As the AP will report, a series of research articles spanning more than a decade found that mice and rats injected with glass-encapsulated RFID transponders developed malignant, fast-growing, lethal cancers in up to 1% to 10% of cases. The tumors originated in the tissue surrounding the microchips and often grew to completely surround the devices, the researchers said.

Albrecht first became aware of the microchip-cancer link when she and her “Spychips” co-author, Liz McIntyre, were contacted by a pet owner whose dog had died from a chip-induced tumor. Albrecht then found medical studies showing a causal link between microchip implants and cancer in other animals. Before she brought the research to the AP’s attention, none of the studies had received widespread public notice. A four-month AP investigation turned up additional documents, several of which had been published before VeriChip’s parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, sought FDA approval to market the implant for humans. The VeriChip received FDA approval in 2004 under the watch of then Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson who later joined the board of the company.

Under FDA policy, it would have been VeriChip’s responsibility to bring the adverse studies to the FDA’s attention, but VeriChip CEO Scott Silverman claims the company was unaware of the research. Albrecht expressed skepticism that a company like VeriChip, whose primary business is microchip implants, would be unaware of relevant studies in the published literature. “For Mr. Silverman not to know about this research would be negligent. If he did know about these studies, he certainly had an incentive to keep them quiet,” said Albrecht. “Had the FDA known about the cancer link, they might never have approved his company’s product.”

Since gaining FDA approval, VeriChip has aggressively targeted diabetic and dementia patients, and recently announced that it had chipped 90 Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers in Florida. Employees in the Mexican Attorney General’s Office, workers in a U.S. security firm, and club-goers in Europe have also been implanted.

Albrecht expressed concern for those who have received a chip implant, urging them to get the devices removed as soon as possible. “These new revelations change everything,” she said. “Why would anyone take the risk of a cancer chip in their arm?”

“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.

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, pets, even racehorses. Microchips are now fixed to car windshields as toll-paying devices, on “contactless” payment cards (Chase’s “Blink,” or MasterCard’s “PayPass”). They’re embedded in Michelin tires, library books, passports and, unbeknownst to many consumers, on a host of individual items at Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

But CityWatcher.com employees weren’t appliances or pets: They were people, made scannable. “It was scary that a government contractor that specialized in putting surveillance cameras on city streets was the first to incorporate this technology in the workplace,” says Liz McIntyre, co-author of “Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID.” Darks, the CityWatcher.com executive, said his employees volunteered to be chipped. “You would think that we were going around putting chips in people by force,” he told a reporter, “and that’s not the case at all.” Yet, within days of the company’s announcement, civil libertarians and Christian conservatives joined to excoriate the microchip’s implantation in people. “Ultimately,” says Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate who specializes in consumer education and RFID technology, “the fear is that the government or your employer might someday say, ‘Take a chip or starve.”‘

Some critics saw the implants as the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy that describes an age of evil in which humans are forced to take the “Mark of the Beast” on their bodies, to buy or sell anything. Others saw it as a big step toward the creation of a Big-Brother society. “We’re really on the verge of creating a surveillance society in America, where every movement, every action - some would even claim, our very thoughts - will be tracked, monitored, recorded and correlated,” says Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C.

In design, the tag is simple: A medical-grade glass capsule holds a silicon computer chip, a copper antenna and a “capacitor” that transmits data stored on the chip when prompted by an electromagnetic reader. Implantations are quick, relatively simple procedures. After a local anesthetic is administered, a large-gauge, hypodermic needle injects the chip under the skin on the back of the arm, midway between the elbow and the shoulder. John Halamka, an emergency physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston got chipped two years ago, “so that if I was ever in an accident, and arrived unconscious or incoherent at an emergency ward, doctors could identify me and access my medical history quickly.” (A chipped person’s medical profile can be continuously updated, since the information is stored on a database accessed via the Internet.) But it’s also clear to Halamka that there are consequences to having an implanted identifier. “My friends have commented to me that I’m ‘marked’ for life, that I’ve lost my anonymity. And to be honest, I think they’re right.”

Indeed, as microchip proponents and detractors readily agree, Americans’ mistrust of microchips and technologies like RFID runs deep. Many wonder:

• Do the current chips have global positioning transceivers that would allow the government to pinpoint a person’s exact location, 24-7? (No; the technology doesn’t yet exist.)
• But could a tech-savvy stalker rig scanners to video cameras and film somebody each time they entered or left the house? (Quite easily, though not cheaply. Currently, readers cost $300 and up.)
• What’s the average lifespan of a microchip? (About 10-15 years.) What if you get tired of it before then - can it be easily, painlessly removed? (Short answer: No.)
• How about thieves? Could they make their own readers, aim them at unsuspecting individuals, and surreptitiously pluck people’s IDs out of their arms? (Yes. There’s even a name for it - “spoofing.”)

The company that makes implantable microchips for humans, VeriChip Corp., of Delray Beach, Fla., concedes that’s a problem - even as it markets its radio tag and its portal scanner as imperatives for high-security buildings, such as nuclear power plants. “To grab information from radio frequency products with a scanning device is not hard to do,” Scott Silverman, the company’s chief executive, says. However, “the chip itself only contains a unique, 16-digit identification number. The relevant information is stored on a database.”

VeriChip Corp., whose parent company has been selling radio tags for animals for more than a decade, has sold 7,000 microchips worldwide, of which about 2,000 have been implanted in humans. The company’s present push: tagging of “high-risk” patients - diabetics and people with heart conditions or Alzheimer’s disease. In an emergency, hospital staff could wave a reader over a patient’s arm, get an ID number, and then, via the Internet, enter a company database and pull up the person’s identity and medical history. To doctors, a “starter kit” - complete with 10 hypodermic syringes, 10 VeriChips and a reader - costs $1,400. To patients, a microchip implant means a $200, out-of-pocket expense to their physician. Presently, chip implants aren’t covered by insurance companies, Medicare or Medicaid.

For almost two years, the company has been offering hospitals free scanners, but acceptance has been limited. According to the company, 515 hospitals have pledged to take part in the VeriMed network, yet only 100 have actually been equipped and trained to use the system. Some wonder why they should abandon noninvasive tags such as MedicAlert, a low-tech bracelet that warns paramedics if patients have serious allergies or a chronic medical condition. “Having these things under your skin instead of in your back pocket - it’s just not clear to me why it’s worth the inconvenience,” says Westhues.

Silverman responds that an implanted chip is “guaranteed to be with you. It’s not a medical arm bracelet that you can take off if you don’t like the way it looks…” In fact, microchips can be removed from the body - but it’s not like removing a splinter. The capsules can migrate around the body or bury themselves deep in the arm. When that happens, a sensor X-ray and monitors are needed to locate the chip, and a plastic surgeon must cut away scar tissue that forms around the chip.

The relative permanence is a big reason why Marc Rotenberg, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is suspicious about the motives of the company, which charges $20 a year for customers to keep one its database a record of blood type, allergies, medications, driver’s license data and living-will directives. For $80 a year, it will keep an individual’s full medical history.

However, those that have introduced the technology state that less than one-fifth of their customers have followed suit. David Sommer, vice president of e-business and software solutions at CompTIA, said the research reflected the current RFID market, which he said had welcomed the wireless system but also faced financing problems and a shortage in the skilled workforce. “Rosy forecasts about rapid and widespread adoption have given way to the reality of dealing with a technology whose broader deployment has been challenged by equipment and tagging costs,” he concluded.

A number of uses for RFID have recently been announced, including its implementation in a sushi restaurant and to monitor handwashing in healthcare facilities. TUV Product Service, part of the TÜV SÜD Group of companies with 1bn Euros turnover, in excess of 9,500 employees and 500 locations worldwide, is a leading producer of Compliance and Assurance Solutions for the RFID sector. Please contact us (info@tuvps.co.uk) for further information.

But there is a gap between talk and action. Few people have bought the GPS or wireless tracking devices that are already on the market. We send a social signal when we reject the distant-oversight hardware. We admit we are scared of the surveillance world. We confess that we can’t see any landmarks, as events push us deeply into that world. [more]

Fund them only with cash, and don’t “register” my account with the MBTA. And since I don’t need a monthly flat-price pass, I’ve gone ahead and obtained TWO cards, so I can mix it up. Use one for going inbound, for instance, and the other for going outbound. That way no one can even prove that the same person made both legs of the trip. This greatly reduces the quantity of information they can collect. The MBTA system doesn’t know when or where you get off the subway, but by using the same card twice it’s easy enough for them to make an educated guess. If a card pays a fare at station A and another at station B two hours later, it’s a good bet that B is where this person got off the first time. Furthermore, he probably returned to station A, and he probably lives near there. That’s a lot of information. I’d rather mix it up so they only get one data point. They won’t know if A is where I come from or where I go to.

There are some ways this scheme could fail. “They” could surveil me at the turnstile, and then associate my face with the system’s record of which card was presented at that same time. They could mine their data looking for repeated instances of some card X being used exactly once, followed by another card Y also being used exactly once. If a pattern appears for two cards X and Y, they can conclude that the same person holds both cards. Or they could simply search or arrest me and discover both cards. But regardless, this is definitely an upgrade over “Hello, my name is Bob Q. Subject, and this is the card with which I’ll create exhaustive records of all my travel from this day forth.”

P.S. Anyone who makes the argument about “if you’re doing nothing wrong, what do you have to hide?” deserves to be pimp-slapped.

RFID fare cards for the Boston subway, for you out-of-towners

The measures are still under Congressional discussion.

Local News Channel KENS5 broadcast a report on the proposals from San Antonio airport.