More Chips Anyone?
The story below was written by WILL WEISSERT, Associated
Press Writer
Thu Jul 15, 9:39 AM ET
Chips Implanted in Mexico Judicial Workers
MEXICO CITY - Security has reached the subcutaneous level
for Mexico's attorney general and at least 160 people in his office — they have
been implanted with microchips that get them access to secure areas of their
headquarters.
It's a pioneering application of a technology that is widely
used in animals but not in humans.
Mexico's top federal prosecutors and investigators began
receiving chip implants in their arms in November in order to get access to
restricted areas inside the attorney general's headquarters, said Antonio
Aceves, general director of Solusat, the company that distributes the
microchips in Mexico.
Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha and 160 of his
employees were implanted at a cost to taxpayers of $150 for each rice
grain-sized chip.
More are scheduled to get "tagged" in coming
months, and key members of the Mexican military, the police and the office of
President Vicente Fox (news - web sites) might follow suit, Aceves said. Fox's
office did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
A spokeswoman for Macedo de la Concha's office said she
could not comment on Aceves' statements, citing security concerns. But Macedo
himself mentioned the chip program to reporters Monday, saying he had received
an implant in his arm. He said the chips were required to enter a new federal
anti-crime information center.
"It's only for access, for security," he said.
The chips also could provide more certainty about who
accessed sensitive data at any given time. In the past, the biggest security
problem for Mexican law enforcement has been corruption by officials
themselves.
Aceves said his company eventually hopes to provide Mexican
officials with implantable devices that can track their physical location at
any given time, but that technology is still under development.
The chips that have been implanted are manufactured by
VeriChip Corp., a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solutions Inc. of Palm Beach,
Fla.
They lie dormant under the skin until read by an
electromagnetic scanner, which uses a technology known as radio frequency
identification, or RFID, that's now getting hot in the inventory and supply
chain businesses.
Scott Silverman, Applied Digital Solutions' chief executive,
said each of his company's implantable chips has a special identification
number that would foil an impostor.
"The technology is out there to duplicate (a
chip)," he said. "What can't be stolen is the unique identification
number and the information that is tied to that number."
Erik Michielsen, director of RFID analysis at ABI Research
Inc., said that in theory the chips could be as secure as existing RFID-based
access control systems such as the contactless employee badges widely used in
corporate and government facilities.
However, while those systems often employ encryption,
Applied Digital's implantable chips do not as yet. Silverman said his company's
system is nevertheless save because its chips can only be read by the company's
proprietary scanners.
In addition to the chips sold to the Mexican government,
more than 1,000 Mexicans have implanted them for medical reasons, Aceves said.
Hospital officials can use a scanning device to download a chip's serial
number, which they then use to access a patient's blood type, name and other
information on a computer.
The Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) has yet
to approve microchips as medical devices in the United States.
Still, Silverman said that his company has sold 7,000 chips
to distributors worldwide and that more than 1,000 of those had likely been
inserted into customers, mostly for security or identification reasons.
In 2002, a Florida couple and their teenage son had Applied
Digital Solutions chips implanted in their arms. The family hoped to someday be
able to automatically relay their medical information to emergency room
staffers.
The chip originally was developed to track livestock and
wildlife and to let pet owners identify runaway animals. The technology was
created by Digital Angel Corp., which was acquired by Applied Digital Solutions
in 1999.
Because the Applied Digital chips cannot be easily removed —
and are housed in glass capsules designed to break and be unusable if taken out
— they could be even more popular someday if they eventually can incorporate
locator capabilities. Already, global positioning system chips have become
common accouterments on jewelry or clothing in Mexico.
3:50:20 PM 
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