- Medical devices range from prosthetic biometrics to several other devices that are used to assist humans and animals in managing a behavioral, physiological and other deficiencies, and in other cases used as prognostic or diagnostic tool. The idea of securing personal health information, electronic payment system, accurate identification of medical record and minimizing deaths associated with emergency situations etc may all be achieved in one shot with a system called radio-frequency identification (RFID). The human RFID implant is known by several names including but not limited to VeriChip, Positive ID and Digital Angel. VeriChip is a non-battery operated encoded chip with unique 16 digits readable numbers, which is linked to a database (VeriMed, VeriPay etc). The database stores codes that carry people’s health information, identification, authentication, financial, background and other personal records. VeriChip operates at 134 KHz, and it is activated by muscle activity and magnetic field transmission as a unique identifier. The chip comprises of 128 bits meaning that VeriChip co-operation can generate 2 to the power of 128 VeriChip. The system is a small sized (like a grain of rice) chip coated with glucose and glass intended to be implanted in the upper arm of a human as a readable system for personal information and identification authentication etc. VeriChip also uses glucose tracking RFID to track viruses and bacteria in the body of the bearer. The system, once implanted in the body can measure and store vital signs, body temperature, blood glucose, other metabolic profiles and can be used as an activated GPS tracking system. The use of this system will bypass the clipboard process either in the case of emergency or non-emergency situation. It will serve as an automated registration, patients safety and patient tracking system. Furthermore, the time for patient’s tracking, search of a missing person or mentally impaired individual will be reduced down to zero (Halamka, Juels, Stubblefield, & Westhues, 2006).The system is also designed to reduce errors associated with individual similarity in names and medical procedure errors.
- The development of the system for human use is part of the initiative to enforce electronic health record for most American within decades. The US department of health services allocated $139 million grants to ensure that the electronic medical systems in the US is in place (AP, 2004).Before the FDA approved VeriChip system in 2002 for human implant, approximately 50 million pets around the world including 1 million pets in the US had VeriChip like technology for physical access control and tracking purposes (Halamka, Juels, Stubblefield, & Westhues, 2006). Nonetheless, after the device was approved in 2002 for human use by the FDA, religious groups (especially Christian leaders were adamantly opposed to the idea) claiming that the move may be the fulfillment of the mark of the beast in the new testament (Halamka, Juels, Stubblefield, & Westhues, 2006).VeriChip is designed and marketed by VeriChip co-operation. VeriChip co-operation is also a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solution (ADS). ADS holds 49% of VeriChip co-operation and produces commercial tracking devices such as global positioning system (GPS) for private co-operations and the US government (Checkfactspolitics, 2012). ADS was also funded ($30 million loan) by the IBM co-operation. It is also worth mentioning that IBM in the 20’s produced punch cards which they leased to the Nazi and Hitler to track people. In addition, VeriChip co-operation contracted the manufacture of VeriChip to Raytheon Microelectronics Espana/ECLAN. Raytheon also produces large scale weapon like the Tomahawk missile. Raytheon is also known as one of the largest US government defense contractor (RFIDNews, 2009). The targeted market revenue for VeriChip medical device is projected at over 100 billion US dollars. For pet uses, the chip costs $50 per pet, and for human use the chip costs between $150- $200 dollars (AP, 2004).
- Currently, ADS has a contract with the California correction department to use digital angel to track parolee.Since VeriChip was approved as a class II medical device by the FDA, there are rare medical concern that has been established which may result from implanting the device in the body. For instance, if the device is injected in the wrong position it may damage the muscle. Despite the fact that the VeriChip co-operation indicated that such incident is rare, the FDA also stated that implanted chips may elicit adverse tissue reactions, infections and may migrate away from the original site of insertion (Halamka, Juels, Stubblefield, & Westhues, 2006). The fact that the device is difficult to physically duplicated or counterfeited, there are also indications that the device can be simulated using emulating reader at the same readable frequency (Halamka, Juels, Stubblefield, & Westhues, 2006). This may increase identity theft and spoofing of personal information from a bearer. The spoofing possibility was demonstrated with a “Proxmarkii” RFID tay reader/spoofer device designed by Westhiues (Halamka, Juels, Stubblefield, & Westhues, 2006).
- In addition, biometric experts indicated that prosthetic biometric poses similar danger as a real biometric (fingerprint) to the bearer. The risk of physical attack is also possible by a determined spoofer even though the device may not be physically duplicated. For instance, in 2005, car hijackers severed a man’s finger just to steal his Mercedes (a finger based-access control car) (Halamka, Juels, Stubblefield, & Westhues, 2006). VeriChip co-operation has already sold 7000 chip implants for human use, and more than 1000 people thus far had the implant worldwide and few in the US (Stein, 2004).The concern the privacy advocate has is whether the decision to be chipped will remain a voluntary option, or will the system indirectly eradicate physical medical cards, ID cards, credit cards etc thereby indirectly forcing everyone to be chipped. If that turns out to be the case, where do we draw the line between security and personal privacy.
- References
- Associated Press. (2004). FDA approves computer chips for humans. Retrieved from http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6237364/#.URCxf1HheR4.Checkfactspolitics (2012). 666, Human RFID, Verichips or positive ID. Retrieved from http://www.checkfactspolitics.com/category/religion/.Halamka, J., Juels, A., Stubblefield, A., & Westhues, J. (2006). The Security Implications of VeriChip Cloning.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 13 (6), 601- 607. Rtrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1656959/.Radio Frequency Identification News (2009). Verichip chooses Raytheon/ECLAN to manufacture its microchips. Retrieved from http://www.rfidnews.org/2009/10/0 5/verichip-chooses-raytheon-eclan-to-manufacture-its-microchips#top.Stein, R. (2004). Implantable medical ID approved by FDA. Retieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29954-2004Oct13.html.
Comments are closed.