Human Microchips General Interest
03/03/2006
Many businesses for security reasons now have badges that are read by a scanner allowing access into a building. All it takes is a quick swipe of the card to get into where you want to go. But soon, this technology may no longer be in your pocket, but in your hand.
Small microchips called radio frequency identifiers are being inserted into people's hands and can be tracked by receivers allowing those monitoring to know exactly what you're doing. Sounds Sci-Fi? It’s not...it's now reality.
In the Seattle area more than eight people have had RFID chips put into their hands since March of 2005. One man from Bellingham uses the RFID chips to open his apartment, his car door and start his computer. He’s had two inserted within the past year, one in his right hand...another in his left.
"It didn't hurt at all. I had a little bit of numbing put in just before, so I didn't feel anything before, during or after” said Amal Graaftra. "I don't even feel it and often I forget I even have them."
Doctors use a hypodermic device to insert the RFID chip under the skin. But, there are those speaking out against receiving RFID chips, because they say it can lead to the public losing their rights.
Liz McIntyre, co-author of Spychips; How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move With RFID says, "The unique numbering of human beings is a pre-cursor to monitoring human beings and of course once you can monitor human beings, you can control human beings and I don't think any of us want to be tracked, monitored and controlled."
Whatever your thought on this issue, the fact is that this technology is here. No longer a subject of the future, taboo or not, now in the present, we must face a world with new technologies.