
Employees Line Up to Get Microchipped in Wisconsin - menzoic
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40710051
======
xemoka
This story, or similar, has been posted multiple times over the last few days.

The most active discussion is from this post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14836390](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14836390)

------
weavie
I remember back when I was a kid it was often talked about in certain circles
that the mark of the beast that is discussed in the Book of Revalations of the
Bible would be a microchip planted in the back of your palm.

The Book talks about how those who fail to get the mark will be outcast and
unable to function in society. So it was said (in these circles) that it is
likely these chips will be used as a kind of credid card, and without one you
will not be able to conduct any financial transactions such as buy food etc..

It is the start of the end times!

~~~
ada1981
" He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to
receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may
buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the
number of his name."

I'm surprised with the generally conservative Christian population in WI that
more people aren't actively against this in their community.

~~~
MadSax
I don't think the vast majority Christians even worry about microchips
anymore. It was a silly fear from the beginning that only caught on because of
how novel and marvelous computers in general were and now that transistors
have become more mundane, so have the old notions that piggybacked primarily
on such novelties.

~~~
unclebucknasty
Hmm. I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss people's concerns about being
microchipped--Christians or otherwise. We may hear more rumblings if this is
implemented at scale.

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lrvick
I have to admit I find it pretty amusing this is news. About a dozen friends
and I have had these for 4+ years, voluntarily.

I no longer carry any traditional metal keys and have modified my front door,
vehicles, etc to open via my implants. Friends even upgraded 2 vending
machines at our hackerspace to work with them.

In addition to access, I use one to store master encrypted backups of files I
might need access to in a pinch and the other I tell everyone contains a vcard
with my contact info, but really it just auto-launches rickroll on their phone
when they tap it. The tags are all r/w and I can update them as I like from my
smartphone.

In a couple weeks I am getting a temperature sensor installed under my arm
designed for animals. While temperature is not a super exciting sensor, it
paves the way for more complicated ones in the future and I can see how it
holds up over time.

My next after that is an HID ATA5577 tag that I can use to clone the HID door
cards of most offices.

Once beta units begin to be produced I plan on getting a Vivokey installed
which covers the typical use cases of a Yubikey and will allow me to do 2FA,
ssh, password management, and cryptocurrency transactions from my body as
well.

~~~
pavel_lishin
How do you get a chip big enough to store large documents into yourself?

An integrated temperature sensor sounds awesome, especially for a
hypochondriac like me.

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Lagged2Death
_"...there is no GPS tracking ability to it. It is really the same thing as
the chip that is in your credit card."_

I had an RFID credit card years ago, but that turned out to be really
insecure[1], and the issuer discontinued the program.

The contact-based chips in modern cards are _not_ the same. At all.

I wonder what would happen if some miscreant super-glued a few dozen RFID
chips to the reader, or to a location close to the reader?

[1] [http://hackaday.com/2013/11/03/rfid-reader-snoops-cards-
from...](http://hackaday.com/2013/11/03/rfid-reader-snoops-cards-from-3-feet-
away/)

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jressey
> What if you get robbed?

> Like everything in life, it could happen.

> But, says Mr Danna, at least it is all in one place, making it easier to
> cancel all those cards.

Are they implying you might get your hand chopped off but at least it's easy
to cancel your credit card?

~~~
leggomylibro
Yeah, I think these would be useful, but not as a single chip in your finger.
You'd want a more distributed solution; a memory chip holding your key
somewhere like your shoulder, a crypto chip to generate the nonce in a knee,
some nodes to emit EMI along the transdermal conduits to prevent eavesdropping
and to act as decoys, that sort of thing.

That way, the transmitter could be in your finger, but it would be useless on
its own. They would need to dismember you to get at the full solution, which
would also be fragile to keep intact if anyone tried to remove while
maintaining its functionality. Individual parts could also have failsafes to
fry the whole system if exposed to atmosphere.

And at that point, unlike chopping off a hand, it'd be so much easier for a
criminal to pull a gun on their mark and walk them to an ATM.

Come to think of it, a bodywide transdermal net would be pretty cool, if you
included junctions for adding arbitrary modules to a common pin footprint. It
would probably be difficult to install, but I dunno... people have put some
crazy things in their skin, like a phone-sized single-board computer.

~~~
JetSpiegel
> They would need to dismember you to get at the full solution

Great, so thieves that are already amoral enough to chop off your hand will
have to kill you instead! Progress!

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c3534l
If it's no different than an ID card, I think I'd rather have the card.

------
narrator
So when you switch jobs you have to get surgery to get the device removed? I
guess people will have to never switch jobs then. Sounds like a way to keep
people from quitting a bad employer.

~~~
michaelmior
I don't see why you would have to get the chip removed. Access to company
services could just be disabled.

~~~
paulvs
Switching jobs would incur a slight penalty of 1) removing chip, b) re-
programming chip, c) leaving chip. I think this is something a lot of people
would like to avoid.

~~~
michaelmior
My guess is that there would be no need to remove or reprogram. I assume the
chip simply presents a unique identifier and nothing more. The old company
could just remove access based on the identifier and in a similar way, the new
company could grant access using the existing chip.

------
Someone
So, what happens with these things if you get an MRI?

The chip may get fried, but that's not my main concern. Does it attempt to
move through your body? Will it succeed at doing that?

~~~
Sleeep
They are supposed to be safe for MRIs. Kari Byron got an MRI with one
implanted on Mythbusters for demonstration. -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDq_LBH_ZYs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDq_LBH_ZYs)

------
Shivetya
Voluntary, perhaps with a kick back for testing? Then maybe. Though I myself
would not sign up for such until the regulations are in place governing
privacy and such; even to the point of determining who is chipped and who is
not.

At this moment, I am not quite sure how I feel about living in a world where
we are chipped. Maybe it is a generational thing

~~~
s73ver
No. "Voluntary" quickly has a way of becoming the de facto mandatory.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Voluntary team lunches, voluntary employee weekend retreats, voluntary work
after hours off the clock...

------
orblivion
FSF better get on this sooner rather than later. I don't know how many of us
would really have so much to complain about if these chips were truly, 100%
under our own control.

------
shmerl
Cyborgs on the rise? Imagine the copyright / DRM mess that will ensue, once
this will become way more invasive?

It will be literally like "we own you now!".

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supermatt
Im not sure about the advantage of an implant vs wearing a ring in these
cases. Anyone care to enlighten me?

~~~
reefoctopus
You can't give your implant to someone else very easily.

~~~
maxerickson
Is the implementation well vetted?

I sort of default to expecting implementation flaws and eventual cloning.

~~~
Sleeep
This isn't new tech - RFID is an extremely common and well vetted
implementation for physical security. This only replaces the fobs you have to
carry with you (usually key fob or credit card sized fob) with a microscopic
one under your skin. Every single office I've ever worked at (5) use RFID keys
for facility access.

Some RFID implementations are vulnerable to cloning and other attacks (brute
force, IIRC). There isn't any information about the implementation given here
other than "RFID" and some implementations are much more secure than others.

There's attack demonstrations on some RFID access implementations on YouTube -
some more viable than others.

