When Cash Is Only Skin Deep Wired News A Florida company has
announced plans to develop a service that would allow consumers to
pay for merchandise using microchips implanted under their skin.
Applied Digital Solutions CEO Scott Silverman said he believes the
company's VeriChip -- a subdermal microchip that uses radio frequency
signals to broadcast an identification number to a scanner -- could
someday replace credit cards. Under Silverman's plan, rather than
swiping a bank card to make purchases, micro-chipped customers would
scan themselves using special readers. Although the biochip payment
plan may strike some people as a bit X Files-ish, financial
transactions using radio frequency identification, or RFID, are
already commonplace in some areas. ExxonMobil's Speedpass, for
example, is a key-chain fob containing an RFID tag that is linked to
the holder's credit card; users wave the fob in front of a scanner
integrated into a gas pump, and their fuel purchase is charged to
their credit card account within seconds. Recently more than 400
McDonald's restaurants in the greater Chicago area started using the
Speedpass system to allow customers to more conveniently buy their
burgers and fries. Meanwhile, MasterCard is testing an RFID-enabled
credit card called PayPass. Like the Speedpass, the revamped card
uses RFID to access the user's financial information and obviates the
need for signatures or interactions with store clerks. In an
interview with USA Today last week, a senior MasterCard executive
said the company is considering integrating its RFID technology into
other items, such as pens or earrings. "Ultimately, it could be
embedded in anything -- someday, maybe even under the skin," the
executive said. Which is where the VeriChip folks come in. RFID-
enabled pens or jewelry could be easily lost or stolen, but RFID-
enabled humans are bit harder to tamper with. "We are the only ones
out there offering implantable ID technology," said Silverman, who
announced the "VeriPay" service during a speech Friday at ID World
2003 in Paris. "We believe the market will evolve to use our
product." Although he acknowledged that a final product may be a few
years away, Silverman invited banks and credit card companies to
collaborate in developing commercial applications using VeriPay. In
the near future, Silverman said, the chip could be used as an added
antifraud device in financial transactions -- ATM users could enter
their PIN and get scanned, for example. Richard M. Smith, a privacy
and security consultant, said one of the biggest hurdles facing the
VeriPay system might be the squeamishness of potential
users. "VeriPay will offer some conveniences over RFID credit cards,
but I think most people will be creeped out with the idea of putting
little radio transmitters in their bodies," Smith said. Meanwhile,
Applied Digital has attracted scorn from some fundamentalist
Christians, who believe that VeriChip is the fabled "mark of the
beast" of biblical lore. According to the book of Revelation, Satan
will someday force people to "receive a mark" on their hands or
foreheads in order to buy or sell. "This is a gigantic step toward
the mark of the beast, " said Gary Wohlscheid, whose website, These
Last Days Ministries, keeps tabs on what many Christians believe are
the signs of a coming religious Armageddon. His site is one of dozens
that link VeriChip to the apocalyptic prophecy. Applied Digital
officials say such concern is unfounded because people are chipped
voluntarily. The VeriPay service is one of several the company has
launched to promote its product. Applied Digital has positioned its
microchip as an anti-kidnapping device (VeriKid), emergency ID system
(VeriMed) and as a way to control access to secure buildings
(VeriGuard).Bio-chip implant arrives for cashless transactions World
Net Daily At a global security conference held today in Paris, an
American company announced a new syringe-injectable microchip implant
for humans, designed to be used as a fraud-proof payment method for
cash and credit-card transactions. The chip implant is being
presented as an advance over credit cards and smart cards, which,
absent biometrics and appropriate safeguard technologies, are subject
to theft, resulting in identity fraud. Identity fraud costs the
banking and financial industry some $48 billion a year, and consumers
$5 billion, according to 2002 Federal Trade Commission estimates. In
his speech today at the ID World 2003 conference in Paris, France,
Scott R. Silverman, CEO of Applied Digital Solutions, called the chip
a "loss-proof solution" and said that the chip's "unique under-the-
skin format" could be used for a variety of identification
applications in the security and financial worlds. The company will
have to compete, though, with organizations using just a fingerprint
scan for similar applications. The ID World Conference, held
yesterday and today at the Charles de Gaulle Hilton, focused on
current and future applications of radio frequency identification
(RFID) technologies, biometrics, smart cards and data collection. The
company's various "VeriChips" are RFID chips, which contain a unique
identification number and can carry other personal data about the
implantee. When radio-frequency energy passes from a scanner, it
energizes the chip, which is passive (not independently powered), and
which then emits a radio-frequency signal transmitting the chip's
information to the reader, which in turn links with a database. ADS
has previously touted its radio frequency identification (RFID) chips
for secure building access, computer access, storage of medical
records, anti-kidnapping initiatives and a variety of law-enforcement
applications. The company has also developed proprietary hand-held
readers and portal readers that can scan data when an implantee
enters a building or room. The "cashless society" application is not
new - it has been discussed previously by Applied Digital. Today's
speech, however, represented the first formal public announcement by
the company of such a program. In announcing VeriPay to ID World
delegates, Silverman stated the implant has "enormous marketplace
potential" and invited banking and credit companies to partner with
VeriChip Corporation (a subsidiary of ADS) in developing specific
commercial applications beginning with pilot programs and market
tests. Applied Digital's announcement in Paris suggested wireless
technologies, RFID development, new software solutions, smart-card
applications and subdermal implants might one day merge as the
ultimate solution for a world fraught with identity theft, threatened
by terrorism, buffeted by cash-strapped governments and law-
enforcement agencies looking for easy data-collection, and
corporations interested in the marketing bonanza that cutting-edge
identification, payment, and location-based technologies can afford.
Cashless payment systems are now part of a larger technology
development subset: government identification experiments that seek
to combine cashless payment applications with national ID information
on media (such as a "smart" card), which contain a whole host of
government, personal, employment and commercial data and applications
on a single, contactless RFID chip. In some scenarios, government-
corporate coalitions are advocating such a chip be used by employees
also to access entry to their workplace and the company computer
network, reducing the cost outlay of the corporations for individual
ID cards. Malaysia's "MyKad" national ID "smart" card is the foremost
example. Meanwhile, privacy advocates have expressed concern over
RFID technology rollouts, citing database concerns and the specter of
individuals' RFID chips being read without permission by people who
have their own hand-held readers. Several privacy and civil liberties
groups have recently called for a voluntary moratorium on RFID
tagging "until a formal technology assessment process involving all
stakeholders, including consumers, can take place." Signatories to
the petition include the American Civil Liberties Union, the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information
Center, Privacy International and the Foundation for Information
Policy Research, a British think tank. Commenting on today's
announcement, Richard Smith, a computer industry consultant, referred
to what some "netizens" are already
calling "chipectomies": "VeriChips can still be stolen. It's just a
bit gruesome when to think how the crooks will do these kinds of
robberies." Citing MasterCard's PayPass, Smith pointed out that most
of the major credit-card companies are looking at RFID chips to make
credit cards quicker, easier, and safer to use. "The big problem is
money," said Smith. "It will take billions of dollars to upgrade the
credit-card networks from magstripe readers to RFID readers. During
the transition, a credit card is going to need both a magstripe and
an RFID chip so that it is universally accepted." Some industry
professionals advocate having citizens pay for combined national
ID/cashless pay chips, which would be embedded in a chosen medium.
Identification technologies using RFID can take a wide variety of
physical forms and show no sign yet of coalescing into a single
worldwide standard. Prior to today's announcement, Art Kranzley,
senior vice president at MasterCard, commented on the Pay Pass system
in a USA Today interview: "We're certainly looking at designs like
key fobs. It could be in a pen or a pair of earrings. Ultimately, it
could be embedded in anything - someday, maybe even under the skin."