Wealthy Mexicans, terrified of soaring kidnapping rates, are spending thousands of dollars to implant tiny transmitters under their skin so satellites can help find them tied up in a safe house or stuffed in the trunk of a car.
Kidnapping jumped almost 40 percent between 2004 and 2007 in Mexico according to official statistics. Mexico ranks with conflict zones like Iraq and Colombia as among the worst countries for abductions.
The Xega company injects the crystal-encased chip, the size and shape of a grain of rice, into clients’ bodies with a syringe. A transmitter then sends signals via satellite to pinpoint the location of a person in distress.
The chips cost $4,000 plus an annual fee of $2,200…
Xega sees kidnapping as a growth industry and is planning to expand its services next year to Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.
We’ve discussed chipping before as likely under more and more repressive governments in the U.S. and elsewhere. This offers an entirely different scenario.
I can see people getting chipped as a status symbol. In fact, there will eventually be people who just stab themselves in the arm with an icepick to make a wee scar that they can say was the result of chipping.
“yea-but” I’ve already seen this in 15 Sci-Fi movies. Kidnap the victim, do a wand scan of the body, cut out the transmitter and the story continues.
Watch USA join kidnapping for profit as the neo-con tax/social policies continue to be “debated.”
Just cut out the chip.
At least you don’t take the chip rectally?
And the jump fro GPS chip in your jacket to implant came kinda fast.
This has to be either a scam or bad reporting. There’s no way a tiny passive chip could be tracked by a satellite.
How does an implant the size of a grain of rice have enough power to generate a signal that can reach a satellite? Or is the transmitter in the external device with panic button mentioned in the article?
“Customers who fear they are being kidnapped press a panic button on an external device to alert Xega which then calls the police.”
in Mexico they cut off your fingers and send them to the family as proof that your being held fro ransom. If they cut off your fingers, they won’t flinch at cutting up the rest of you.
I can see people getting chipped as a status symbol. In fact, there will eventually be people who just stab themselves in the arm with an icepick to make a wee scar that they can say was the result of chipping.
Further to #5, joe; why not just cut off the whole arm?
The signal dont need to be very strong to be picked up by a Sat.
I NOW have a new business.
How to scramble the signal…Hmmm..
I could make $1000 Each unit, for $10 work.
Scare them into asking for them. Can’t wait to see what they have instore for us to make us feel like we “need” them.
Can’t wait to watch it on TV.
Just another thing I don’t have to worry about. I’m not worth much to anybody.
What is it powered by? Plutonium? So a battery
1/2 the size of a grain is going to get a radio
signal out of your body , through a car trunk
(farday cage) to geosyncronis orbit. I love
when scam artist target the super-rich.
wikipedia.org says “Many active tags today have operational ranges of hundreds of meters, and a battery life of up to 10 years.”
hundreds of meters is about the best these things can do. The grain of rice implant is presumably not active (no battery), so even less output power. Maybe the thing implanted is not what’s shown in the photo.
Go to this site. After reading about it scroll down to the order button there is a little note there.
http://www.lightninggps.com/personal-tracking/gps-implant.html
# 6 joe said,
“In Mexico they cut off your fingers and send them to the family as proof that your being held for ransom. If they cut off your fingers, they won’t flinch at cutting up the rest of you.”
Maybe you could place a larger model deep inside your nose.
Could hurt a bit taking it out though.
http://tinyurl.com/5z7ymy
From “Total Recall”
Bullshit. There’s no way this thing works. You’d need an external antenna to reach a satellite.
I thought RFID chips drew power from the radio waves bouncing off them so they never required a battery source :/
I am calling BS on this one. The Verichip sold by Xega is a near-field device made by TI originally for livestock id, readable at inches not miles.
One would need a cellphone sized device to get enough power and a antenna gain to hit an LEO satellite.
followup – ALL of the images in these websites in this thread are of TI TIRIS low frequency implantable passive transponders. The coil of wire seen in the transponders is a magnetic near field antenna, which must couple inductively.
Inches, not miles.
My guess is that the “external device with panic button” mentioned in the article reads the info from the RFID implant. The external device then transmits it to the satellite. Would be nice if there were a picture of the external device.
Sloppy editing in most versions of this story. CNET says: “The company injects the crystal-encased chip, the size and shape of a grain of rice, into clients’ bodies with a syringe. A transmitter then sends signals via satellite to pinpoint the location of a person in distress.”
But REUTERS says: “The company injects the crystal-encased chip, the size and shape of a grain of rice, into clients’ bodies with a syringe. A transmitter in the chip then sends radio signals to a larger device carried by the client with a global positioning system in it, Xega says. A satellite can then pinpoint the location of a person in distress.”
The REUTERS version makes more sense, power wise. But why not just carry the larger device and trigger that? How does the injected chip help?
Continuing with #20, skeptic. Why not just use a cell phone with GPS?
Apparently RonD got it right and the external device is the actual transmitter. But if that is the case, a simple cell phone would work just as well.
The inductive coupling is necessary because higher frequencies don’t transmit through flesh. That limits them to transmission in inches, as others mentioned. Typically the range is more like a singular inch, especially if you implant it deeper than just under the skin.
#12…those long distances are the UHF versions, not the implantables.
#5 Ron – “Customers who fear they are being kidnapped press a panic button on an external device to alert Xega which then calls the police.”
But what if the POLICE ***ARE THE KIDNAPPERS*** AS IN MEXICO ???
And of course, getting “Chipped” ANNOUNCES TO THE POLICE THAT YOU ARE RICH ENOUGH TO FEAR KIDNAPPERS, THUS MAKING YOU A TARGET !!!
#23 JimD – in that case they are totally screwed, unless they happen to know someone like the character Denzel Washington played in “Man on Fire” who can come to their rescue. 🙂
I had a similar idea for an updated version of Tv’s “Search” series (1971). Where the agents would have implant devices, that would communicate via a booster device they carried, to cellphone towers. A much more realistic idea than before, when a coin sized camera worked thru satellite links. No Way!
Wow, it’s only been written about 2K years ago.. but still nobody will listen.
Baaaa sheep, Baaaaa.
Once it’s “forced” (yeah, it will be) will you do it?
:/
“Continuing with #20, skeptic. Why not just use a cell phone with GPS?”
looks like they are charging big bux for a cell phone with the company phone number preprogrammed in it.
the bad guys throw away the cell phone at point of abduction, and the person is still screwed