the recipient, and “read” by a device similar to a cardreader. “There’s nothing pulsing or sending out a signal,” said Mr Darks, who has had a chip in his own arm. “It’s not a GPS chip. My wife can’t tell where I am.”
The technology’s defenders say it is acceptable as long as it is not compulsory. But critics say any implanted device could be used to track the “wearer” without their knowledge. VeriChip – the US company that made the devices and claims to have the only chips that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration – said the implants were designed primarily for medical purposes. So far around 70 people in the US have had the implants, the company said.
About Me
- CyberKitten
- I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.
5 comments:
Once again, it's not the technology that's bad, but how it "may" be used.
implanted chips are a common theme in Sci-Fi - from utopian, cashless societies to dystopian, criminal hellholes, and everything inbetween.
i have no doubt that we will see implanted technology in common use in our lifetime - it just sounds so easy!
Maybe we shouldn't rush to give possible totalitarian regimes the tools to perpetuate their tyrannies? Maybe if we make things a little too easy for them it will increase the likelihood of them coming into existence... for all the best of reasons of course.
Or perhaps we should not fear new technology because it may be mis-used at some time in the future, byt a possible governmental type.
Now you're starting to sound like those people who believe that the internet was only designed to spy on our shopping habits, or that genetic research will automatically lead to the end of humanity, or that we shouldn't teach the masses to read because they might read about how to make a terrorist bomb!
The technology is not bad. It just needs guidelines/restrictions/protection built in.
The point I'm trying to make is that its rather unethical and more than a little dangerous to actively persue technologies that allow any government - present or future - to more easily spy on or otherwise manipulate its people.
I see it as equivalent to making guns harder to detect by airport scanning machines or metal detectors or making semtex harder for dogs to sniff out. It may be possible to do these things - but is it in any way desirable? I think not.
"I see it as equivalent to making guns harder to detect by airport scanning machines or metal detectors or making semtex harder for dogs to sniff out."
Really? What strange analagies!
I see it the same as the credit card, the driving licence, email or the PNC! This all allows the government to keep information on us, but the current benifits definitely outweigh the potential risks!
Post a Comment