VeriChip: RFID Microchip Implants for Humans

by URI DOWBENKO

First it was cattle. Then it was pets. Now it's Mexicans.

Will Americans be next?

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=74&contentid=900&page=1

Bio-chip implant arrives for cashless transactions
Announcement at global security confab unveils syringe-injectable ID microchip

Posted: November 21, 2003
7:42 p.m. Eastern

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35766


Informant: Jack Topel

ZDNet

07/28/04

The US Federal Drug Administration issued a ruling overnight that essentially begins a final review process that will determine whether hospitals can use VeriChip's RFID systems to identify patients and/or permit relevant hospital staff to access medical records, said Angela Fulcher, vice president of marketing and sales at the Florida-based company. ... So far, most of the sales have been outside the United States. Along with its attorney general's implant, Mexico has evaluated the chips as a way to better identify children in the event of a kidnapping. The Baja Beach Club in Spain has used them as electronic wallets to buy drinks. Sales have also taken place in Russia, Switzerland, Venezuela and Colombia. ... But FN Manufacturing, a South Carolina gun maker, is evaluating the technology for 'smart guns,' which contain sensor-activated grips so that only their owners can fire them...

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/0,2000061744,39154693,00.htm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

http://www.canada.com/technology/story.html?id=e061566b-bd5b-4fb8-858e-ffb59d17f7b6


Informant: Vince Bradley

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=25600100


Informant: Anna Webb

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 19, 2004

Chip implants won't help crime wracked country, could make things worse

"Promoting implanted RFID devices as a security measure is downright 'loco,'" says Katherine Albrecht, Founder and Director of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering). "Advertising you've got a chip in your arm that opens important doors is an invitation to kidnapping and mutilation."

That's Albrecht's response to the announcement by Mexican Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha that he and 160 other Mexican officials were implanted with Verichip RFID devices. Reportedly, the chips allow the implanted employees to access secure areas of the Attorney General's headquarters.

Albrecht surmises that Macedo de la Concha made the ill advised revelation in the wake of citizen protests against corruption in the crime wracked country. "Selling the idea of RFID chipping as the solution to rampant crime may be politically expedient, but it's dangerous misinformation. He could encourage the Mexican people to seek the implants thinking RFID is their ticket to security. RFID implants may offer the illusion of safety from kidnappers, but in reality, they put their users at peril."

While there are promises of future implantable RFID devices that could be globally trackable even in remote areas, the read range of the VeriChip devices currently marketed is only a few inches, Albrecht explains. While that small read range could be critical to someone desperate to access a secure area, it would do little to locate a kidnap victim hidden miles away from reader devices.

Ironically, rather than protecting their wearers from kidnapping, implantable security devices may actually turn their wearers into tempting targets for Mexico's notorious kidnapping gangs, especially as the chips migrate to serve as payment devices, says Albrecht. "What could be more inviting to kidnappers than a chip that offers access to secure areas or someone's bank account? If criminals want to get ahold of a chip, they will naturally try to nab a person wearing one."

The potentially gruesome implications of being probed for an implanted chip are obvious, said Albrecht. She points out that at least one Mexican kidnapping gang, a group nicknamed "el chip" for its interest in RFID implants, is focused on the technology. According to recent reports, its members have stripped kidnapping victims and demanded to be told where they have chips implanted in their bodies.

Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) is a grass-roots consumer group fighting retail surveillance schemes since 1999, and item-level RFID tagging since 2002. With thousands of members in all 50 U.S. states and over 30 countries worldwide, CASPIAN seeks to educate consumers about marketing strategies that invade their privacy and to encourage privacy-conscious shopping habits across the retail spectrum.

For more information, see

http://www.spychips.com and http://www.nocards.org

See our campaigns at:

http://www.BoycottGillette.com
http://www.BoycottBenetton.org

We encourage you to duplicate and distribute this message to others.

What goes around comes around. The government and ruling class of Mexico are very oppresive toward the poor working class. All of the actors and commercials on TV and the movies have whites as if the country were 100% with no Indians or Mestizos.

The people have to leave the country to earn anything above 5 dollars a day. And even at five dollars a day the cannot find a job. The ruling class does not even allow Mexicans to vote in their Presidential Elections once they live in the USA. Other nations do not do this.

There is no unemployment insurance. There is no Workmens Compensation law that amounts to a thing. There is no Social Security. There is no justice.

So the rich will have to continue to worry about kidnappings. This does not surprise me.

----- Original Message -----

From: "Unknown"

Mexico's attorney general has taken the unusual step of having an "anti-kidnap" chip stuck in his arm and then making the fact public - thereby ensuring that anyone lifting señor Rafael Macedo de la Concha will be certain to remove said limb at their earliest convenience.

Mexico is suffering a kidnapping epidemic, with up to 3,000 people abducted every year. Thousands of the country's citizens recently took to the streets to demand action.

Accordingly, Concha announced that several senior members of his staff plus 160 employees at a new crime database centre have also received the chips, which allegedly "serve both as an identity device and a tracking mechanism should they be kidnapped", the Guardian reports.

Concha did, however, admit that the principal role of the system was to restrict access to the database centre in an attempt to fight widespread corruption - considered a major factor in the authorities' lack of success in tackling the kidnap problem.

One-armed bandido

Which makes sense, because there is no indication as to exactly how the chip can be "tracked", nor any evidence to suggest that it can be tracked at all. Furthermore, the widespread publicity surrounding the chips has provoked one gang - known as "el chip" - to strip its victims and aggressively demand if they are tagged. Presumably, once they have accrued enough funds from their illicit activities, el chip will buy a chip scanner and save everyone a lot of time and needless upset.

The issue of permanently tagging people remains controversial - and not just because of its questionable value, as certainly applies to the Mexican deployment. In 2002, US outfit Applied Digital Solutions' VeriChip RFID tagged one Jacobs family. As we reported at the time, Applied Digital Solutions "want people to accept it as natural on the basis that's it's entirely positive, and everybody should have it done. The security potential is substantial, and the privacy issues come clanking along behind."

They certainly do. The public's response to RFID technology has been at best lukewarm, at worst hostile. Punters don't even like RFID tags being attached to goods in shops - as the cases of Wal-Mart and German retail giant Metro prove - let alone implanted into their arms.

Even where the apparent benefits seem to justify such tagging of humans, the response to the idea is generally one of revulsion. Kevin Warwick - aka "Captain Cyborg" - felt the full force of public opprobrium when he announced his intention to chip an 11-year-old in response to the abduction and murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

Mercifully, nothing came of Warwick's plan. In any case - and as many suggested at the time - had Wells and Chapman themselves been tagged it would have served only for an instant identification of their bodies. The same can be said of Rafael Macedo de la Concha's and his "anti-kidnap" chip. ®


Informant: mrosario

by Jo Best

July 08 2004

Japanese authorities decide tracking is best way to protect kids

The rights and wrongs of RFID-chipping human beings have been debated since the tracking tags reached the technological mainstream. Now, school authorities in the Japanese city of Osaka have decided the benefits outweigh the disadvantages and will now be chipping children in one primary school.

The tags will be read by readers installed in school gates and other key locations to track the kids' movements.

The chips will be put onto kids' schoolbags, name tags or clothing in one Wakayama prefecture school. Denmark's Legoland introduced a similar scheme last month to stop young children going astray.

RFID is more commonly found in supermarket and other retailers' supply chains, however, companies are now seeking more innovative ways to derive value from the tracking technology. US airline Delta recently announced it would be using RFID to track travellers' luggage.

http://networks.silicon.com/lans/0,39024663,39122042,00.htm

Copyright 2004 Cnet Networks Inc. All Rights Reserved


Informant: Anna Webb

Im November erste Anwendung in 'freier Wildbahn'

08.07.2004 16:23 | von silicon.de

In einem 'RFID Innovation Center' können Lieferanten und Partner des Metro-Konzerns ab sofort Hard- und Software der Technologie unter realistischen Bedingungen testen. Im November sollen dann Paletten und Transportverpackungen der ersten Lieferanten mit RFID-Chips (Radio Frequency Identification) ausgestattet werden. Bis Januar 2006, so plant der Konzern, sollen 250 Filialen mit den Funkchips arbeiten, 2007 sollen es 800 sein.

Unter den Partnern der ersten Stunde werden unter anderem Oetker, Nestle, Procter & Gamble und Henkel sein. Bis Ende 2007 sollen dann alle zu Metro gehörenden Geschäfte in Deutschland - darunter Real, Media Markt, Saturn und Praktiker – auf das neue System umgestellt sein.

Bereits jetzt können die Unternehmen in dem 1300 Quadratmeter großen Innovationszentrum bei Neuss lernen, mit der Technologie umzugehen. In den fünf Bereichen der Testanlage werden verschiedenen Einkaufssituationen simuliert, zum Beispiel ein Lebensmittelmarkt und ein Bekleidungsshop. Er demonstriert die RFID-Anwendung vom Regal über die Umkleidekabine bis zur Kasse. "Mit der Eröffnung dieses Zentrums lösen wird unser Versprechen ein, unsere Partner beim Roll-Out der Technologie intensiv zu unterstützen", sagte Metro-Sprecher Zygmunt Mierdorf.

Metro treibt den Einsatz von RFID trotz teilweise massiver Proteste von Datenschützern voran. Sie fürchten, dass durch die Funkchips die Kunden und deren Konsumverhalten überwacht werden könnten. Um solche Bedenken zu zerstreuen, will der Konzern an den Kassen "Deactivatoren" anbringen. Hält der Kunde die Ware an dieses Gerät, überschreibt es den 30-stelligen Code auf den RFID-Chips mit Nullen und soll so die mögliche Nachverfolgung einzelner Packungen unmöglich machen.

http://www.silicon.de/nl.php?id=181593

Quelle: Stoppschild.de Meldungen

By Josh McHugh

I'm in a supermarket called the Extra Future Store in Rheinberg, Germany, 40 kilometers north of Düsseldorf, jonesing for a bit of Philadelphia cream cheese. I feed my request into the touchscreen console on my shopping cart, and up pops a map showing the optimal path to the dairy section. I steer over and grab a box - regular in name but far smarter than the average cream cheese. The package carries a computer chip that talks to a 2-millimeter-thin pad lining the shelf under the box. When I pick up the cheese, sensors in the pad notify the store's database that the box has been removed. I exchange the plain for the mit Kräuter (with herbs) then, wracked with indecision, snag the low-fat version. It turns out it's not really all that low-fat anyhow, so I put it back down. My waffling will produce a flurry of data back at Kraft Foods headquarters. The company, which gets this information in return for subsidizing the smart shelf and the microchips attached to the packages, will use the data to analyze my behavior. The marketing department will likely draw some kind of conclusion from my skittishness - a hint that maybe "low-fatness" is too Spartan a theme for a hedonistic schmear anyway. Of course, they'll also have serious insight into my personal shopping habits.

.....The star of the show is the radio frequency identification chip - a piece of circuitry about the size of a grain of sand. Thanks to the coordinated efforts of the world's biggest retailers and manufacturers, not to mention the persistence of former lipstick marketer Kevin Ashton, these little tags are about to infiltrate the world of commerce.

Depending who you ask, RFID tags constitute

1. the best thing to happen to manufacturing since the cog.

2. the biggest threat to personal privacy since the crowbar.

3. the near-exact fulfillment of the Book of Revelation's description of the mark of the beast.

There's a compelling argument for each of these perspectives - including number three.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.07/shoppers.html?tw=wn_tophead_6


Peace - Anna

Alex Jones' Prison Planet/Paul Joseph Watson | July 1 2004

Microsoft's MSN Money website is currently running a poll asking its readers if they would voluntarily have an RFID tracking chip implanted in their body.

To the majority of us with a shred of common sense this would be like asking, would you like a bullet to be fired into your brain? However, the website couches the question in positive semantics by stating, 'The radio frequency chips are becoming more popular. But would you put one in your body?'

The rest of the piece states, "Some retailers love the idea of radio frequency identification chips, which they can use to easily track merchandise. Wal-Mart (WMT, news, msgs), for instance, wants its suppliers to tag items shipped to the giant retailer.

But there are other uses of RFID that have some people worried. Passports will soon have some RFID ability, which means authorities could track your movements around an airport. There's even talk of having RFID chips placed under people's skin, possibly encoded with items like their work security pass."

Rather disturbing is that fact that at time of writing, only 81 percent are against the notion. That means almost two in ten people want a microchip in their body allowing the government to track their movements. This is vomit-inducing. Please and vote no to send a message to these people that Big Brother is not 'cool' and implantable microchips are the modern day concentration camp tattoo.

By pure coincidence (ahem) IBM, the company behind Verichip, the major retailer of implantable chips, also ran the cataloging system used by the Nazis to store information on Jews in Hitler Germany.
http://www.guerrillanews.com/ibm/
Something tells me we should be a tad more concerned about that than who's going to win American Idol.


Informant: m macleod