US privacy campaigners fear mark of the beast

James Sturcke Wednesday April 26, 2006 - The Guardian

A decision by the Bush administration to proceed with what is believed to be the largest radio frequency tagging programme in history has triggered protests from US privacy campaigners. The US department of agriculture (USDA) wants to keep track of all livestock production and movements in what it claims is an attempt to improve the traceability of disease outbreaks. By 2009, 40m cattle will have been tagged, and the scheme is to be extended to include the billions of chickens and other animals farmed every year in the US.

But campaigners are outraged that all agricultural producers, including smallholder farmers, are being pressured into registering their details when the national animal identification system (Nais) becomes fully operational in 2009. They also fear that the technology earmarked for the scheme could be used on people.

"This is the biggest scheme of its kind," said Katherine Albrecht, a consumer privacy expert. "They say it is aimed at tracking animal disease outbreaks, but I have had conversations with public health officials where they have been looking forward to a time when the spread of human diseases could also be monitored in this way."

Although the USDA insists the programme is "technology neutral", and various schemes, such as retina scans and DNA testing, could be used in it, campaigners believe radio frequency identification (RFID) will predominate. RFID involves a chip that is scanned by a reader in a way similar to the operation of the Oyster card ticket system on the London underground. Firms tracking components and stock as they move around the world are increasingly using the technology, but it has caused alarm among civil liberty campaigners, who believe it will also enable organisations to monitor the movement of people.

"It raises issues not just about the movement of products but about watching people's lives," Ms Albrecht said. "We are not a long way off from people beginning to demand publicly that systems be used on humans." "I know that many people believe this is the best way to trace animal diseases. However, there are other people with alternative agendas. They are not talking or thinking enough about the long-term impact or the bigger picture: if you do it to animal diseases, the next step is humans. I believe we are on the verge of the next step."

She cited as evidence the decision last year by a former US health secretary, Tommy Thompson, to join the board of Verichip, a Florida-based firm that makes human RFID tags. Soon after taking the job, Mr Thompson announced he would have a rice-sized VeriChip RFID tag implanted under his skin. The firm's website states that the technology could have medical applications, with paramedics instantly able to call up the records of unconscious, but tagged patients. Earlier this month, the US agriculture secretary, Mike Johanns, announced the Nais implementation plan.

"Developing an effective animal identification system has been a high priority for USDA, and we've made significant strides towards achieving a comprehensive US system," he said. He announced that the plan "set an aggressive timeline for ensuring full implementation of the Nais by 2009".

The animal-tracking databases will record and store animal movements, providing animal health officials with data they will use in fighting outbreaks of livestock disease. Their aim is to identify the origins of an outbreak within 48 hours. The plan involves registering properties where farm animals are kept, initially on a voluntary basis. However, the USDA says it "may move toward a requirement for mandatory premises and animal identification for all species included in the system". Plans are currently being developed for cattle, swine, sheep, goats, horses, poultry, bison, llamas and alpacas, among other animals, to be tagged.

Around 35m cattle and 8bn poultry are slaughtered in the US every year. Under the scheme, some animals would need individual tags while others would be tagged as a group. The plans have triggered protests from small farmers across the US, who have used a website to voice their fears of invasions of privacy, increased food prices and concentration of power in the hands of large producers.

Posted: November 21, 2003
By Sherrie Gossett

At a global security conference held today in Paris, an American company announced a new syringe-injectable microchip implant for humans, designed to be used as a fraud-proof payment method for cash and credit-card transactions. The chip implant is being presented as an advance over credit cards and smart cards, which, absent biometrics and appropriate safeguard technologies, are subject to theft, resulting in identity fraud. Identity fraud costs the banking and financial industry some $48 billion a year, and consumers $5 billion, according to 2002 Federal Trade Commission estimates.

In his speech today at the ID World 2003 conference in Paris, France, Scott R. Silverman, CEO of Applied Digital Solutions, called the chip a "loss-proof solution" and said that the chip's "unique under-the-skin format" could be used for a variety of identification applications in the security and financial worlds.

The company will have to compete, though, with organizations using just a fingerprint scan for similar applications.

The ID World Conference, held yesterday and today at the Charles de Gaulle Hilton, focused on current and future applications of radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies, biometrics, smart cards and data collection.

The company's various "VeriChips" are RFID chips, which contain a unique identification number and can carry other personal data about the implantee. When radio-frequency energy passes from a scanner, it energizes the chip, which is passive (not independently powered), and which then emits a radio-frequency signal transmitting the chip's information to the reader, which in turn links with a database.

ADS has previously touted its radio frequency identification (RFID) chips for secure building access, computer access, storage of medical records, anti-kidnapping initiatives and a variety of law-enforcement applications. The company has also developed proprietary hand-held readers and portal readers that can scan data when an implantee enters a building or room.

The "cashless society" application is not new – it has been discussed previously by Applied Digital. Today's speech, however, represented the first formal public announcement by the company of such a program.

In announcing VeriPay to ID World delegates, Silverman stated the implant has "enormous marketplace potential" and invited banking and credit companies to partner with VeriChip Corporation (a subsidiary of ADS) in developing specific commercial applications beginning with pilot programs and market tests.

Applied Digital's announcement in Paris suggested wireless technologies, RFID development, new software solutions, smart-card applications and subdermal implants might one day merge as the ultimate solution for a world fraught with identity theft, threatened by terrorism, buffeted by cash-strapped governments and law-enforcement agencies looking for easy data-collection, and corporations interested in the marketing bonanza that cutting-edge identification, payment, and location-based technologies can afford.

Cashless payment systems are now part of a larger technology development subset: government identification experiments that seek to combine cashless payment applications with national ID information on media (such as a "smart" card), which contain a whole host of government, personal, employment and commercial data and applications on a single, contactless RFID chip.

In some scenarios, government-corporate coalitions are advocating such a chip be used by employees also to access entry to their workplace and the company computer network, reducing the cost outlay of the corporations for individual ID cards.

Malaysia's "MyKad" national ID "smart" card is the foremost example.

Meanwhile, privacy advocates have expressed concern over RFID technology rollouts, citing database concerns and the specter of individuals' RFID chips being read without permission by people who have their own hand-held readers.

Several privacy and civil liberties groups have recently called for a voluntary moratorium on RFID tagging "until a formal technology assessment process involving all stakeholders, including consumers, can take place."

Signatories to the petition include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Privacy International and the Foundation for Information Policy Research, a British think tank.

Commenting on today's announcement, Richard Smith, a computer industry consultant, referred to what some "netizens" are already calling "chipectomies": "VeriChips can still be stolen. It's just a bit gruesome when to think how the crooks will do these kinds of robberies."

Citing MasterCard's PayPass, Smith pointed out that most of the major credit-card companies are looking at RFID chips to make credit cards quicker, easier, and safer to use.

"The big problem is money," said Smith. "It will take billions of dollars to upgrade the credit-card networks from magstripe readers to RFID readers. During the transition, a credit card is going to need both a magstripe and an RFID chip so that it is universally accepted."

Some industry professionals advocate having citizens pay for combined national ID/cashless pay chips, which would be embedded in a chosen medium.

Identification technologies using RFID can take a wide variety of physical forms and show no sign yet of coalescing into a single worldwide standard.

Prior to today's announcement, Art Kranzley, senior vice president at MasterCard, commented on the Pay Pass system in a USA Today interview: "We're certainly looking at designs like key fobs. It could be in a pen or a pair of earrings. Ultimately, it could be embedded in anything – someday, maybe even under the skin." source

Injectable chip opens door to 'human bar code'

Charles J. Murray PlanetAnalog (01/04/2002)

Radio-frequency identification chips, which have found a home in applications ranging from toll road passes to smart retail shelves, may be close to taking up residence in the human body.

A Florida-based company has introduced a passive RFID chip that is compatible with human tissue, and the developer is proposing the chip for use on implantable pacemakers, defibrillators and artificial joints. The company, Applied Digital Solutions (Palm Beach, Fla.), also said that the chip could be injected through a syringe and used as a sort of "human bar code" in security applications.

Called the VeriChip, the device could open up a broad new segment for the $900 million-a-year RFID business, especially if society embraces the idea of using microchips for human identification. Applied Digital executives ultimately believe that the worldwide market for such implantable chips could reach $70 billion per year.

"The human market for this technology could be huge," said Keith Bolton, senior vice president of technology development at the company.

Futurists agree that the idea of using microchips inside the body could ultimately represent a large market opportunity, but they doubt whether this initial effort will have a significant effect on the RFID market.

"Are we going to see chips embedded in the human body? You bet we are," said Paul Saffo, a director of The Institute for the Future (Menlo Park, Calif.). "But it isn't going to happen overnight."

Pacemaker helper

Still, Applied Digital Solutions' executives are preparing to sell between $2.5 million and $5 million worth of VeriChips in 2002. The company initially plans to sell the chips in South America and Europe for use with pacemakers and defibrillators. In that application, it could be attached to the outside of the heart device or implanted nearby in the body. Doing so would enable medical personnel to identify and monitor a patient's implanted devices merely by running a handheld scanner over the patient's chest.

"If you're a pacemaker user and you're in an accident and in shock, an ambulance attendant could scan the body and retrieve information about the device," Bolton said. "The chip could provide information about the pacemaker's settings, who its manufacturer is and whether you have any medical allergies."

The company said it is working with makers of implantable pacemakers and defibrillators to incorporate the chip during the equipment-manufacturing process.

Applied Digital Solutions is awaiting approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and does not expect to sell the chips in the United States until that approval is granted. The company's engineers said they expect approval later this year.

The announcement of the chip's availability created a media stir, however - not because of its potential use with pacemakers but because of its science-fiction-like potential application in human identification systems. Because the microchip and its antenna measure just 11.1 x 2.1 mm, Applied Digital Solutions said the assembly can be injected through a syringe and implanted in various locations within the body.

The tube-shaped VeriChip includes a memory that holds 128 characters of information, an electromagnetic coil for transmitting data and a tuning capacitor, all encapsulated within a silicone-and-glass enclosure. The passive RF unit, which operates at 125 kHz, is activated by moving a company-designed scanner within about a foot of the chip. Doing so excites the coil and "wakes up" the chip, enabling it to transmit data.

The chips are said to be similar to those that are already implanted in about a million dogs and cats nationwide to enable pet owners to identify and reclaim animals that have been temporarily lost. Applied Digital Solutions, which has made the pet-tracking chips for several years, says that the human chips differ mainly in the biocompatible coating that's used to keep the body from rejecting the implanted chip. The VeriChip is believed to be the first such chip designed for human identification.

Inspired by Sept. 11

In September, Applied Digital Solutions implanted its first human chip when a New Jersey surgeon, Richard Seelig, injected two of the chips into himself. He placed one chip in his left forearm and the other near the artificial hip in his right leg.

"He was motivated after he saw firefighters at the World Trade Center in September writing their Social Security numbers on their forearms with Magic Markers," Bolton said. "He thought that there had to be a more sophisticated way of doing an identification."

Applied Digital said Seelig, who serves as a medical consultant to the company, has now had the chips implanted in him for three months with no signs of rejection or infection. Ordinarily, the company said, the chips would be implanted in a doctor's office under local anesthesia.

Applied Digital's executives said the ability to inject the chips opens up a variety of RFID applications in high-security situations, as well other types of human identification systems. The chips, they said, could be implanted in young children or in adults with Alzheimer's disease, to help officials identify people who can't identify themselves. But the company is backing away from involuntary identification applications, such the tracking of prisoners or parolees. "We are advocating that this technology be totally voluntary," Bolton said.

Whether the technology will boost the market for RFID chips remains uncertain. Industry analysts had assumed that by now RFID would constitute a far larger market than its current, $900 million annual tally. A consortium of major manufacturers has sought to push the technology as a replacement for bar codes in everyday products ranging from cereal boxes to shaving cream cans, but the cost hasn't dropped low enough to make that feasible. More recently, a group led by the European Central Bank began work on embedding RFID chips in the euro bank note, but the chip category has yet to find its killer app.

Applied Digital nonetheless has high hopes for its RFID technology. The publicly held company's stock did not fare well last year, plummeting from a high of $3 a share on Feb. 7 to 11 cents per share on Sept. 17. But its per-share stock price jumped to 50 cents from 38 cents after the company announced the VeriChip.

Eventual adoption

Analysts expressed confidence that the concept would eventually be adopted but were skeptical about its immediate future. "For this to work, you are going to need a standard that everyone agrees to," said Saffo of The Institute for the Future. "Then you have to convince people to buy reading devices that may be fairly costly."

Applied Digital's engineers would not say how much the chips or handheld readers might cost. The company's reader is a proprietary unit that is required for use with the VeriChip. Some further suggested that the chip might be too large for easy adoption.

Veterinarians who have implanted the chips in dogs and cats say that the techniques used in animals are unlikely to be embraced by humans. "The needle is huge," said Dean Christopoulos, a veterinarian in Des Plaines, Ill. "It's almost as thick as your pinky."

Some engineers suggested the technology might ultimately be scaled down, making the chip's acceptance more likely. At Alien Technology Corp. (Morgan Hill, Calif.), engineers have already discussed using that company's ultrasmall RFID chips in human applications. Alien, which uses a process known as fluidic self-assembly to create chips measuring 350 x 350 microns, has demonstrated its 900-MHz technology on everyday products such as soap and shampoo bottles. The coded information can be detected and read across distances measuring almost 3 feet.

"There are companies making RFID tags that are much smaller than a couple of millimeters," said Andy Holman, director of business development for Alien Technology.

Analysts also suggested that human identification technology would be more likely to be popularized when engineers are able to integrate more memory and other features, such as global-positioning satellite units and induction-based power-recharging techniques. GPS might help find lost children and adults, they said, while larger memories would enable doctors to store vital patient information.

The concept "goes all the way back to the 1960s," said Jerry Krasner, vice president of market intelligence for American Technology International Inc.'s Embedded Forecasters Group. "What's new is the ability to store a lot of data.

"As soon as you can do that, you'll see more applications for this type of technology," he said. - eetimes.com