"There's a chip in my head" For several years in the late 1990s, Boulder Weekly editors and writers were treated to routine visits by a former Disneyland employee who insisted the company had rendered him unconscious to implant a chip in his head. He begged Boulder Weekly to pay for surgery to remove the chip, in return for the opportunity to photograph the procedure. We passed, but couldn't help but wonder what types of conspiracy theories would emerge should society ever accept the overt use of human implant technology. No matter how creepy some Americans find the prospect of implant technology, no one can stop its creation. "Technology is continually trumping the constitutional guarantees that we have," says Gray. He'd like to see protections against the misuse of such chips as they become commercially available: "Citizens could ask for a law that made it a crime to put these into a person without their permission, and to forbid, under any conditions, for the government to put these into prisoners, parolees, illegal aliens, soldiers, citizens." He's even proposed "only half joking" a "Cyborg Bill of Rights" to help ensure that "new technologies are chosen democratically and we do not have to accept every new technology that invades our freedoms." ‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹‹ Boulder Weekly September 21-27, 2000 Digital Angel Microchip implants for humans may eliminate autonomy any day - - - - - - - - - - - - by Katherine Mieszkowski and staff reporters ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Worry no more, doting parents! Whether it's your little pumpkin's first day walking home from school by herself or the millionth time you've lost her at the mall, the Babysitterª will track your sweetpea's location using a jellybean-sized microchip implant, discreetly tucked under the skin of her collarbone. You'll be able to chart her every move. What better way to give her independence, and put your mind at ease? Also available: The Constant Companionª lets you keep a watchful eye on grandma and grandpa, even when you can't be by their side; The Invisible Bodyguardª offers freedom from fear so you can enjoy the fauna and foliage when eco-tourism takes you to kidnapping-hot spots around the globe. Coming soon: The INS Border Patrollerª; the Maximum Security Guardª; the Personal Private Eyeª; the Micro-Managerª. Alas, this is not as far-fetched or as futuristic as it sounds. The whoa-dude notion of surveillance chips being installed in human beings is poised to cross over from the realm of science fiction into everyday reality, and soon. One technology with the deliciously sci-fi name of the "Digital Angel," a prototype of which will be unveiled next month, could be implanted under the skin and used to monitor not only the chip-wearer's location, but vital signs like heart rate and body temperature. Other devices, worn externally like bracelets or pagers, are already in use and invite us to embrace electronic monitoring in specific environments like a theme park, college campus or construction site for our fun, health or safety. The technology was born in Boulder, where Destron Corporation invented the microchip implant for pet and livestock identification. Unlike the Digital Angel, which evolved from animal implant technology, the Destron chips are designed transmit only a few feet to a scanner. Spying on salmon Today, the chips and a variety of imitations, are in millions of American dogs and cats. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service implants them in salmon to track their migration habits and survival trends in the Snake and Columbia Rivers. Ducts that bypass hydro-electric dams have been outfitted with scanners that collect data as the fish swim by. Although Destron never intended for chips to be implanted in humans, the company's technology led to it. "On one hand, society has a tremendous need for a practical identification system for humans," says Bob Stewart, of Boulder, who was the head of engineering for Destron before the company moved to Minneapolis in 1992. "More than a half million Americans have their identities stolen every year. On the other hand, implanting chips into humans brings up serious issues of privacy and Big Brother. It conjures images of Nazis branding Jews for easy identification." What's also disturbing is just how quickly these devices, which only recently would have been laughed off as a cyborg fantasy, are becoming accepted. Amazingly, it was but two years ago that a British cybernetics professor pulled what then seemed like a futuristic stunt: temporarily installing electronics in his arm to control his computer remotely. Now having a personal chip is becoming, well, not quite the norm but a ready possibility. Kevin Warwick, the cybernetics prof, says, "As the topic becomes more accessible in the media, people get used to the idea; it's not such a frightening thing...If it's not there this year, it's only a year or two downstream." A Japanese firm is already testing chips to track lost relatives. And the New York Times, in a nod to what its editors imagine the future might hold now that the human genome project is complete, asked several designers to suggest how we might carry around a chip encoded with our unique genetic sequence "for perfect identification in matters medical, official, criminal or otherwise." Some of the possibilities portrayed in the July 9 Sunday magazine: a "decoder" ring, an implant in the human iris to be read with a retinal scanner, even an oval-shaped "genegg" for the belly button. Stewart agrees that implant technology has an amazing future of sinister and productive applications. He disagrees, however, that it's only a few years out. "It's a bit of a stretch to say in just a few years we'll be able to track all sorts of people with Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology and read all sorts of information about them," Stewart says. "The developers of Digital Angel would like to convince investors of that. But in reality, we're talking about a significant amount of functionality in one very small space. I suspect it's going to be 10 to 15 years before we see the successful, wide-scale use of this technology." The ability to simply scan and identify pets, for example, was a long row to hoe. Destron began developing the technology in Boulder back in 1970s. Only in the mid 1990s did the technology advance to the point where veterinarians, pet owners and animal shelters trusted it enough to start buying chips and scanners. Today, however, the system works well. Lost pets are scanned. If a small glass rice-sized capsule containing a chip has been installed in the pet, it transmits a number. A coinciding number on a central registry reveals the pet owners address and phone number. But Digital Angel promoters counter critics, such as Stewart, by reminding them that technology advances exponentially. And with commercial interests hard at work to spread the gospel of human tracking and monitoring voluntarily, and for our own good, of course and others normalizing chip implantation, it might not be too soon to start preparing for a whole new silicon craze. Excuse me, but is that a chip in your ass? The power problem GPS technology already exists to track us wherever we might care to go the problem is keeping the sensor up and running, giving off signals all the time from inside of our bodies. Thus far, the biggest technological challenge is energy; a tracking chip needs a power source. Think how annoying it would be to have to plug your arm into the wall to recharge yourself like a pesky cellphone; besides, it would make it near-impossible to thwart kidnappers or retrieve lost kiddies if rescuers didn't find the missing subject before the charge died. There's also the vexing dilemma of getting the chip and its power source small enough for comfort and aesthetics. Who wants an unsightly chip bulge? Chris Hables Gray, an associate professor of computer science and the cultural study of science and technology at the University of Great Falls in Montana, says that researchers have been working to find just such a small, self-generating power source by tapping everything from body heat to the electrical pulses in the muscles. There's even been talk of putting teensy-weensy nanotechnology machines to work as miniature waterwheels in the bloodstream so the heart itself could be the power source. The heart running your chip: It's practically poetic. Dr. Daniel Man, a famous plastic surgeon in Boca Raton, Fla., holds the patent for an implantable microchip, encased in glass, with a battery he says can be recharged by radio signal. And one company claims that it has the ultimate solution to the power-source conundrum. It has a patent on "the solution," although executives won't yet reveal the technical details of how it actually works. Applied Digital Solutions didn't invent it, but purchased the patent for a "personal tracking and recovery system," which the company has dubbed Digital Angel. According to CEO Richard Sullivan, Digital Angel combines GPS wireless communications with biosensors, powered by body heat in the form of a dime-sized chip, which can be embedded in a watch, bracelet or medallion, even under your flesh should the FDA approve such an invasive thing. "It's like a live radio signal all the time," he says. Sullivan sees a $100 billion potential market for the technology, which is still under development with help from researchers at Princeton University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The company will hold a gala in New York in October to show off the prototype, and try to drum up investment to finance actual products. "They're going to use this event to stir up a lot of excitement, and will probably try to make it sound as if this is all just right around the corner," says Stewart. "It's on the horizon, but I'm skeptical that this is going to work the way they say it will anytime in the next few years." Miracle cures Considering the potential applications, should the thing actually work as the company claims it does? Just use your imagination, folks. Sullivan envisions kiddies having their own Digital Angels watching over them in case of a snatching. Or caretakers installing them in patients with Alzheimer's disease to prevent the old folks from wandering off. And just wait until the military gets a load of this one in every soldier to track not only their whereabouts, but their very mortality, in real time. No future questions about prisoners of war are they dead or alive and where are they? some 30 years after a conflict on foreign turf. The device could save the lives of employees in extremely hazardous workplaces, such as nuclear power plants. Come to think of it, a medallion worn around the neck that's powered by your very body heat doesn't seem any more invasive than some of the things that companies already do to their employees, so why not a chip in every last cube? Better still, dispense with those pesky keycards to get in and out of the office, and just have the whole thing implanted in your left butt cheek. If you're not already wondering how you and your loved ones made it this far without a single chip implant, just consider all the medical applications. Picture a system that would constantly monitor a heart disease sufferer's pulse rate or a diabetes patient's sugar levels and notify medical help when things were looking dangerous. We accept pacemakers as a necessary and important technology to extend and enhance the quality of lives. How is this any different? Sullivan brushes off concerns about privacy by promising that the chip-wearer will be able to control when he or she is, uh, switched on, although he won't yet say how exactly that will work. The Digital Angel website puts it bluntly: "The unit can be turned off by the wearer, thereby making the monitoring voluntary. It will not intrude on personal privacy except in applications applied to the tracking of criminals." Inevitable abuse Maybe so, but the potential for abuse is so ludicrously high that it's almost impossible to overstate. You can just see the Michael Douglas-Sharon Stone Hollywood version, where the jealous husband gives an opulent anniversary watch with the chip inside it to his cheating wife, so he can obsessively monitor her movements, her body temperature, the very acceleration of the pounding of her heart rate...until she figures it out, and puts the chip to work against him. To makers of tracking technologies, these Big Brother worst-case scenarios sound like the same griping that has met all sorts of other advancements we now blithely accept, like Social Security numbers, credit cards that catalog our every purchase and even e-mail. "We believe that the benefits of the technology to a parent looking for a child at a theme park or a student feeling safe walking across campus far outweigh some of those concerns," says Tom Turner, senior vice president of marketing and business development for a company called WhereNet, which makes a technology that can be used to find people or objects in a specific, local environment. "It's individual choice." So far, WhereNet has licensed its technology to companies that make bracelets worn on the wrist or pager-like devices carried in a pocket or purse. It's in use at Water World, a water theme park southeast of Boulder, and on the campuses of the University of South Florida in Tampa and the University of South Alabama in Mobile. Turner sees a future for such gadgets on cruise ships, in gated communities and at shopping malls. Stewart says once the technology is reliable, chips could be programmed to screen potential customers. Imagine a world in which one must be embedded with a microchip in order to enter major shopping malls. Imagine if the courts could program the chips in repeat-offender shoplifters to set off a buzzer if they enter stores that want to screen them out. How about chips that warn potential employers of applicants with criminal records? All of this may sound extreme today, but the potential economic ramifications could make such exercises politically popular. Americans have shown time and time again a willingness to exchange privacy and a variety of civil liberties for safety and security. A recent survey determined that the average American, for example, is subject to the scrutiny of public and private surveillance cameras installed in businesses, on highways and in a variety of public venues three times a day. Yet there's little public outcry from the public. TV executives have even managed to popularize the practice with low-budget shows in which the audience watches tape of people involved in crimes and automobile accidents. Just keep us safe Brendan Fitzgerald minces no words regarding the profit potential in products that enhance safety and security to consumers. Fitzgerald is president of Microgistics, which produces a device call WalkMate. It's to be used by college students to alert campus police if they're in danger. Remember the gang rape of a University of Colorado Student last year? What if cops could have found her while the crime was in progress? The potential, in cases like that, give some Americans warm and fuzzy feelings about Big Brother. Bring on Big Brother and let him kick the criminal element's collective ass. Fitzgerald thinks the benefits of human tracking technology are clearly greater than the risks. "If you were working in a hazardous industrial environment, you would want to know that you could push a button and have someone help you if you need help. 'I fell into the vat of boiling acid!'" The safety-first logic is hard to argue with, even when it starts to veer from help when you need it to totally transparent surveillance when you're at work. Sullivan, of Applied Digital Systems, dismisses nagging doubts about what it means to literally wire ourselves up. "By our own nature, we tend to avoid things we know the least about and gravitate towards those that we do know. Some of the things that have made the most positive contributions to our lives are the things that there are the most concern about. Like any technology, it's really in the hands of the user," he says. Translation: It's Galileo vs. the Church all over again. OK, Dr. Jekyll, you've convinced us. We're ready for our implants. Let us be the first to sign up for our very own chip body modifications. What list do we put our names on? In fact, we want our chips secured on the outside of our skin in order to show them off and impress everyone as to just how wired we've become. Surely it will be the next big thing filling the void left by the waning trendiness of tattoos, piercing, scarification. Visualize "chipification." However fashionable or discreet tracking devices might become, not everyone is titillated by the possibilities. "I think most people would be repulsed by the idea. This is just a sort of modern version of tattooing people, something that for obvious reasons the Nazis tattooed numbers on people no one proposes," says Bob Gellman, a Washington privacy consultant. "You can do anything you want voluntarily. You can tattoo a bar code on your forehead if you want." But the real question, as he sees it, is who will be able to demand that a chip be implanted in another person a parent in a child; a prison warden in an inmate; the INS in an undocumented illegal alien found in the country; an employer in an employee as a condition of being hired? A judge, tired of seeing the same shoplifters, or drunk drivers, over and over again? Isn't this illegal? "I'm sure there's a strong argument that implanting a chip in a person is unconstitutional. It would be cruel and unusual punishment," Gellman says. And for now the legal and social questions of who could turn such a chip on or off and who would have access to the information generated by such a chip is "a totally unexplored area," says Gellman, adding: "And probably one better off left unexplored." Others see the chipification of humans as all but inevitable. Professor Chris Hables Gray, a self-proclaimed "cyborgologist" and author of the forthcoming book Cyborg Citizen, says it really doesn't matter whether or not the Digital Angel flies in October. "If this company doesn't do it, someone else will," he says. And watch out when they do. "They will start implanting them in prisoners, parolees, child abusers, sex offenders and drunk drivers," he predicts. Gray says that it's been a military project for some 20 years to find a way to track every soldier on the battlefield. Remember when Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh complained of having been a part of a Gulf War experiment that implanted a chip in his butt? "McVeigh kept saying that he was being controlled by a chip in his ass," says Gray. The cyborgologist isn't saying he believes the bomber, of course, but cites circumstantial evidence that the military may have been experimenting with such tracking devices, and "if the military starts to say we will put these chips into every Marine's ass, they have no protection from that." "There's a chip in my head" For several years in the late 1990s, Boulder Weekly editors and writers were treated to routine visits by a former Disneyland employee who insisted the company had rendered him unconscious to implant a chip in his head. He begged Boulder Weekly to pay for surgery to remove the chip, in return for the opportunity to photograph the procedure. We passed, but couldn't help but wonder what types of conspiracy theories would emerge should society ever accept the overt use of human implant technology. No matter how creepy some Americans find the prospect of implant technology, no one can stop its creation. "Technology is continually trumping the constitutional guarantees that we have," says Gray. He'd like to see protections against the misuse of such chips as they become commercially available: "Citizens could ask for a law that made it a crime to put these into a person without their permission, and to forbid, under any conditions, for the government to put these into prisoners, parolees, illegal aliens, soldiers, citizens." He's even proposed "only half joking" a "Cyborg Bill of Rights" to help ensure that "new technologies are chosen democratically and we do not have to accept every new technology that invades our freedoms." © 2000 Boulder Weekly. All Rights Reserved.
