UPDATE: Looks like we were late on this one. The RFID dog tags have already been cloned. Twice! Here’s the poop on it.
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And what happens when the soldier comes home. Will it be removed? Will they have to keep them in because they might be unexpectedly recalled as they’re doing now when enlistments don’t keep up? Will they have to have them until they are too old to be recalled? What happens when they’re inevitably hacked and their identities stolen a week after the program starts?
Implanted Chips in Our Troops?
A Florida company wants to get under the skin of 1.4 million U.S. servicemen and women.
VeriChip Corp, based in Delray Beach, Fla., and described by the D.C. Examiner as “one of the most aggressive marketers of radio frequency identification chips,” is hoping to convince the Pentagon to allow them to insert the chips, known as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips under the skin of the right arms of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen to enable them to scan an arm and obtain that person’s identity and medical history. The chips would replace the legendary metal dog tags that have been worn by U.S. military personnel since 1906.
In an e-mail to the Examiner, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wrote: “If that is what the Defense Department has in mind for our troops in Iraq, there are many questions that need answers. “What checks and balances, safeguards, and congressional oversight would there be?” Leahy asked. “What less-invasive alternatives are there? What information would be entered on the chips, and could it endanger our soldiers or be intercepted by the enemy?”
Makes me think back to days of inventing devices to be used against colonial troops from Western lands. So easy to turn imperial technology back against the “blimps”.
So, you either cop the spec for these devices off the Internet — or take a “captured” rfid chip and reprogram details [or just leave it alone] — and implant one into a suicide mission volunteer.
After we’re a few years into these things being “normal”, the typical guard on duty at, say, some American military barracks won’t think twice about passing someone through security. The chip says he’s OK.
BOOM!
These VeriChip guys just won’t give up. Nobody wants these damn things in their bodies. Of course, that blows their entire business model (well, except for putting ID’s in cattle and pets).
It looks like Verichip is getting desperate for a big sale of human implanted RFIDs. Why not lobby Congress and the Pentagon to mandate them? That will help generate a lot of sales and it doesn’t matter if the recipients want it or not.
I think is ok to “chip” active and reserve military personel. The advatages of this are endless. But they should also be given the option for removal upon their seperation from the military.
and why put in on an arm only…I mean, going to Iraq gives you a big chance of coming back in a crate…you wouldn’t want to return with mixed up limbs…
Put them on every piece of limb and torso too…
Please send all complaints to the unamerican activies committee.
Let me get this straight, a private corporation wants to perform invasive surgery on 1.4 million people and insert their product? They are actively lobbying the goverment to mandate this for military personel? WOW, talk about corporate greed and a complete lack of any sort of responsible ethic.
The mere fact that they are even proposing this astounds me. Humans are not ‘cattle’ to be branded. Whats next. “After years of chipping the military we have found no problems, and recommend that we think of the children now and tag them at birth so we dont loose any.” That is exactly where this will lead to.
Leahy should ask whats wrong with dogtags. They have worked for 100 years now. Senators who even contemplate agreement with this are just showing were their true alliances lay. Asking questions to appear important and knowledgable just demonstrates the sheer audacity of what is going on in congress. Oversight indeed, exactly what will happen and exactly what is not needed.
#3 – Yeah the advantages are endless, depending on how you look at these so called benefits. Guess what, the disadvantages will always remain one step ahead of the endless. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, in case you didn’t hear that.
What is to stop a sophisticated enemy from designing a missle systerm that hones in on these RFID tags. This is all the soldiers need.. a chip implanted in them that continually broadcasts “Here I am”…”Here I am”……
I happen to be editing a book on RFID.
Being a “closed system” there is no need to follow the RFID industry standards, they can create a new, proprietary system. I’d assume the tags used in troops would only respond to a specific code….pinging the implanted tags with random RF ain’t gonna make them chirp. Additionally, they would have to be HF tags, meaning they work at distances of about three feet max. (These tags are not really doing RF…they are inductively-coupled via a magnetic field generated by the reader, and distances are very limited.)
Meaning, implantable tags are useless for position tracking. Heck, we could litter the battlefield with dummy tags, in a high-tech version of the dummies on parachutes that ‘invaded’ at Normandy.
I don’t know if they’re a good idea or not in troops, but let’s not give this technlogy any capabilities it doesn’t have.
Olo Baggins of Bywater,
While the limitations of the RFID system you describe may be true TODAY, there is nothing that says that new technology can’t “enhance” the ability to track or imitate these tags in the near future. Never underestimate what a dedicated group of individuals can do especially when it comes to cracking technology!
Steve
Steve…it’s physics, and it ain’t gonna change in our lifetimes. 🙂
(BTW I was mistaken….these would be LF tags…120 kHz or so)
Magnetic flux lines cannot cover any significant distance beyond a couple feet, and that’s what LF tags use. They’re called “RF”ID but in reality these LF tags are magnetic devices, essentially acting like the secondary windings of transformers.
When we get into UHF tags, we’re talking 30 feet based on standards and probably a lot longer with well-designed homebrew stuff. But at LF, there really is no way to make the tags chirp from any meaningful distance.
Also note that the DoD is one probably the primary instigator in the rise of RFID. If you supply materials to DoD, you have tagged those materials. The military is using them everywhere….tags that CAN be read from distances.
Olo — I feel for your confidence in the DoD; but, let’s add two collateral comments:
1. There’s probably more work resulting worldwide from the Walmart RFID mandate than the DoD. That spreads experience around the globe, as well — right from the beginning.
2. I participated in the study that convinced the DoD to mandate bar codes — too long ago to want to remember the exact date. We ran 10,000 parcels through an inventory/shipping system that gave us 100% results in commercial installations.
The DoD got 99.97%. They lost 3 parcels!
If it is technologically possible to do something, you can be assured it will be done by somebody, somewhere. And if that “Something” is a relatively new concept (ie. electronically tagging people), it is even more attractive to companies who see a wide-open, untapped market, and an opportunity to be the visionary pioneer who corners the market and reaps the riches.
There may be public resistance, but “it is useless to resist us.”
You can be sure people will find ways of detecting them. And then it’ll make a great way to find US troops on the battlefield.
Another way to bolster enlistments… get all the “mark of the beast” crowd to ensure that none of their sons & daughters ever join the military.
How many on active duty will refuse on religious grounds?
How many reservists will fight being called-up to active duty if it requires being “chipped”?
3 I think is ok to “chip” active and reserve military personel.
You first…
The dog tag system has worked for so long, whats wrong with it now. If its the fact that they need more information than the dog tag can provide than chip the dog tag itself. I have no problem if it can be remove and such.
This police offcie in New Jersey is sure glad he had the Verichip!! Seeing as it helped SAVE HIS LIFE!!!
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_4140686?source=rss
Hey Mike Voice, when you join the military, you do what they say, no questions asked. You don’t have the same rights as the general population, so yes they will have to get “chipped” if thats the order. I would not want one myself, but I’m not in the military, so its not germain to the argument. If I was and they said it was required, then I guess I would have to.
Well it was not required for the Police Officer in New Jersey, but he sure as heck is appreciating the FACT he had the Verichip when he got into his accident and was rushed to the Hospital’s ER in an unconcious state! Saved his life!!!
Why wouldn’t a medicalert tag do the same thing? You can even get them with flash memory now.
Medic Alert bracelets easily fall off and are not linked to a medical database in which you approve of or data entried yourself. Also, the primary segment group meant for the Verichip are Alzheimer patients and those with cognitive diseases. It just so happens this group of people often take off watches and other jewelry (such as bracelets) because they feel they are constraining them and they do so without even knowing as this is one of the symptoms of their illness unfortunateley.
19 Hey Mike Voice, when you join the military, you do what they say, no questions asked.
Do tell… 🙂
That is why people on active duty were refusing to get the anthrax vacine:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020701/cummings
The Pentagon announced its controversial plan to forcibly inoculate all 2.4 million troops against anthrax in 1997. Almost immediately, military members began to protest, based in part on the revelation that approximately 300,000 servicemembers had been given experimental drugs without their knowledge in the Gulf War.
It all adds up, over time…
They told soldiers it was safe to stand in trenches during A-bomb tests.
Nobody in the field knew Agent Orange was a problem.
Gulf War syndrome?
And they still expect people to salute and shout “Yes, sir! Thank You, Sir!” when they come around with a needle?
19 I would not want one myself, but I’m not in the military, so its not germain to the argument.
In other words: “They should have thought about that before they volunteered?”
I have family members and friends serving in the military and they are very much in favor of the Verichip. They take a look at how the Verichip helped save the Police Officer’s life in New Jersey and recognize the Verichip would very much so do the same for an injured soldier coming off the battlefield.
So all that’s needed to gun down an American soldier is an automated gun attached to a large Antenna?
So by your description, only the incompetent really need a chip but cops and soldiers clamor for it? Your posts #22 and #24 clash. Soldiers enter and approve their medical records? Unless things have changed mightily since I served that is not the case either. You come across as an industry shill, sorry.
Money maker, and just how many of these “chips” do you have implanted?
There will always be cases where a medical alert bracelet or similar warning devise will fall off. Shoot, even an arm may be mutilated and the chip unreadable. In the general scheme of things, they just don’t fall off all that often. BTW, my wife is an RN and in unaware of lost medical alert bracelet problem from any of her stints in ER.
True, not all companies are linked to the same data base. But that has more to do with fraud and fly-by-night companies selling medical alert bracelets. The same thing will occur with the different RF implants. There will always be that special someone who has a chip that can’t be read by the hospital scanner. In fact, there are currently only 19 hospitals even equipped to read the implant. (see your own article)
That police officer? The same information could have been contained on a bracelet. He was a diabetic, and while this indeed important information, would have been quickly found in a comatose patient blood draw. It is SOP to check sugar levels in a comatose patient admitted to ER. It would be revealed by the conscious patient.
Hmmm, with the update it seems like my idea of chipped dog tags is a flop though that doesnt rule out memory by contact (mag strip or rom).
Actually, a chipped dog tag with internal flash memory could plug into a medical terminal and deliver far more information than could be encoded into an RFID tag.
#29, as well, there can be information printed on the dog tag that is easily read. When your scanner isn’t working or the batteries are dieing, the written info just might make all the difference.
A “smart” dog tag is probably the short term answer, but implantable chips make a helluva lot of sense, once we get past the hysteria and misinformation.
If you think the enemy can find people or track them or aim bombs with implanted verichips then you don’t really understand this particular RFID technology. This isn’t the same stuff used in passports or by Walmart or on packages at department stores. LF tags work in an entirely different fashion than the UHF tags used on packages or passports…they can NEVER work beyond a couple feet. For the enemy this isn’t a matter of figuring out how to build a better antenna or preamp to read them from a mile away, it’s a matter of overcoming the physical laws of magnetic fields in free air. For details look into the theory of transformer coupling and flux.
In addition, anybody attempting to sniff out a LF RFID tag on the battlefied would be EASILY detected at a distance.