[privacy] Microchip Implants Raise Privacy Concern

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () computerbytesman com>]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070721/D8QH34P80.html
 
Microchip Implants Raise Privacy Concern
Jul 21, 12:19 PM (ET)
By TODD LEWAN
CityWatcher.com, a provider of surveillance equipment, attracted little
notice itself - until a year ago, when two of its employees had
glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennas embedded in their
forearms. 


The "chipping" of two workers with RFIDs - radio frequency identification
tags as long as two grains of rice, as thick as a toothpick - was merely a
way of restricting access to vaults that held sensitive data and images for
police departments, a layer of security beyond key cards and clearance
codes, the company said. 


"To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques,"
Sean Darks, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based company, said. He
compared chip implants to retina scans or fingerprinting. "There's a reader
outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it
opens the door." 


Innocuous? Maybe. 


But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with
electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the
proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their ability
to erode privacy in the digital age. 


To some, the microchip was a wondrous invention - a high-tech helper that
could increase security at nuclear plants and military bases, help
authorities identify wandering Alzheimer's patients, allow consumers to buy
their groceries, literally, with the wave of a chipped hand. 


To others, the notion of tagging people was Orwellian, a departure from
centuries of history and tradition in which people had the right to go and
do as they pleased, without being tracked, unless they were harming someone
else. 


Chipping, these critics said, might start with Alzheimer's patients or Army
Rangers, but would eventually be suggested for convicts, then parolees, then
sex offenders, then illegal aliens - until one day, a majority of Americans,
falling into one category or another, would find themselves electronically
tagged. 


The concept of making all things traceable isn't alien to Americans. Thirty
years ago, the first electronic tags were fixed to the ears of cattle, to
permit ranchers to track a herd's reproductive and eating habits. In the
1990s, millions of chips were implanted in livestock, fish, dogs, cats, even
racehorses. 


...

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