What I personally fear the most about embedded chips is that
- If having this chip makes it easier to find someone who has been kidnapped, then at the same time, having this chip makes it easy for would-be kidnappers to find their victims, chop out the chip from the body, and leave it with a ransom note, so that when the rescuers zoom in on the chip, they find what the kidnappers want them to find. Also kidnappers can browse info about people in a crowd, to match up someone easy to seize with someone who is worth seizing, on the basis of what the embedded chip tells them, when they look up the code number.
- Some institutions will begin to require that their employees or customers have this embedded chip as part of their security system.
- Potential crooks will think the embedded chip is the only thing they need for access to the facility.
- Humans will be assaulted for the purpose of chopping off whatever part of their anatomy is thought to contain the chip, so that the crook can then use a human arm with an embedded chip as the key to try to unlock access to whatever facility they want to break into.
- It is bad enough now that crooks want to steal my wallet, or break into my home and steal property from me, or steal my identity, but with this technology, future crooks will want to chop off part of my body.
Wired Articles on Privacy:
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy
The initial version of the VeriChipID is the size of a grain of rice. http://www.adsx.com/prodservpart/verichip.html It needs to be activated by a scanner. It gives a code number, that when looked up in a data base, gives whatever info the wearer has decided will be in that data base. However, much more advanced versions are in the pipeline, such as Digital Angel, which combines Global Positioning (GPS) system and monitoring service, to help keep track of people with certain medical conditions, school children, where the legal system needs to keep track of them, and potential kidnap victims. Sex Offenders are branded for life in some states, but not yet with this chip. Perhaps some Catholic Priests need to have the Mark of the Beast added to their anatomy, so parents can scan child care providers before entrusting their children to their care.
Remember Lojack? http://www.lojack.com/ This is a system used to help the police locate stolen vehicles, that have had Lojack installed in advance. Depending on how large Lojack is, and how obvious it is to thieves who might want to remove it during the theft, before the theft is discovered, some people might want this installed on other products of value ... would it interfere with the operation of a computer for example?
Well what we are talking about here is a similar concept embedded in human bodies.
A similar chip has been embedded into pets so animal shelters can identify the owners. Three different companies market these devices. There is some controversy over whether the technology works as advertised.
Several versions of this product, from several companies, are being marketed in Latin America with an GPS that keeps track of where the person is, who has the chip. This can help locate people who have been kidnapped, before the kidnappers remove the chip from their bodies, and it can also be used by kidnappers to help them find their kidnap victims. Kidnapping is big business in South America, and the US State Dept has a travel warning on Columbia due to this. A politician in Brazil has volunteered to be chipped, to demonstrate how safe it is to the people. The capital of Brazil is also the kidnapping capital of Brazil.
Wherify makes a bracelet that parents can lock onto children wrists, to allegedly track their physical movement, and their Internet travels, to allegedly keep the children safe, until a kidnapper removes the bracelet. http://www.wherifywireless.com/corp_home.htm If the child strays, does not report in when supposed to, the parents can use the internet to identify the child GPS signal on the map.
However, the technology exists such that the parents could have software continuously checking on where the child is in transit, to make a little map of all the places the children have been to, and the speed of transition (implying when in a vehicle in excess of speed limit).
I have a hard time believing that the Applied Digital Solutions chip was accurately depicted to FDA personnel who told Applied Digital Solutions that this chip did not need FDA approval, if the company proceeded in a certain way in their advertising claims and statements to the media, because Section 201 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, implants and other devices that "affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals" require government approval. http://www.fda.gov/opacom/laws/fdcact/fdctoc.htm Any foreign object inside human body, for any length of time, has the potential to impact that human's well being, and thus must have FDA approval. Many implants, that have no medical purpose, come under FDA regulation.
Perhaps we want to invest in Applied Digital Solutions, as there are sure to be lots of people who will want to buy the product, without taking the risks seriously, but suppose there is law suit thanks to major abuse? Be ready to sell the stock real fast. Applied Digital Solutions is also in the news because of conflicts with their auditors, which puts them at risk of being in violation of their restructured loan with IBM Global Credit.
- Hearing Aids, Contact Lenses, Tattoos, surely are less intrusive on our bodies than embedded chips, but they are in fact covered by FDA regulations. Something does not compute here.
- Anything we eat is covered by FDA regulations, with a large chunk of the food chain from agriculture also covered, and packaging of Halloween candy to give to kids
- Any medicine we take is covered by FDA regulations
- Vitamin Pills and alternative medicine covered by FDA regulations
- Medical tools in the home like thermometer or blood pressure measure or know if pregnant are covered by FDA
- Chemicals placed on our bodies, like cosmetics, ointments, anti-mosquito repellant, sun tan, you name it, is covered by FDA
- Products that emit radiation, are covered by FDA regulations, such as Cell Phones, Lasers, Microwave Ovens, Personal Computers ... but somehow this embedded chip in our bodies which is connected by radio to GPS to track who we are and where we are, is to be exempted from FDA regulations. I have a hard time believing this story.
- Safety of nation's blood supplies, from say West Nile or AIDS, is covered by FDA
- On-line medicine and imported treatments covered by FDA
- Bioterrorism information from FDA web site
FDA Investigator's Concern about potential health risks to humans from having this chip embedded in their bodies:
Apparently, during a press briefing of the implications of what had happened with the Jacobs family in Florida, Applied Digital Solutions representatives spoke of the chip being linked to FDA compliant medical data base. The FDA says it is illegal to use the FDA name in such a way that it sounds to be an endorsement of any product.
Any company, that is marketing products that might have government approval implications for some aspects of their products, ought to have its marketing department briefed by appropriate lawyers with respect to what you can say and what you ought not say. It sure sounds like Applied Digital Solutions is not following that safety protocol, which so far has resulted in a whole series of foot in mouth incidents that will probably eventually cost the company millions of dollars in fines, lawsuits, and lost business. I can only conclude that either Applied Digital Solutions management is extremely inexperienced, or deliberately taking serious chances because they think the publicity and scandals will help them much more than any damage.
I have not been following this story in detail, so it is not clear to me what the precise sequence of events are. The news media seems to be implying that of Applied Digital Solutions tried to put something over on the FDA, and the FDA either fell for some of it, or we are already seeing abuses.
Remember Lindows, where that company clicked I agree that everyone has to click to get a product, then in their advertising claimed a relationship that the I agree vendor felt was excessive and sued to have them stop saying that? Well the FDA has a similar gripe, and they are not the only place with gripes.
Allegedly Applied Digital Solutions asked the FDA what they had to do to avoid needing FDA approval, then after FDA told them, they both violated that understanding, and advertised that they had government approval to market the thing. Here is another example of where Applied Digital Solutions actions have triggered a storm of media controversy ... was it deliberate or by mistake? It sounds to me that if the FDA told them what they had to do to avoid needing FDA approval for the device, and if they complied with those conditions, then they did in fact have government approval from the FDA, and the only problem would be with how they phrased it.
This sounds to me to be very sloppy business practice, or outright attempt at fraud, another example of where Applied Digital Solutions actions triggered a storm of media controversy ... was it deliberate or by mistake?
FDA Spokesperson Claim that so long as no medical information is involved in this tracking of human beings, it is not subject to FDA regulation. It is Ok to have it connected to a medical data base, and it is Ok for people to use it to save them in medical emergencies, but so long as the device itself is not gathering medical information about the person it is embedded in, it is not subject to FDA approval.
The Executive Director of the New York ACLU says that this has enormous potential for benefits at the same time as enormous potential for abuse. I agree with both.
Potential benefit and abuse at the same time
Potential benefits
- Similar to medical alert bracelet ... you wheeled into hospital unconscious, and this thing tells medical professionals what you would have told them had you been conscious, about your medical allergies for example.
- Your child is kidnapped, and assuming the kidnappers don't have one of these scanners to locate and destroy the chip and injure your child in the process, the police use GPS to find your child.
- Alzheimer's patients who may get lost.
- Some felon is supposed to report to authorities regularly, out on bond, or on parole, but of course this only works for criminals who lack the desire to cut up their own bodies to remove the thing. http://www.ptm.com/
- Article listing benefits and claiming no risk to privacy. I do not believe the latter claim. http://www.techtv.com/siliconspin/features/story/0,23008,3375490,00.html The article claims that the data bases will be protected using the full state of art, but I know from past experience and education that the state of art is full of holes. Plus, there are various risks I talk about elsewhere in this post.
Potential abuses
- Many concerns stated above, such as the risk to having our arm chopped off if the chip is used for something really critical access, such as security key to get into a facility that terrorists or criminals desire to get into.
- You walking, minding your own business. Someone scans you, gets your code #s, looks up the data base, and pretty soon there is in your face advertising, tailored to the contents of your data base.
- Suppose you win the lottery. A kidnapper could use the chip to locate your child. Start off by searching the internet for info about you, to determine what kids you have and what the code numbers are of any chips in them, then use portable scanners to look at kids in your neighborhood to see which one has the chip for the parent that just got wealthy.
- Go through airport security - it sets off some kind of alarm - special legislation needed to say that people with this are allowed to use the nation's airlines. Ok now the homicide bombers seek to manufacture pieces of weapons that can masquerade as this stuff, then a terrorist team takes turns using the privacy of the airplane toilet to dig the pieces out of themselves to assemble their weapon. The initial version is about the size of a grain of rice and needs to be activated by a scanner. It does not have the GPS feature.
- Applied Digital Solutions CEO Richard Sullivan said, in an interview, that this could be used to track foreigners in the USA.
- You show up as a tourist, student, business person, or whatever, and have to have this injected into your body, as a condition of being in the country, then you would be treated as a suspected criminal until you leave. Those of us already here might have to show up to some government office to be injected. This way only the real criminals who smuggle themselves into the country and do not voluntarily go to the government offices would not have them.
- I also expect that some criminals would indulge in identity theft and have injected into themselves one of these gadgets with a forged code number that agrees with the person whose identity they are stealing. I wonder how difficult it would be to change the code number so that on different days the criminal will be masquerading as different people.
- Although the company is now downplaying their CEO's remarks, there has allegedly been an effort in the UN to mandate this for keeping track of refugees and other stateless persons.
- Electronic Frontier Foundation Attorney speaks out about Issues and Concerns with the VeriChip in http://www.techtv.com/siliconspin/features/story/0,23008,3375488,00.html
- Gary Wohlscheid, President of Last Days Ministries http://www.tldm.org/, is comparing this chip to the Biblical Mark of the Beast. http://www.tldm.org/News4/MarkoftheBeast.htm
Thanks to V. of TYR for bringing these links to Al attention. Discuss this at Tech TV also here and here and here. I may have lost track ... many of the Tech TV articles have at the very bottom, links to other articles that are related, then below that there is an area where people have been commenting on these stories. Some of the Wired articles also have space at the bottom for commenting on them.
12:04:52 PM 
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