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painless procedure barely lasted 15 minutes. In his South Florida office,
Dr. Harvey Kleiner applied a local anesthetic above the tricep of my right
arm, then he inserted a thick needle deep under the skin.
''First we locate a prime spot,'' he said. ''The next thing is to
release the button that triggers the injection mechanism, and that's it,
the cargo's been delivered.''
The ''cargo'' was a half-inch-long microchip inside a glass and
silicone cylinder that carries my permanent identification number. For an
instant, I remembered the famous scene in the movie ''Fantastic Voyage''
in which a miniaturized Raquel Welch and her companions are inserted,
submarine and all, into the vein of a patient. In my case, the tiny chip
inside me can transmit personal information to anyone with a special
handheld scanner.
Theoretically, this VeriChip will allow doctors to call up my medical
records even if I'm too badly hurt to answer questions. It is also
supposed to allow me to get money from an automatic teller machine by
flashing my arm instead of punching in my PIN number. Or reassure airport
security that I am a journalist, not a terrorist.
And, though the VeriChip strikes critics as Orwellian, its makers think
the surgically implanted IDs could be the Social Security numbers of the
future in a nervous world.
''I believe the day will come when most of us will have something
similar to the VeriChip under our skin,'' said Scott Silverman, president
of Florida-based Applied Digital Solutions. ''People will regard that its
benefits -- in terms of financial, security, and health care -- far
outweigh the possibility of loss of privacy.''
Right now, I am part of a very small club, the 18th person in the world
-- and the first journalist -- to get ''chipped.'' Most of the others are
ADS employees along with one Florida family who have been jokingly dubbed
''the Chipsons'' in a play on the old Jetsons cartoon.
The idea of a system that gives emergency workers and others immediate
access to potentially lifesaving information is exactly what drew the
Jacobs family of Boca Raton to the VeriChip. At the request of their
14-year-old son, Derek, the Jacobses got chipped last year.
''My husband has cancer and we've experienced the frustrating delays of
trying to provide urgent medical history information every time he is
rushed into the emergency room,'' says Leslie Jacobs.
Since the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, she
continues, ''we know that our lives are increasingly vulnerable. If we
want increased safety, security, and peace of mind, we need to take
positive steps. We've decided that having a VeriChip is one way to do just
that.''
But critics see surveillance technology like the VeriChip as a growing
threat, giving potentially dangerous new power to businesses and
government alike. In a report issued in January by the American Civil
Liberties Union, Jay Stanley and Barry Steinhardt warned that an explosion
of technology has already created a ''surveillance monster.''
''Scarcely a month goes by in which we don't read about some new
high-tech way to invade people's privacy, from face recognition to
implantable microchips, data mining, DNA chips, and even `brain wave
fingerprinting,' '' they wrote. ''The fact is there are no longer any
technical barriers to the Big Brother regime portrayed by George Orwell
[in his novel `1984'].''
The VeriChip is similar to the more than 25 million chips already
embedded in animals all over the world acting as ''pet passports,''
allowing customs officials to monitor those animals that do not need to go
into quarantine, or to identify your stray dog.
But, at least for now, the VeriChip does much less: it's mainly for
demonstration purposes, carrying only an identification number and the
capacity for about three paragraphs of information. Only 10 hospitals and
doctors in Florida have the scanner to read the chips. And the Food and
Drug Administration has not yet approved the chips for use in health care,
so they cannot be used to access medical records.
However, ADS officials say this is just the beginning. They want to
build a chip that can store loads of information, or act as the key to a
central database that stores information about the user. Ultimately, the
company hopes to be able to track the movement of people with chips
worldwide using global positioning satellites.
The company is field testing its Personal Locator Device, or PLD, which
ADS says could help track lost children, sick elderly family members,
mountain climbers who get lost, or kidnap victims. Company officials say
they have been inundated with requests from private companies in Latin
America, especially Mexico and Colombia.
The PLD is still years away from wide use, according to Keith Bolton,
ADS's chief of technologies. The working prototype is rather large -- 2
1/2 inches in diameter -- and would require major surgery for implantation
(though it appears some Israeli secret service agents already carry
something similar). It is powered by a pacemaker battery, and, just like
in a Tom Clancy book, it would let anyone with access to the PLD system
follow the wearer anytime, anywhere in the world, at the click of a
mouse.
''The PLD would also monitor the vital signs of the wearer, and the
environmental conditions around that person, and it could be a great way
to protect a family member with a disease such as Alzheimer's,'' says
Bolton.
Businesses already use technology to track their products around the
world, but we should stop and think about the implications before starting
a human tracking system, cautions Mohan Tanniru, professor of information
systems at the University of Arizona.
''I am not going to put a chip on my kid thinking that she could be
kidnapped,'' he says, ''unless I know the chip will be activated only if I
report that my kid is lost. But how do I know that the police are only
going to activate it when I say so, and not when they feel like it? You
can't just say that technology is bad just because it is there. So it is a
matter of deciding what trusting agency should be given that
responsibility.''
Tanniru actually thinks that human tracking might be welcome in certain
cases, such as following criminals on probation or making sure foreign
nationals don't overstay their visas. In fact, Pro Tech Monitoring of
Tampa already makes an externally worn tracking device for parolees that
alerts authorities if the wearer enters a forbidden area, such as a school
zone.
For ADS's Silverman, both the VeriChip and its future GPS-based version
are a matter of individual choice.
''No one is forcing you to have a VeriChip. If you want a chip in your
right arm you are going to know it is there because you will see it
injected. When you look at the events of 9/11 and the way people measure
their own personal security today versus the way they did a few years ago,
there is a much higher concern to make sure that family members are safe
and sound, and some people now put that above privacy rights.''
So far, ADS's technology gamble has not translated into profits. In
2002, ADS lost $112 million on revenues of $96 million, though this loss
is significantly lower that that of the previous year.
As far as I am concerned, having a chip with a code in it is not giving
me the chills. I think it would be nice to use it to get cash or pay for
gas, and I wouldn't mind paramedics having access to my health records in
the blink of an eye. Besides, I know it would never get lost. I did,
however, have a few questions about its health hazards. So I asked Dr.
Kleiner.
''The VeriChip is extremely safe,'' he says. ''Pacemakers are hundreds
of times larger and more complicated and nobody has problems with them. To
prevent the chip from migrating to another part of the body there is a
little polymer at one end of the capsule that will adhere to the skin and
hold it in place.
At his office, my arm was like a barcoded product at a supermarket cash
register: It beeped every time the scanner prodded the chip. It worked
even through my clothes. Displayed on the screen was a long number with
many zeroes. For good or bad, I thought, this chip may be quietly
heralding a time when people will literally have technology under the
skin.
