For those who claim RFID won't work in people

[Baltimoreboy]

Here is an article from today's Washington Post. This isn't science fiction. This is ALREADY being used.


Credentials Under the Skin
Mexico's Top Law Officer, Aides Receive Microchip Implants
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 15, 2004; Page A16

MEXICO CITY, July 14 -- The long arm of the law has gone bionic.

Mexico's attorney general, Rafael Macedo de la Concha, announced this week that he has a microchip implanted in one of his arms. The chip, enclosed in a sleek capsule about the size of a grain of rice, emits a low-frequency radio wave that can be used to locate Macedo, as he told reporters, "at any moment, wherever I am."

The chips also function as an electronic identification that grants Macedo and about 160 of his lieutenants access to a suite of offices on the third floor of the attorney general's headquarters, which houses a state-of-the-art, $30 million computerized database of crime, which President Vicente Fox inaugurated Monday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50239-2004Jul14.html

[sendero]

1. Why don't you go to....

... the VeriChip website and see what the chip actually does, not what some moron in the news says it does....

http://www.4verichip.com/verichip.htm

The chip has to be scanned. It is not a GPS locator system, it will not pinpoint your position it will merely let someone scan you and issue a set of data.

Big freaking deal.

[Baltimoreboy]

2. Some moron?

This is Mexico's attorney general, Rafael Macedo de la Concha.

[sendero]

3. Go to the freaking site..

... and read it. It is not a locating device, period. The claims of the ag are either his mistake or a misquote.

Or maybe is is spin of the same kind our politicians issue every day. Yes, you can scan someone from anywhere, and access the id database. Again I say, big fat hairy deal. As a positive identification device, it has its uses. As a locating device, it has no use whatsoever. You have to be within the field of the scanner for it to work. That means I can locate you if you are within a few feet of my scanner.

There won't be an implantable lojack for humans in the foreseeable future, the technology is just not there.

[Baltimoreboy]

4. Are you sure the website details everything they do?

For a top secret technology, I can't envision them putting it out there for all the world to see.

[sendero]

6. I only...

... visited the site to prove to anyone reading that the claim of locator function is false.

I already knew that, I've been an Amateur Radio licensee for 30+ years and I actually understand the technology involved. You cannot have a location device without emitting an RF signal (with presently known technology). You cannot build a device that will do that, with sufficient power, in a unit small enough to be implanted. Much less deal with power and antenna issues.

My belief is that this will be possible someday, but it will probably not use satellite/GPS/RF technology, but something completely different.

[soothsayer]

9. So how come you can put them in tires and a bazillion other products

and they work?

BTW, if you zap them in the microwave for a few seconds, it fries them. Hard to do with tires, and harder yet with implants, but I do hope we will find ways to defeat these privacy invading nuisances.

[porphyrian]

11. Do you also know what the military has at the moment?

It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me that the technology could be in place, just not yet declassified. Why couldn't there be some sort of passive system that maybe uses the person's body as an antenna or something else you haven't thought of. Is that not a possibility, or do you know something we don't?

[sendero]

12. I don't claim.....

... to know what kind of stuff the military might have.

I'm only trying to dispel the myth that RFID is an active device. It is not, it is just a little gizmo that can be scanned.

People keep trying to equate that with a kind of global locator device, when in reality there is no relationship whatsoever between the two.

I'm as big a privacy advocate as anyone, and RFID just doesn't bother me. I get annoyed when folks exaggerate the capability of such devices to make some big-brother point. There are plenty of real privacy issues out there without making them up out of whole cloth.

[porphyrian]

14. Thanks for explaining that, then. - n/t

[Lerkfish]

15. but you're overlooking...

that the chip doesn't HAVE to be a transmitter, if there are enough proximity scanners...say at every light pole. hell, the key card that lets me into my parking garage only has to come within 5 feet of the scanner to open the door, and it can be under a winter parka.

The keycard is not a transmitter, either.

What you're overlooking is that the device can still be a locator in areas set up to look, like an archway at points of entry, etc.

[xocolatl]

5. It would be hard for such a tiny device to emit a strong signal...

... so I'm with deseo on this one.

The RFID is akin to a bar code, which is still creepy anyway.

[Katarina]

7. I have a question

I will say now, I know next to nothing on this subject but what about the contest coke has going where the cans have RFID chips in them and they can track you to your position? If they can track you with a coke can, wouldn't the same technology work on a human implanted with these chips?

[xocolatl]

8. The coke cans are GPS devices

which are much larger than a grain of rice.

[jmowreader]

10. Coke isn't using RFID

The Coke can contains two pieces of tech: a cell phone and a GPS receiver. You push the button on the side of the can and the technical equipment in the can phones your location in to the Coke center.

I don't know about Katarina, but I'm not having something like that implanted in me.

[Katarina]

13. Not me!

There is no way I would let them put that in me or my family.

My apologies on thinking coke was using RFID tags. It's still creepy though.