Who Controls the Children

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The hospital infant protection systems don't use implantable RFID chips. The chips are on a removable band attached to the infant's arm or leg.

[CNHT]

The hospital infant protection systems don't use implantable RFID chips. The chips are on a removable band attached to the infant's arm or leg.

Yes I see that from the article -- but does the product offering of implantable apply to humans or just animals at this point?

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Oh yes, they have implantable RFID chips for people. See above.

[penguins4me]

Also, all current RFID/Verichip-type devices, while small, are large enough that they could do serious harm if left to roam about the body's circulatory system. I'm only currently aware of them implanting these just under the skin, usually in a specific location, so that someone doesn't have to wand a person's entire body to find the thing.

[CNHT]

Oh yes, they have implantable RFID chips for people. See above.

Well they had them 10 years ago, but I was just wondering if they were ready and marketable for people, and apparently they are past the experimental stage.

I remember watching a TV show where a guy claimed he was abducted by UFOs. He showed the reporter a little bump on his shin where he claimed something had been embedded. Now I wonder if it wasn't just the government doing experiments on people. You heard a lot about this abduction stuff 10 years ago...

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Well they had them 10 years ago, but I was just wondering if they were ready and marketable for people, and apparently they are past the experimental stage.

Uh, okay.

Did you notice what's missing from those press releases?

I'll give you a hint.

I've only heard of one person ever being implanted with one of these VeriChip RFID chips. I'm sure there are more, but if it were a significant number, the company would be likely to mention it.

Someone somewhere else posted that a few hundred people have them already.

There's a company which has implanted RFID chips in all its employees for building access control.

Etc...

[penguins4me]

There's a company which has implanted RFID chips in all its employees for building access control.

... which makes me absolutely cringe with the idea that, somehow, someway, biometrics or "implantables" will become commonly used as authentication tokens. No longer will the mugger, etc. just demand your credit card and PIN, your account name and password, etc., but will now likely also hack off the body part containing the desired authentication token.

Unintended consequences. Whee.

[error]

Oh, you don't have to hack off the body part containing the chip. You only have to read the chip and replay it!

[penguins4me]

True, not something I've thought of, but then how many people do you know own a reader/recorder device? I'd like to hope criminals would be so considerate...

[error]

Anybody wanting to gain access to such a secured facility is going to blow the $50 on a reader.

[penguins4me]

... $50 for a cheap reader, $500-2000 for a notebook or other portable PC to connect the reader to, and who knows how many $ for either a special transmitter to replay the original signal, or an RFID chip-maker to recreate the original. Or, they could just get honest jobs as IT consultants. :P

My point was not so much for today, but at some point in the future where, perish the thought, fingerprints, irises, and/or implanted chips are used as authentication tokens for common activities such as financial transactions, residential access, automobile access, etc.

There has already been a case in the Philippines where both a fancy 'biometric' car and the owner were stolen, because the thieves needed the owner's finger in order to start/open the car. IIRC, it ended well for the owner, though he was a bit shaken as one can imagine.

-edit
I am, of course, completely overlooking the most obvious flaw with such "permanent" types of authentication tokens: the tokens can be copied or duplicated, and unlike credit card numbers, etc., are either not easily replaceable (implanted chips), or are not replaceable at all (fingerprints, iris pattern, etc.)!