GETTING ARCHIVE 2004: How the mark may be applied in these last days

Signs Of The Times End Times Getting Chipped Is the mark of the beast near? New World Order RFID Tags VeriChip Satellite tags Body Chip injectable Start your search of this site with this page link News & Views

[this may be the development that incorporates GPS into the VeriChip capsule that I have predicted...therev]

ORBCOMM, a global satellite telecommunications company, today announced that it has executed an agreement with VeriChip(TM) Corporation,

a subsidiary of Applied Digital, to be its provider of satellite and telecommunication services for applications to be developed for use with the world's first implantable radio frequency identification (RFID) microchip, also called VeriChip(TM).

Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will also work together to develop and market new military, security, and healthcare applications for use in the United States and around the world.

WorldNetDaily.com reports: “Setting the stage for controversial tracking technology, the satellite telecommunications company ORBCOMM has signed an agreement with VeriChip Corp., maker of the world's first implantable radio frequency identification microchip.

VeriChip, a subsidiary of Applied Digital, will work with ORBCOMM to develop and market new military, security and healthcare applications in the U.S. and around the world, the company said.

As WorldNetDaily reported, Applied Digital has created and successfully field-tested a prototype of an implant for humans with GPS, or global positioning satellite, technology.

The device, about the size of a grain of rice, contains a unique verification number that is captured by briefly passing a proprietary scanner over it.

Once inserted into a human, it can be tracked by GPS technology and the information relayed wirelessly to the Internet, where an individual's location, movements and vital signs can be stored in a database for future reference.

‘ORBCOMM's relationship with VeriChip provides yet another new and important industry that will use the ORBCOMM satellite system and its ground infrastructure network to transmit messages globally,’ ORBCOMM CEO Jerry Eisenberg said.

Initially, after privacy concerns and verbal protests over marketing the technology for government use, Applied backed away from public discussion about such implants and the possibility of using them to usher in a ‘cashless society.’

In addition, to quell privacy concerns, the company issued numerous denials, stating it had no plans for implants.

When WND reported in April 2002 that the company planned such implant technology, Applied Digital spokesman Matthew Cossolotto accused WND of intentionally printing falsehoods.

Less than three weeks later, however, the company issued a press release announcing that it was accelerating development on a GPS implant…”

[Human implantable VeriChip is now satellite tractable just like I have predicted...therev]

Companies Will Jointly Develop and Market Innovative Military, Security and Healthcare Applications for VeriChip(TM), the World's First Implantable Microchip

FORT LEE, N.J. -- Companies Will Jointly Develop and Market Innovative Military, Security and Healthcare Applications for VeriChip(TM), the World's First Implantable Microchip

ORBCOMM, a global satellite telecommunications company, today announced that it has executed an agreement with VeriChip(TM) Corporation, a subsidiary of Applied Digital (NASDAQ:ADSX), to be its provider of satellite and telecommunication services for applications to be developed for use with the world's first implantable radio frequency identification (RFID) microchip, also called VeriChip(TM).

Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will also work together to develop and market new military, security, and healthcare applications for use in the United States and around the world.

VeriChip(TM) Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Applied Digital. The VeriChip product is a subdermal RFID microtransponder that can be used in a variety of security, financial, emergency identification and healthcare applications. About the size of a grain of rice, each VeriChip Device contains a unique verification number that is captured by briefly passing a proprietary scanner over the VeriChip. In October 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared VeriChip for medical applications in the United States. VeriChip is not a FDA-regulated device with regards to its security, financial, personal identification/safety applications.

"ORBCOMM's relationship with VeriChip(TM) provides yet another new and important industry that will use the ORBCOMM satellite system and its ground infrastructure network to transmit messages globally," Jerry Eisenberg, CEO of ORBCOMM, said.

[A part of this is incorrect as the Verichip can be read up to 30 feet away...therev]

A little electronic capsule, smaller than a dime, could be one of the biggest technological advances in how we share and store private medical records. It may also be one of the most controversial.

Known as the VeriChip, it is a microchip that is implanted under a person's skin, and then scanned with a special reader device to reveal important medical data about that person.

Applied Digital, the Florida-based company that makes the VeriChip, hopes the implant will revolutionize how doctors obtain medical information, particularly in emergency situations. Theoretically, if a person can't speak, medics could scan that person and quickly be linked to a database that would provide crucial information like the patient's identity, blood type and drug allergies.

Dr. Csaba Magassi, a plastic surgeon in Northern Virginia, is among a nationwide network of doctors who are ready and waiting to implant the VeriChip into willing patients. His office receives calls daily from people inquiring about the chip.

Dr. Magassi said, "If you are in an auto accident, and you are unconscious, they could scan you, know exactly who you are; your medical history can easily be printed out onto the hospital record."

Dr. Magassi added, "If a patient comes in requesting the VeriChip, I usually tell them it takes between two and five minutes to place the device in place. A needle which contains the VeriChip is inserted. The needle pushes the device through, and it is implanted permanently. Put a bandaid on and you are done."

Dr. Magassi demonstrated the procedure for CBN News on an apple. Once the microchip was inserted, the hand-held scanner read the number on the chip using radio frequency waves. Think of it as a human barcode.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the VeriChip implant for medical use in humans in October, a huge victory for Applied Digital.

In an effort to jumpstart interest, the company launched the "Get Chipped" campaign. It is offering a discount to the first few hundred people who get the implant, and also plans to donate hundreds of scanners to the nation's trauma units to promote use of the VeriChip.

But in a letter obtained by CBN News from the FDA to the VeriChip makers, the microchip is not completely safe. In fact, the letter lists a whole host of health risks associated with the device, including "adverse tissue reaction," "electrical hazards" and "MRI incompatibility."

Consumer privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht said, "There are millions of people that have read the press reports about all the positives of this technology, but really have no idea about its dangers."

Albrecht strongly opposes the VeriChip for the physical risks it poses, as well as the privacy risks. She has been called "the Erin Brokovich of RFID chips."

Albrecht said, "There's a very serious concern that, already, engineers and people who think along those lines are already thinking like hackers and criminals -- they're already starting to say, how can this system be compromised, how can it be abused? When you are dealing with a radio frequency device, by design, it is transmitting info using invisible radio waves at a distance. In this case, that distance is only a couple of inches or a couple of feet so it's not a huge distance, but it means that anyone who can get within a couple of inches or a few feet of you, even with a reader device they have hidden in a backpack or a purse, would be able to scan that number, obtain that info and potentially duplicate it."

And it is not just private medical information at stake. The microchip implant technology has been around for several years now, and has been used for a variety of different applications.

Thousands of chips have been implanted in pets by veterinarians for identification purposes. Livestock is now chipped to track things like mad-cow disease. Manufacturers are putting chips in products like clothing and shoes for marketing research.

In Mexico, the attorney general and his top aides were chipped for security purposes. And, in Spain at the Baja Beach Club, patrons can get a microchip with their financial information implanted, so they can pay for their cocktails with a swipe of the arm. As these pictures seem to suggest, getting chipped is fun and painless.

Applied Digital also launched a brand new application for the chip last year called the "VeriPay." This implant would hold all of a person's financial information. Rather than swipe a card or pay cash, consumers would scan their wrists for purchases. And, if a swipe of the wrist becomes too troublesome, there are already prototypes made of doorway portals that can simply scan a person and their purchases as they walk through the door.

Allbrecht said, "I think there is a very real concern that, down the road, such a chip would become mandatory. And not necessarily initially, but it would be voluntary, in the same way let's say as credit cards or a drivers license is voluntary. No one forces you to have a driver's license or to have a cell phone, but yet the vast majority of people do, because it is very difficult to function in a normal society without it."

For now, though, a microchip implant is voluntary. Only a few thousand chips have been sold and only a fraction of those have been implanted in humans.

For someone who wants an implant for medical purposes, Dr. Magassi and others are standing by. Magassi says, "If they want it, God love 'em. I'll put it in. It's as simple as that."

The VeriChip just recently made its debut in a Miami, Florida nightclub, where patrons had the opportunity to "Get Chipped," much like the Baja Beach club patrons in Spain.

I did notice the statement "Logitech's biochip technology" and thought that rather strange but you never know who's finger might be in RFID today.

However, I did not notice the phrase "Crockett's **Bluff** Community Church" which I am told is a dead giveaway and a web search can prove it. I have no time to surf so I will leave it up to those who do. Please let me know whatyou find out.

In a startling collision of modern technology and ministry, Crockett's Bluff Community Church is the first known church in America to use Logitech's biochip technology to receive its weekly tithes and offerings.

According to last year's church theme - "Be ID'd With CBCC in '03" - the congregation of 15,782 outfitted each member of its flock with a subdermal microchip in the right hand.

The device, smaller than a mustard seed, contains the banking information of each worshipper and is scanned by an usher as he or she enters the sanctuary.

UK mobile phone users could soon be able to check their bank balances using their handset in an initiative from the Link cash machine network.

The initial roll-out will involve two of the UK's High Street banks and four mobile operators.

The intention is for users to see a tiny version of a cash machine screen on their handsets.

In time, the service is intended to extend the number of Link machines offering top-ups for pre-paid mobile phones as well.

Link, which is owned by 22 financial institutions, hopes the service will be successful because cash machines are used 100 million times a month for balance enquiries.

The mobile venture aims to make money by taking a small cut of mobile transactions, such as the mobile top-up service, to begin with.

Initially the service will be limited to balance enquiries, and will not allow other services

But Link said it is considering adding other services in 2005, which could include some method of mobile payment for goods.

They may also include the ability to get a mini bank statement - and potentially to extend overdrafts and transfer money to other people's accounts.

[Now the chip has become a token or a contactless payment, or an embedded mechanism...therev]

SMART System Technologies, Inc. predicts that the next year will be the first of a 10-15 year trend in the convergence between consumer identity and contactless payment and loyalty.

In terms of adoption, we have already seen the credit card associations allocate additional resources to support expanded distribution to contactless credit and debit cards. They are also starting to address the challenge of installing equipment for merchants to accept contactless payments.

To persuade merchants to accept the new technology, SST predicts that the card associations will need to reach an agreement to allow co-branded readers. Ultimately, the ideal solution for merchants will be a reader that is based on an open standard and capable of accepting each card's contactless token.

When it comes to consumer applications, we are seeing a growing trend in the use of proximity identification for corporate access and employee identification. SST expects applications to be developed in the next year that will enable employees to use the same identification card they use to enter their office buildings to make contactless payment purchases in the corporate cafeteria and to access additional employee areas such as parking and workout facilities.

Over time, we envision that these capabilities will even extend to surrounding merchants, enabling individuals to use their employee identification cards to purchase gasoline or stop for food at quick service restaurants for instance on their way to and from work. Consumers will also be eligible to receive increased loyalty rewards based on usage in each of these environments, and from groups of merchants through coalition marketing opportunities.

Public transportation is another setting where it is now possible to think about using one mechanism embedded in a transit tag, wristband or watch to commute and pay for necessities along the way. This could be funded by a cash deposit at a kiosk, through a checking account, by a payroll deduction or over an interchange with credit and or debit cards.

As the market evolves and more consumers adopt contactless payment technology, SST expects that a more sophisticated means of marketing to consumers will be required and traditional methods may not be as effective. For instance, it will become increasingly more important to provide electronic coupons and targeted promotions in real-time to meet consumer demand for instant gratification.

Another method of communicating with consumers in real-time will be through SMS messaging and near field communication (NFC) enabled handsets, which will also enable peer-to-peer transactions independent of the underlying cellular networks.

SST expects to see significant numbers of NFC devices become available in the next 12-24 months. In the peer-to-peer scenario, an individual could purchase two concert tickets and sell one to a friend via NFC handsets, without having to deal with the exchange of cash or waiting for a check to clear.

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IBank customers in Colombia now have the option of using their fingerprints to withdraw cash from ATMs.

Colombia's Bancafe Bank has partnered with technology company NCR to upgrade its ATMs and allow its 2.5 million customers the option of accessing their accounts and withdrawing money using just their fingerprints and PIN numbers.

According to NCR, around 50 percent of Bancafe Bank's customers have signed up to use the machines, and the bank expects that figure to grow as it upgrades its entire network of ATMs

Mark Grossi, NCR's chief technology officer, said that biometric technology is now reliable and cheap enough to be used in a banking environment.

"The technology has now matured to a stage where it is sufficiently robust and affordable to meet the needs of specific markets," Grossi said. "In the case of Bancafe, fingerprint scanning has enabled the bank to expand their customer base by offering customers the option of cardless transactions."

Nelson Sanchez, commercial director at Bancafe, said the fingerprint technology has attracted new customers to the bank--many of whom were previously reluctant to open accounts.

"Biometric-enabled ATMs have allowed us to target completely new market segments and provide groups such as pensioners and coffee growers with an easier and safer way of handling their money," Sanchez said.

Sanchez said the bank initially tested the technology on 170 ATMs. The technology is now live on three-quarters of the bank's 486 machines.

Plans to put RFID chips in passports in 2005 have been roundly criticized for both privacy and security reasons. Noted cybersecurity guru Bruce Schneier clearly outlines the problems.

Now the mainstream press appears to have figured it out, too, with a recent AP article reporting that "even an executive at one of the companies developing a prototype for the State Department calls the international standards woefully inadequate."

In a letter obtained by CBN News from the FDA to the VeriChip makers, the microchip is not completely safe.

In fact, the letter lists a whole host of health risks associated with the device, including "adverse tissue reaction," "electrical hazards" and "MRI incompatibility."

Plans to put RFID chips in passports in 2005 have been roundly criticized for both privacy and security reasons. Noted cybersecurity guru Bruce Schneier clearly outlines the problems.

But VeriChip claims there is one group screaming for the chip instead of against it - teenagers.

'After our first announcement in 2001, over 2,000 kids e-mailed saying they were ready to be chipped.'

Plans to put RFID chips in passports in 2005 have been roundlycriticized for both privacy and security reasons. Noted cybersecurity guru Bruce Schneier clearly outlines the problems.

As if planning to affix RFID tags to medication bottles wasn't bad enough, the government now wants to share personal prescription records for anxiety, depression, insomnia, and pain with law enforcement.

A bill before Congress, The National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act (H.R. 3015), has been passed by the House and is being considered by the Senate.

"While masquerading as a law enforcement tool to help control the illegal use of painkillers, the national bill would...create a central database affecting tens of millions who are not even suspected of a crime. And the information will be shared with state and local law enforcement."

The American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is leading the charge against the plan. If you are concerned, urge your senator to vote "no" and print out the AAPS' doctor info page to share with your physician.

Jesus Christ is about to establish the only world government that will last. Will you be a part of it or will your soul spend eternity in the place the the KJV Holy Bible says "there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth"? If you are reading this and Jesus Christ is not the Lord and Saviour of your life please go to this link RIGHT NOW to choose click here... or go to our "STAY HEALTHY" page for prayer - please email us after you pray...therev

VeriChip promoters unveiled a six-point privacy statement earlier this week that, frankly, has us scratching our heads. Here's one of the points:

VeriChip should be voluntary and voluntary only. No person, no employer, no government should force anyone to get "chipped."

Sounds good -- but wait, what about the government employees in Mexico who were implanted with VeriChips to access their secure data center?

We're pretty sure nobody tied them down and "forced" chips into them, but what would have happened if they had said no? Is taking a chip to keep your job really "voluntary?" As for government mandates, this is a company that envisions a market of "billions," i.e., they want to chip nearly everyone on earth. How will they accomplish that without government complicity?

We pledge to thoughtfully, openly and considerately engage government, privacy groups, the industry and consumers to assure that the adoption of VeriChip and RFID technology is through education and unity rather than isolation and division.

The Bush administration opposes some privacy protections for new passports that will contain microchips.

The passports have antennae that allow a reader to capture data about the owner.Privacy advocates say the passports can by read from as far away as 30 feet.

But a State Department passport official says encrypting that data might make it more difficult for other countries to read the passports

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The widespread adoption of RFID to track goods through the global supply chain will mark the start of a new era in which the computers sense the world, anticipate the needs of people and act on their behalf, according to Hans Mulder, associate director of Intel Research, a unit of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel.

"We are on the verge of a vast increase in the spatial and temporal fidelity at which we measure and analyze the world," he said, speaking at Innovate 2004, an invitation-only RFID symposium for thought leaders hosted by ADT Security Services last week in West Palm Beach, Fla.

"RFID is the stepping-stone to sensor networks." Sensor networks consist of wireless sensors that detect heat, light, movement and many other environmental factors.

Also known as motes, the sensors gather data and transmit it from one node in a network to another and another until it reaches a node connected to a computer that can store and analyze the data.

Mulder said the problem with computing today is that, unlike with a sensor network, people have to input most of the data and receive most of the computer's output.

"We are the primary I/O [input/output] device, but we are the bottleneck," he said. "We need to get away from the human-centric model of computing and connect computers to the world."

He said that in the future, computers would anticipate people's needs and act on their behalf. Some people might be uncomfortable with the latter for privacy and other reasons, Mulder said,

but he pointed out that antilock braking systems are an example of computers that act on people's behalf today.

RFID has been used in closed-loop applications for years. But the growing adoption of the technology to track goods in open supply chains signals the start of this new era of computing, he said, because RFID tags are basically wireless sensors that identify objects.

The widespread deployment of RFID technology is expected to lead to the installation of more robust networks that can cope with the quantity of data that a sensor can generate.

RFID tags with integrated temperature sensors are already on the market, and researchers are working on other low-cost sensors that can be integrated with RFID tags.

Mulder believes that sensor technology will transform the way companies manage their assets. He gave examples of BP using sensors on railcars and motors on an oil tanker.

Intel put sensors on some pumps within one of its own semiconductor plants and put sensors on grapevines in a California vineyard.

Data was gathered and analyzed to try to improve maintenance and, in the case of the vineyard, ensure that the vines received the right amount of sunlight, water and other things necessary to the vines' health and growth.

"It's all about productivity and efficiency," Mulder said. "Sensor networks have a transformational power that could boost world GDP by 10 percent or more."

A radio frequency tag that patients can affix like a bandage to ensure doctors perform the right surgery on the right person won government approval Friday.

The tag, manufactured by SurgiChip Inc. of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., aims to prevent wrongful surgeries that records show kill thousands of patients a year.

SurgiChip is the first surgical marking device approved by the Food and Drug Administration to use radio frequency identification.

The FDA endorsed the same technology this week to track drugs on their journey from manufacturing plants to pharmacists' shelves.

In front of her gated apartment complex, Courtney Payne, a 9-year-old fourth grader with dark hair pulled tightly into a ponytail, exits a yellow school bus. Moments later, her movement is observed by Alan Bragg, the local police chief, standing in a windowless control room more than a mile away.

Chief Bragg is not using video surveillance. Rather, he watches an icon on a computer screen. The icon marks the spot on a map where Courtney got off the bus, and, on a larger level, it represents the latest in the convergence of technology and student security.

Hoping to prevent the loss of a child through kidnapping or more innocent circumstances, a few schools have begun monitoring student arrivals and departures using technology similar to that used to track livestock and pallets of retail shipments.

Here in a growing middle- and working-class suburb just north of Houston, the effort is undergoing its most ambitious test. The Spring Independent School District is equipping 28,000 students with ID badges containing computer chips that are read when the students get on and off school buses. The information is fed automatically by wireless phone to the police and school administrators.

In a variation on the concept, a Phoenix school district in November is starting a project using fingerprint technology to track when and where students get on and off buses. Last year, a charter school in Buffalo began automating attendance counts with computerized ID badges - one of the earliest examples of what educators said could become a widespread trend.

At the Spring district, where no student has ever been kidnapped, the system is expected to be used for more pedestrian purposes, Chief Bragg said: to reassure frantic parents, for example, calling because their child, rather than coming home as expected, went to a friend's house, an extracurricular activity or a Girl Scout meeting.

When the district unanimously approved the $180,000 system, neither teachers nor parents objected, said the president of the board. Rather, parents appear to be applauding. "I'm sure we're being overprotective, but you hear about all this violence," said Elisa Temple-Harvey, 34, the parent of a fourth grader. "I'm not saying this will curtail it, or stop it, but at least I know she made it to campus."

The project also is in keeping with the high-tech leanings of the district, which built its own high-speed data network and is outfitting the schools with wireless Internet access. A handful of companies have adapted the technology for use in schools.

But there are critics, including some older students and privacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, who argue that the system is security paranoia.

The decades-old technology, called radio frequency identification, or RFID, is growing less expensive and developing vast new capabilities. It is based on a computer chip that has a unique number programmed into it and contains a tiny antenna that sends information to a reader.

The same technology is being used by companies like Wal-Mart to track pallets of retail items. Pet owners can have chips embedded in cats and dogs to identify them if they are lost.

In October, the Food and Drug Administration approved use of an RFID chip that could be implanted under a patient's skin and would carry a number that linked to the patient's medical records.

"It's too Big Brother for me," said Kenneth Haines, a 15-year-old ninth grader who is on the football and debate teams. "Something about the school wanting to know the exact place and time makes me feel kind of like an animal."

Kenneth's opinion is echoed by organizations like the A.C.L.U. and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes "digital rights."

It is "naive to believe all this data will only be used to track children in the extremely unlikely event of the rare kidnapping by a stranger," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the A.C.L.U.

Mr. Steinhardt said schools, once they had invested in the technology, could feel compelled to get a greater return on investment by putting it to other uses, like tracking where students go after school.

Advocates of the technology said they did not plan to go that far. But, they said, they do see broader possibilities, such as implanting RFID tags under the skin of children to avoid problems with lost or forgotten tags. More immediately, they said, they could see using the technology to track whether students attend individual classes.

Mr. Weisinger, the head of transportation at Spring, said that, for now, the district could not afford not to put the technology to use. Chief Bragg said the key to catching kidnappers was getting crucial information within two to four hours of a crime - information such as the last place the child was seen.

"We've been fortunate; we haven't had a kidnapping," Mr. Weisinger said. "But if it works one time finding a student who has been kidnapped, then the system has paid for itself."

Precision Dynamics Corporation, a global leader in automatic wristband identification, will showcase its newest products, Smart Kiosk and Smart Reader, during the IAAPA (International Association of Amusement Parks & Attractions) Trade Show in Orlando, Florida, November 17-20.

Smart Kiosk is a free-standing booth with touch-screen that allows patrons to load money using cash, credit or debit cards onto RFID (radio frequency identification) wristbands which are provided to patrons at admissions. Smart Reader is a free-standing combination point-of-sale (POS) system and reader that replaces the need for expensive stand-alone POS systems and readers. PDC's cashless payment solution consists of Smart Kiosks, Smart Band RFID Wristbands, and Smart Readers, located at points-of-sale throughout a venue for quick and easy purchases.

"Smart Kiosk is a money loading device that works similar to ATM machines, but instead, funds are transferred onto patrons' RFID wristbands," comments Victor LaRosa , PDC RFID Manager. "It is part of the latest cashless payment technology which is practical for water and amusement parks where patrons don't like to carry wallets, and loose cash can get wet or lost. It provides an added convenience for both park owners and patrons."

The system helps increase throughput at concession stands, reducing long lines that often deter patrons from making additional purchases. Most of the time spent waiting in lines is attributed to the financial transactions of handling and counting cash or processing credit cards.

"A significant barrier to entry for park owners has been removed with the introduction of Smart Kiosk and Smart Reader. Before, interfaces between POS systems and readers were needed, making the leap to cashless payment more cumbersome," adds LaRosa.

Smart Band RFID Wristbands can be used for a variety of functions including cashless payment, tracking of purchases, and access control. They provide nontransferable positive patron ID while helping to increase per capita spending, enable cashless transactions at the point-of-sale, and eliminate the need for tickets at events.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday appointed a new Department of Motor Vehicles director who has advocated taxing motorists for every mile they drive — by placing tracking devices in their cars.

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Medical-supply company Henry Schein has agreed to distribute implantable radio frequency identification chips to doctors' offices across the country--

the first major sales push for the technology since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it for medical use last month.

MasterCard International has announced OneSMART PayPass, which will combine a contact chip and a contactless interface to provide a highly flexible EMV-based smart card application for credit and debit cards.

The first cards and terminals now ready for testing, banks and merchants can trial OneSMART PayPass as an alternative to cash payments. "OneSMART PayPass combines the power and security of MasterCard M/Chip, with the speed and convenience of contactless payments," said Pascal Dufour, vice president and head of Chip Product Management, MasterCard International.

"Contactless payments are most powerful in places where speed is of the essence - such as in quick-serve restaurants, petrol stations and tollways. Cardholders simply tap their PayPass-enabled card on the PayPass reader and are on their way."

"Trials in the United States have shown us that MasterCard PayPass has the potential to replace cash with card p ayments. This represents a huge potential for banks and merchants, particularly as a significant proportion of cash payments are made in retail environments where convenience and speed of transaction are at a premium.

OneSMART PayPass will now enable our customers in regions where EMV smart cards predominate, such as Europe, to reap the benefits offered by contactless payments," added Dufour. How MasterCard PayPass Works - OneSMART PayPass cards have a chip and an antenna embedded in their plastic.

When a card is brought in close proximity to a PayPass-enabled reader, it uses radio frequency technology to transmit account details to the PayPass reader. Once payment details have been captured by the terminal, they are processed through the MasterCard acceptance network in the same way as a contact chip payment.

The transaction is authorized either online by the issuer host or offline by the card. The card's on-chip risk management capabilities can also accomplish Card Authent ication (CAM) offline. To further speed up a PayPass transaction, CVM requirements, such as signature or PIN, may be waived for low-risk, low-value purchases. With OneSMART PayPass, a consumer can now 'tap and go', making the transaction simpler and faster than cash.

Responding to a rise in crimes against children, a Tokyo manufacturer is joining forces with a security firm to create school bags with a global positioning system, or GPS.

The high-tech bags, which began selling this week, are believed to be the first of their kind in the world, the Japan Times reported.

The bag maker, Kyowa Corp., said it is meeting the demand of parents who want to know the whereabouts of their children.

Using a system operated by the security firm Secom Co., parents can track their children on a website, which uses satellite and mobile phone waves to pinpoint the backpack.

With all of the excitement last month about the Food and Drug Administration approving an implantable radio frequency identification device (RFID), it's easy to forget that the first place that many Americans will encounter RFID is not in their arms, but at the gas pump, on their key chains, and at major retailers like Wal-Mart.

While the FDA and healthcare establishment have been noodling around on the medical and ethical implications of implanting chips into people, other industries have been moving full-speed ahead. RFID technology is already broadly deployed within the United States.

Between the "proximity cards" that are used to unlock many office doors and the automobile "immobilizer chips" that are built into many modern car keys, roughly 40 million Americans carry some form of RFID device in their pocket every day.

I have two: last year MIT started putting RFID proximity chips into the school's identity ca rds, and there is a Phillips immobilizer chip inside the black case of my Honda Pilot car keys. I'm a big fan of these two chips. The proximity chip lets me open doors at the MIT Stata Center by waving my wallet—I don't even need to take the card out of my pocket.

The immobilizer chip interlocks with an RFID reader that's built into the steering column of my Honda: if the chip isn't there, the car's computer kills the ignition system and "immobilizes" the vehicle. According to several studies, these chips have had a significant impact on automobile theft over the past decade.

But the real interest in RFID today isn't these proprietary devices, but rather the standardized Electronic Product Code (EPC) chips that were developed by the AutoID center and are now being overseen by EPCglobal, a trade organization.

EPC tags are designed to replace today's ubiquitous Universal Product Code (UPC) bar-codes, except instead of identifying the maker and kind of product, the 96-bit EPC code will give every package of razors, every box of pancake mix, and every shoe its own unique serial number.

The tags, which operate in the unlicensed radio spectrum between 868 and 965 megahertz, can be read at a distance of many feet and through paper, fabric, and some plastics. And although the tags can cost as much as 25 cents today, when they are purchased by the million the cost plummets to 10 cents or less.

Should consumers be worried? Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), is one of the privacy activists leading the charge against RFID.

In November 2003 Albrecht received international media attention when she revealed that Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble had conducted a test of RFID-tagged Max Factor Lipfinity lipstick at a Wal-Mart store in Broken Arrow, OK.

Albrecht and others claimed that, despite the company's promises, consumers had not been properly notified that the lipstick boxes contained RFID tags. And earlier that year, Wal-Mart had canceled plans to test Gillette's RFID-enabled "smart shelf" in Brockton, MA, after Albrecht had publicized the retailing giant's plans "Wal-Mart is blatantly ignoring the research and recommendations of dozens of privacy experts," said Albrecht this spring when Wal-Mart announced its early success with RFID.

"When the world's largest retailer adopts a technology with chilling societal implications, and does so irresponsibly, we should all be deeply concerned." Representatives from Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble have repeatedly said that there was adequate notification inside the Broken Arrow store.

And even though Wal-Mart admitts to canceling the trial in Brockton, the company insists that Albrecht had nothing to do with it. "There was no secret test. We discussed the concept with the supplier and we worked with the supplier to set up a prototype," says Wal-Mart spokesperson Gus Whitcomb. "But we pulled the plug before it ever went live.

I'm not sure you can publicly 'reveal' something that never took place." As far as the tags go, Whitcomb says, "The consumer has three choices: buy the product and keep the tag; buy the product and remove the tag anytime post-purchase; or don't buy the product."

But as EPC technology starts its move from the laboratory to the marketplace, it's becoming clear that attention to privacy niceties and even some forms of notice will increase the price of this technology. After all, it takes time to properly alert people to the presence of RFID.

Wal-Mart might have had signs up at Broken Arrow, but at least some people at the stores who bought RFID-labeled products didn't know that the products contained radio frequency tracking devices.

MIT could have printed an RFID symbol on my ID card, but it didn't; there was no requirement for it to do so. Honda doesn't bother putting an RFID symbol on its car keys—this despite the fact that the keys can be read from 30 centimeters or more away using specialized equipment. The problem of voluntary, industry-approved privacy standards is that they're voluntary—companies don't need to comply with them.

Mobiles could soon double up as travel cards, with Nokia planning to try out a wireless ticket system on German buses. Early next year travellers in the city of Hanau, near Frankfurt, will be able to pay for tickets by passing their phone over a smart-card reader already installed on the buses.

Passengers will need to own a Nokia 3220 handset which will have a special shell attached to it. The system would reduce queues and make travelling easier, said Nokia. Transport systems around the world are seeing the advantage of using ticketless smartcards.

Using a mobile phone is the next step, said Gerhard Romen, head of market development at Nokia. The technology offers access to a lot of services and makes it easy to get the information you want The ticketless trial will start early in 2005 and people will also be able to access transport information and timetables via their phones.

Nokia has worked with electronics g iant Philips to develop a shell for the mobile phone that will be compatible with Hanau's existing ticketing system. The system opens up possibilities for mobile devices to be interact with everyday environments, said Mr Romen.

"It could be used in shops to get product information, at bus-stops to get information about the next bus or, for example, by being passed over an advert of a rock star to find out details of concerts or get ringtones," he told the BBC News website.

He is confident that the trial being run in Germany could be extended to transport systems in other countries. "The technology offers access to a lot of services and makes it easy to get the information you want," he said.

BBC story - Eye scan to order school dinners. The article, like so many science and technology reports recently, unveils a plan to use head- retinal scanners for buying and selling. Now it's not that I'm getting worried...yet...but isn't it starting to feel a bit 'mark-y' these days? The particular scanning machines in the article referenced above will supposedly ease the method of buying school meals and checking out library books by scanning up to 12 students per minute during lunchtime.

In 1973, Senior Scholastics predicted a similar system, which would start in public schools. The article introduced school age children to the concept of buying and selling using numbers inserted in their foreheads. The secular high school journal's September 20, 1973 feature "Who Is Watching You?" speculated:

"All buying and selling in the program will be done by computer. No currency, no change, no checks. In the program, people would receive a number that had been assigned them tattooed in their wrist or forehead. The number is put on by laser beam and cannot be felt. The number in the body is not seen with the naked eye and is as permanent as your fingerprints. All items of consumer goods will be marked with a computer mark. The computer outlet in the store which picks up the number on the items at the checkstand will also pick up the number in the person's body and automatically total the price and deduct the amount from the person's 'Special Drawing Rights' account."

Implantable chips, hand and head scanners [already designed and in limited use at several retail chains], and inventory trackers are part of the new high-tech makeover leading to a cashless society. Hospitals are planning uses that include "chipping" the elderly and infirmed and prisons will begin chipping tens of thousands of inmates this year. Retail stores currently field testing the emerging technology include the number-one chains - Kroger, The Gap, Thriftway, McDonald's, and Wal-Mart.

"And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name" (Rev. 14:9-11).

Implanting a microchip in a pet has become a common practice, but until last week, it may have seemed quite a stretch to implant one in a person. On Wednesday, a Florida company announced that the Food and Drug Administration had approved its microchip for embedding into humans to convey information about their medical conditions.

The FDA's decision could move privacy concerns about the emerging technology to the forefront of public debate. The technology behind it involves radio frequency identification, or RFID, sensors that are being applied to all kinds of objects to hold information about them and track their whereabouts.

Proposals for RFID tags run the gamut from tubes of toothpaste to passports and money. Until now, much of the work has focused on using RFID tags in business-supply chains to monitor the flow of goods and increase efficiency. But as the technology moves from the lab into the real world, busi nesses may face more calls for regulation.

RFID isn't new technology, but as small inexpensive tags proliferate, so could the ability for companies to amass a database detailing an individual's movements and purchases. Unlike a bar code, which identifies only the type of product, each RFID tag has a unique serial number.

The tags themselves can pack greater amounts of data and transmit the information faster from farther away. In today's closed RFID systems, such as those used by libraries, data cannot be shared because only one reader — the library's — can get information from the tags.

Tomorrow's open standards are designed so that tags can be read by virtually any reader. These capabilities are at the heart of the debate over RFID, a debate that illustrates the difficulty of striking a balance between protecting privacy and allowing a potentially useful technology to develop.

"You don't want to constrain the potential impact of this technology. At the same tim e, you don't want to be careless about what potential privacy issues will come up," said Greg Plichta, a Seattle patent attorney who has studied RFID and developed a set of proposed privacy guidelines. "The balance now certainly weighs in favor of protecting privacy," he said.

"Perhaps it's time to start thinking about proposing some rules that would go beyond just espousing general guidelines." Applied Digital Solutions, the Delray Beach, Fla., company producing the implantable VeriChip, cites potential life-saving benefits the chips could have by allowing access to a patient's medical records even if the patient is unconscious.

The company says its chips contain a 16-digit number that can be read by passing a scanner over the arm where the chip has been inserted. The number links to a database accessible to health-care providers over the Internet.

But privacy advocates contend the tags are a bad idea because they could lead to abuses by government and contribute to the gro wth of identify theft. "This is the most invasive use of the technology we know of so far," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C.

"With an implantable chip, the person who's being tagged really doesn't have the ability to remove the tag or control the disclosure of its identity." Yet the idea has already gained ground in other parts of the world. In Mexico, government officials have had chips implanted in their arms for access to restricted areas, and chips have been embedded in some hospital patients.

People in Spain have used implanted chips for entering a nightclub and buying drinks. In Japan, some parents are putting RFID tags on their children's bags or clothing to track their movements. In the United States, many large retailers are planning to use RFID tags on boxes and warehouse pallets and have started some trials of tags on individual items.

Privacy questions arise at the point the tags move from back-end sup ply chains to goods consumers buy and take home, Rotenberg said. Retailers envision using data from item-level tags for targeted marketing campaigns. For example, a clothing tag could identify a frequent shopper as he or she walked through the store.

Shop clerks could then approach the customer with special offers. Privacy advocates worry that a company could collect RFID data from objects like clothing and associate it with personal information to track movements, or sell that data to other companies. Tags are small enough to be undetected if embedded into products. Right now, the tags are too expensive for widespread use at the item level but that could soon change.

New U.S. passports will soon be read remotely at borders around the world, thanks to embedded chips that will broadcast on command an individual's name, address and digital photo to a computerized reader.

The State Department hopes the addition of the chips, which employ radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology, will make passports more secure and harder to forge, according to spokeswoman Kelly Shannon. The reason we are doing this is that it simply makes passports more secure," Shannon said.

"It's yet another layer beyond the security features we currently use to ensure the bearer is the person who was issued the passport originally." But civil libertarians and some technologists say the chips are actually a boon to identity thieves, stalkers and commercial data collectors, since anyone with the proper reader can download a person's biographical information and photo from several feet away.

"Even if th ey wanted to store this info in a chip, why have a chip that can be read remotely?" asked Barry Steinhardt, who directs the American Civil Liberty Union's Technology and Liberty program. "Why not require the passport be brought in contact with a reader so that the passport holder would know it had been captured? Americans in the know will be wrapping their passports in aluminum foil."

Last week, four companies received contracts from the government to deliver prototype chips and readers immediately for evaluation. Diplomats and State Department employees will be issued the new passports as early as January, while other citizens applying for new passports will get the new version starting in the spring.

Countries around the world are also in the process of including the tags in their passports, in part due to U.S. government requirements that some nations must add biometric identification in order for their citizens to visit without a visa.

Current passports (which are alread y readable by machines that decipher text on the photo page) will remain valid until they expire, according to a State Department spokeswoman. The RFID passport works like a high-tech version of the children's game "Marco Polo."

A reader speaks out the equivalent of "Marco" on a designated frequency. The chip then channels that radio energy and echoes back with an answer. But instead of simply saying "Polo," the 64 Kb chip will say the passport holder's name, address, date and place of birth, and send along a digital photograph.

While none of the information on the chip is encrypted, the chip does also broadcast a digital signature that verifies the chip itself was created by the government. Security experts said the U.S. government decided not to encrypt the data because of the risks involved in sharing the method of decryption with other countries.

RFID technology has been around for more than 60 years, but has only recently become cheap enough to be adopted widely. E-Z Pa ss prepay toll systems across the country run on RFIDs, pets and livestock around the world have RFID implants, and businesses such as Wal-Mart plan to use the tags to track their inventory.

But Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Lee Tien argues that RFID chips in passports are a "privacy horror" and would be even if the data was encrypted. "If 180 countries have access to the technology for reading this thing, whether or not it is encrypted, from a security standpoint, that is a very leaky system," Tien said.

"Strictly from a technology standpoint, any reader system, even with security, that was so widely deployed and accessible to so many people worldwide will be subject to some very interesting compromises."

Travel privacy expert Edward Hasbrouck argues that identity thieves are not the only ones with an interest in recording the data remotely. Commercial travel companies, including hotels, will capture the data to create commercial dossiers when people check into ho tels or exchange currency in order to up-sell their customers, he argues.

While there are no laws in the United States prohibiting anyone from snooping on someone's passport data, Roy Want, an RFID expert who works as a principal engineer for Intel Research, thinks that the possibility of identity theft is overblown.

"It is actually quite hard to read RFID at a distance," said Want. A person's keys, bag and body interfere with the radio waves, and the type of RFID chip being used requires readers equipped with very large -- and obvious -- coils to capture the data, according to Want.

Still, he concedes that a determined snooper could create a snooping system. "In principle someone could rig up a reader, perhaps in a doorway you are forcing people to go through. You could read some of these tags some of the time," Want said.

In this era of high-tech memory management, next in line to get that memory upgrade isn't your computer, it's you. Professor Theodore W. Berger, director of the Center for Neural Engineering at the University of Southern California, is creating a silicon chip implant that mimics the hippocampus, an area of the brain known for creating memories.

If successful, the artificial brain prosthesis could replace its biological counterpart, enabling people who suffer from memory disorders to regain the ability to store new memories. And it's no longer a question of "if" but "when." The six teams involved in the multi-laboratory effort, including USC, the University of Kentucky and Wake Forest University, have been working together on different components of the neural prosthetic for nearly a decade.

They will present the results of their efforts at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in San Diego, which begins Sa turday. While they haven't tested the microchip in live rats yet, their research using slices of rat brain indicates the chip functions with 95 percent accuracy. It's a result that's got the scientific community excited.

"It's a new direction in neural prosthesis," said Howard Eichenbaum, director of the Laboratory of Cognitive Neurobiology at Boston University. "The Berger enterprise is ambitious, aiming to provide a prosthesis for memory. The need is high, because of the prevalence of memory disorder in aging and disease associated with loss of function in the hippocampus."

Forming new long-term memories may involve such tasks as learning to recognize a new face, or remembering a telephone number or directions to a new location. Success depend on the proper functioning of the hippocampus. While this part of the brain doesn't store long-term memories, it re-encodes short-term memory so it can be stored as long-term memory.

It's the area that's often damaged as a result of h ead trauma, stroke, epilepsy and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. Currently, no clinically recognized treatments exist for a damaged hippocampus and the accompanying memory disorders. "If you can figure out how the inputs are transformed, then you do have a prosthesis.

Then I could put that into somebody's brain to replace it, and I don't care what they look at -- I've replaced the damaged hippocampus with the electronic one, and it's going to transform inputs into outputs just like the cells of the biological hippocampus." Dr. John J. Granacki, director of the Advanced Systems Division at USC, has been working on translating these mathematical functions onto a microchip.

The resulting chip is meant to simulate the processing of biological neurons in the slice of rat hippocampus: accepting electrical impulses, processing them and then sending on the transformed signals. The researchers say the microchip is doing exactly that, with a stunning 95 percen t accuracy rate. "If you were looking at the output right now, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the biological hippocampus and the microchip hippocampus," Berger said. "It looks like it's working."

If successful, the artificial brain prosthesis could replace its biological counterpart, enabling people who suffer from memory disorders to regain the ability to store new memories.

Wired.com reports: “In this era of high-tech memory management, next in line to get that memory upgrade isn't your computer, its you.

Professor Theodore W. Berger, director of the Center for Neural Engineering at the University of Southern California, is creating a silicon chip implant that mimics the hippocampus, an area of the brain known for creating memories. If successful, the artificial brain prosthesis could replace its biological counterpart, enabling people who suffer from memory disorders to regain the ability to store new memories.

And it's no longer a question of ‘if’ but ‘when.’ The six teams involved in the multi-laboratory effort, including USC, the University of Kentucky and Wake Forest University, have been working together on different components of the neural prosthetic for nearly a decade. They will present the results of their efforts at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in San Diego, which begins Saturday.

While they haven't tested the microchip in live rats yet, their research using slices of rat brain indicates the chip functions with 95 percent accuracy. It's a result that's got the scientific community excited.

‘It's a new direction in neural prosthesis,’ said Howard Eichenbaum, director of the Laboratory of Cognitive Neurobiology at Boston University. ‘The Berger enterprise is ambitious, aiming to provide a prosthesis for memory. The need is high, because of the prevalence of memory disorder in aging and disease associated with loss of function in the hippocampus.’

It's the area that's often damaged as a result of head trauma, stroke, epilepsy and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. Currently, no clinically recognized treatments exist for a damaged hippocampus and the accompanying memory disorders…”

Privacy advocates are concerned that an implantable microchip designed to help doctors tap into a patient's medical records could undermine confidentiality or could even be used to track the patient's movements.

"If privacy protections aren't built in at the outset, there could be harmful consequences for patients," said Emily Stewart, a policy analyst at the Health Privacy Project. The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that Applied Digital Solutions of Delray Beach, Fla., could market the VeriChip, an implantable computer chip about the size of a grain of rice, for storing medical information.

With the pinch of a syringe, the microchip is inserted under the skin in a procedure that takes less than 20 minutes and requires no stitches. Silently and invisibly, the dormant chip stores a code that releases patient-specific information when a scanner passes over it.

The VeriChip itself contains no medical records, just codes that can be scanned and revealed in a doctor's office or hospital. With that code, doctors can unlock part of a secure database that holds the patient's medical information, including allergies and prior treatment.

The electronic database, not the chip, would be updated with each medical visit. The microchips have already been implanted in 1 million pets. But the chip's possible use to track people's movements - in addition to speeding delivery of medical information to emergency rooms - has raised alarm.

The company's chief executive officer, Scott R. Silverman, said chips implanted for medical uses could a lso be used for security purposes, like tracking employee movement through nuclear power plants.

An information technology guru at Detroit Medical Center said he will lobby for his center's inclusion in a VeriChip pilot program. "One of the big problems in health care has been the medical records situation.

So much of it is still on paper," said David Ellis, the center's chief futurist and co-founder of the Michigan Electronic Medical Records Initiative. "It's part of the future of medicine to have these kinds of technologies that make life simpler for the patient," Ellis said. Strong encryption algorithms will ensure hackers can't nab medical data, he said.

The Health and Human Services Department on Wednesday announced $139 million in grants to help make real President Bush's push for electronic health records for most Americans within a decade. William A. Pierce, an HHS spokesman, could not say whether VeriChip and its accompanying secure database of medical records fit w ithin that initiative.

"Exactly what those technologies are is still to be sorted out," Pierce said. "It all has to respect and comport with the privacy rules." To kickstart the chip's use among humans, Applied Digital will provide $650 scanners for free at 200 of the nation's trauma centers.

In pets, installing the chip costs owners about $50. For humans, the chip implantation cost would be $150 to $200, said Angela Fulcher, an Applied Digital spokeswoman. Ultimately, the company hopes patients who suffer from such ailments as diabetes and Alzheimer's or who undergo complex treatments, like chemotherapy, would have chips implanted.

Motorola and MasterCard are conducting field tests of new mobile phones that include Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips embedded in them as part of a cashless payment system dubbed PayPass.

The phones will be equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC) systems, which will allow them to communicate with nearby readers to, for instance, pay for small purchases or tickets for transit or events simply by passing their phone close to a reader.

Once the phone and account has been identified by the RFID tag, the user's MasterCard account will be billed automatically by the network for the appropriate amount.

MasterCard also sees potential for the phones as contactless readers, which it claims opens the door for "a variety of marketing and promotional applications," on which the company did not elaborate further.

Motorola and MasterCard are conducting field tests of new mobile phones that include Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips embedded in them as part of a cashless payment system dubbed PayPass.

Once the phone and account has been identified by the RFID tag, the user's MasterCard account will be billed automatically by the network for the appropriate amount.

Depending on who you talk to, they will be sinister micro-spies, whose web of whispers will snare personal information with Orwellian efficiency. Or they will be dependable sentinels, shielding U.S. cities from infiltration by psychopathic terrorists.

Or they will be tireless helpmates wordlessly working through the night to be sure your cat is healthy, your refrigerator is stocked and your coffee is ready just as you step out of the shower -- even if you hit the snooze alarm, twice.

They" are Radio Frequency Identification Devices or RFIDs. A billion of them will be distributed in the next 14 months with billions more scattered across the globe over the next decade. Experts agree they can be used to track and monitor people.

Commercial firms are worried privacy fears will kill the nascent industry. The question is whether anyone will address the privacy implications of RFID tags before they are inextricably mixed into our lives. RFID tags are tiny computer chips, each with its own antenna.

Smaller than a grain of rice, they contain at a minimum a unique identification number that can be read from a distance by machine. Many tags can be read at once and new advances are expected to enable the reader to store new information on the chip.

The signals are at frequencies that can pass through many materials so readers can see the tags through boxes and containers. If you carry an RFID-laced card in your wallet, perhaps a student ID or a building access card, there is a fairly good chance a reader can grab the ID number from that, too, even if it still is in your pocket. Some new tags have sensors.

They could be used to monitor the health of livestock or pets by tracking their temperature. More advanced tags are on the horizon that will not need to be near a reader like the unpowered ones today.

This new generation of tags will have their own batteries, more memory, and will be able to co mmunicate with each other, passing messages along until they reach their destination. The day may come when the RFID tag on the milk carton reports it is no longer fresh and sends a message to the store to deliver a new carton.

Today's tags, however, are used primarily to track shipments. RFID tags are gradually enabling businesses to scan entire shipments of goods in minutes and enter the items into inventory without unpacking pallets or tying up employee time.

Wal-Mart, the world's most powerful retailer, has mandated its top 100 suppliers adopt the technology effective this January. Other retailers, struggling to shave costs, are following suit. RFID applications are concentrated on shipping because tags are too expensive to be placed on individual items.

As the price for a tag drops, however, tags are expected to replace the familiar stripes of bar codes. At that point, it will be possible to capture expansive arrays of buying information about a person. RFID also will e nable tracking of people's movements.

Though it will be many years before constant tracking over extended distances is possible, it is not difficult to visualize a mall or large grocery chain placing RFID chips in their frequent-buyer cards and tracking people throughout the store to see how they shop.

"We see more than 50 bar-coded objects before we get to work ever day ... they are so pervasive they are almost invisible. Someday RFID tags will get there," said Ravi Pappu, founder of ThingMagic and an RFID expert.

Pappu spoke before a workshop on RFID held by the Federal Communications Commission in Washington last Thursday. "The downside ... when you start tagging everything, is if you have tagged objects you can be tracked. There is a risk of that.

But the interesting thing about this time ... is that (RFID) is not yet widely deployed enough, or low cost enough, to be incorporated in everyday objects.

"I think now is the right time to have a very serious debate about the privacy issues because this will become a problem if it is not dealt with," Pappu said. "Now is the time to exercise all possible options in the evolution of this technology."

U.S. APPROVED- APPROVED - APPROVED - RFID Implantable medical ID approved by FDA

The Washington Post reports: “A microchip that can be implanted under the skin to give doctors instant access to a patient's records yesterday won government approval, a step that could transform medical care but is raising alarm among privacy advocates.

The tiny electronic capsule, the first such device to receive Food and Drug Administration approval, transmits a unique code to a scanner that allows doctors to confirm a patient's identity and obtain detailed medical information from an accompanying database.

Applied Digital Solutions Inc. of Delray Beach, Fla., plans to market the VeriChip systems -- the chips, scanners and computerized database -- to hospitals, doctors and patients as a way to improve care and avoid errors by ensuring that doctors know whom they are treating and the patient's personal health details.

Doctors would scan patients like cans of soup at a grocery store. Instead of the price, the patient's medical record would pop up on a computer screen. Emergency room doctors could scan unconscious car accident victims to check their blood type and medications and make sure they have no drug allergies. Surgeons could scan patients in the operating room to guard against cutting into the wrong person. Chips could be implanted in Alzheimer's patients in case they get lost.

‘In hospitals today, many deaths occur because people aren't able to communicate timely enough their medical information or because of wrong information,’ said Scott Silverman, the company's chief executive. ‘With VeriChip, you'll be able to have accurate information even if a patient can't talk. It's a way to modernize our antiquated system of medical records.’

The approval was immediately denounced by privacy advocates, who fear it could endanger patient privacy and mark a dangerous step toward a Big Brother future in which people will be tracked by the implants or required to have them inserted for surveillance, identification and other purposes.

‘Once the technology is out there and is available, it raises the very real possibility that people in a position to require or demand it will begin to do that,’ said Katherine Albrecht, who has campaigned against such devices. ‘It would obviously be possible to inject one of these into everyone. In the post-9/11 world, we are already racing down the path to total surveillance. The only thing missing to clinch the deal has been the technology. This may fill that gap.’…”

A controversial technology already planned for tracking consumer products could be used to create "smart" driver's licenses that emit signals readable from a distance, according to federal and state government officials contemplating ways to fight identity fraud.

Radio frequency identification, or RFID, could help thwart terrorists who use falsified documents to get around, say Virginia lawmakers who will hear testimony on the technology's uses, reports Wired.com.

A Johnson & Johnson executive recently told industry leaders that in the future, the RFID chips will be "on everything from diapers to surgical instruments." On the driver's licenses, the computer chips would emit a radio signal bearing the holder's unique, personal information. Virginia is considering adding biometric data such as fingerprints and retinal scans to the RFID tags.

But privacy advocates fear government could use the technology to spy on ci tizens and believe it could make identity theft even more complicated. Government agents could, for example, easily identify large numbers of protesters in a march, and crooks could mine personal information from the wallets of passersby on a street corner.

A government also could track the movement of its citizens by coupling global positioning data related to satellites with information from card readers that translate the signals.

Some privacy advocates worry about the capability of reader devices to sense signals from a distance. Tests have demonstrated broadcast ranges of up to 30 feet.

Opponents also point out federal legislators could require states to conform with uniform "smart card" standards, effectively turning the licenses into a national ID that could be read anywhere in the country.

The EU Observer reports: “Drivers all around the EU will soon have the same driving license, after ministers of transport agreed to standardize the 110 different models currently circulating around the union.

The new cards will be plastic and may eventually contain a microchip, reports Belgian daily La Libre Belgique.

Drivers will have to renew this license every ten years, but will not be required to take another driving test.

The Commission wants to standardize the licenses to help easy identification of drivers…”

In the future, a controversial technology that uses tiny computer chips to identify and track items from a distance will be "on everything from diapers to surgical instruments," says an executive for a leading corporation.

Pat Rizzotto, vice president of global customer initiatives for Johnson & Johnson, says his company's long-term vision for RFID, or radio frequency identification, includes having physical objects communicate in real time and extending the Internet into everyday items.

Knowing where the company's products are at any time promises significant cost savings, better on-shelf availability of products and a more efficient supply chain, he explained at the EPC Global U.S. Conference 2004 in Baltimore this week held by EPC Global, the non-profit organization seeking to adopt a universal technology standard for products.

RFID chips communicate the location and status of the tagged items by radio waves similar to those used to broadcast FM radio programs. However, privacy advocates express concern over the price society might pay for these benefits.

"RFID radio waves can travel right through solid objects," said Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of CASPIAN, Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, a group that has led the opposition to RFID.

"Information on RFID 'spy chips' can be read through the things we usually rely on to protect our privacy, like walls, purses, backpacks and even through our clothes," she said. "It would be a privacy nightmare if we allowed them to be attached to everyday objects."

CASPIAN was one of more than 40 privacy and civil liberties organizations to call for a voluntary moratorium on the use of RFID on consumer items last November. "Used improperly, RFID has the potential to jeopardize consumer privacy, red uce or eliminate purchasing anonymity and threaten civil liberties," the group warns in its position statement.

RFID supporters have discounted the concerns as overblown, emphasizing that the focus of the tracking technology is on warehouse pallets and cases, not consumer goods. But Rizzotto's statements suggest the industry is working toward a future in which individual items are chipped and tracked.

"There will be tags and readers everywhere," he told the standing-room-only crowd. While Johnson & Johnson is best known for its baby shampoo and Band-Aid bandages, the company also makes birth-control pills, incontinence protection, portable diabetes testing systems and medication for schizophrenia.

Consumers might not want information about their use of these products remotely accessible, the privacy advocates argue. Research by RFID consulting firm Capgemini found that consumers are uncomfortable with the technology. In its October 2003 study [pdf file] of 1,000 U.S. consumers, "Understanding Their Mindset," Capgemini concluded,

"When it comes to consumer concerns relating to RFID, there's no question that privacy heads the list ... ." The study reported that "almost seven out of 10 respondents said they were 'extremely concerned' about the use of consumer data by a third party; 67 percent were concerned they would be targeted with more direct marketing; and 65 percent were concerned about the ability to track consumers via their product purchases."

Wired.com reports: “Some federal and state government officials want to make state driver's licenses harder to counterfeit or steal, by adding computer chips that emit a radio signal bearing a license holder's unique, personal information.

In Virginia, where several of the 9/11 hijackers obtained driver's licenses, state legislators Wednesday will hear testimony about how radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags may prevent identity fraud and help thwart terrorists using falsified documents to move about the country.

Privacy advocates will argue that the radio tags will also make it easy for the government to spy on its citizens and exacerbate identity theft, one of the problems the technology is meant to relieve.

Virginia is among the first states to explore the idea of creating a smart driver's license, which may eventually use any combination of RFID tags and biometric data, such as fingerprints or retinal scans.

‘Nine of the 19 9/11 terrorists obtained their licenses illegally in Virginia, and that was quite an embarrassment,’ said Virginia General Assembly delegate Kathy Byron, chairwoman of a subcommittee looking into the use of so-called smart driver's licenses, which may include RFID technology.

The biometric data would make it harder for an individual to use a stolen or forged driver's license for identification. The RFID tags would make the licenses a ‘contact-less’ technology, verifying IDs more efficiently, and making lines at security checkpoints move quicker.

Because information on RFID tags can be picked up from many feet away, licenses would not have to be put directly into a reader device. If there was any suspicion that a person was not who he claimed to be, ID checkers could take him aside for fingerprinting or a retinal scan.

States need to adopt technologies that can ensure a driver's license holder is who he says he is, said Byron.

Federal legislators may also require states to comply with uniform ‘smart card’ standards, making state driver's licenses into national identification cards that could be read at any location throughout the country. The RFID chips on driver's licenses would at a minimum transmit all of the information on the front of a driver's license. They may also eventually transmit fingerprint and other uniquely identifiable information to reader devices…”

WorldNetDaily.com reports: “A little-known federal agency is planning a new monitoring program by which the government would track every car on the road by using onboard transceivers.

The agency, the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office, is part of the Department of Transportation. According to an extensive report in the Charlotte, N.C., Creative Loafing, the agency doesn't respond to public inquiries about its activity.

According to the report, cutting-edge tracking technology will be used by government transportation management centers to monitor every aspect of transportation. Under the plan, not only will movement be monitored but it also will be archived in massive databases for future use.

The paper reports a group of car manufacturers, technology companies and government interests have worked toward implementing the project for 13 years.

‘The only way for people to evade the national transportation tracking system they're creating will be to travel on foot. Drive your car, and your every movement could be recorded and archived. The federal government will know the exact route you drove to work, how many times you braked along the way, the precise moment you arrived – and that every other Tuesday you opt to ride the bus.

‘They'll know you're due for a transmission repair and that you've neglected to fix the ever-widening crack that resulted from a pebble dinging your windshield.’

The agency's website says its purpose is to ‘use advanced technology to improve the efficiency and safety of our nation's surface transportation system.’…”

A University of Pittsburgh researcher and a U.S. subsidiary of a Korean chipmaker announced Thursday they plan to sell radio-frequency identification tags to get a share of what could be the biggest change in retail technology since the barcode.

ADCUS Inc., a subsidiary of Advanced Digital Chips Inc., plans to market a generic "smart tag"' developed by University of Pittsburgh electrical engineer Marlin Mickle, who has said his "Product Emitting Numbering Identification" tags are smaller and cheaper to produce than other smart tags -- hence the acronym, "PENI" (pronounced "penny").

Mickle and Wexford, Pa.-based ADCUS said they want to help speed the implementation of the "smart tags''-- tiny radio transponders made of microchips and mini-antennas and known as RFID -- by making them cheap enough for smaller businesses to buy and use. "Companies would not have to pay to create these generic chips from scratch," Mick le said.

"Instead, they would just buy them as ready-made commodities. They could then customize these chips, or pay a programmer to customize them, to meet their own specific needs and those of customers." Mickle and other University of Pittsburgh researchers have patented a 2.2 millimeter-square chip with a tiny antenna etched onto its surface.

Mickle has said the tags -- which are passive, meaning they only bounce radio waves back to transmitters -- could cost between a nickel and a dime to make. Mickle said ADCUS could begin selling more advanced and active chips, which would broadcast all the time, within three years.

If successful ADCUS could cash in on growing interest in RFID technology, which could grow from a $1 billion industry last year to $3 billion in 2007, according to the Wireless Data Research Group. Retail giant Wal-Mart and the U.S. military have required their suppliers by next year to begin using the smart tags, which have been touted for their potential to speed up checkout lines, control inventory, cut costs and reduce theft.

Other retailers such as Albertson's, Best Buy and Target as well as drug makers such as Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co. and Wyeth are also looking into the tags. Analysts have said the radio tags would have to cost no more than a nickel before they're used widely; last year the average price ranged from 57 cents for a passive tag to 91 cents for an active tag, according to the ARC Advisory Group, a research firm in Dedham, Mass.

A recent report by ARC predicted that the least expensive tags would fall to only 16 cents by 2008. But ADCUS is confident it can sell or license the RFID tags to businesses that may not be able to afford buying or developing the technology today, said Bill Choi, vice president of business development.

The tags are envisioned as brainier bar codes; they can hold much more information, can relay information faster and don't need to be passed under laser readers. The tags talk with scanners using radio waves and relay information stored on them. Advocates say the technology could result in consumers spending less time in line, because whole shopping carts could be "scanned" rather than one item at a time.

Items could spend less time in warehouses or on store shelves because retailers could quickly check and manage inventory. Privacy advocates worry the tags could be used to collect personal data and even track people's movements.

Imagine having a glass capsule measuring 1.3mm by 1mm, about the size of a large grain of rice injected under your skin. Implanting microchips that emit a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) into animals has been common practice in many countries around the world, with some looking to make it a legal requirement for domestic pet owners.

The idea of having my very own microchip implanted in my body appealed. I have always been an early adopter, so why not. Last week I headed for the bright lights of the Catalan city of Barcelona to enter the exclusive VIP Baja Beach Club.

The night club offers its VIP clients the opportunity to have a syringe-injected microchip implanted in their upper arms that not only gives them special access to VIP lounges, but also acts as a debit account from which they can pay for drinks. This sort of thing is handy for a beach club where bikinis and board shorts are the uniform and carrying a wallet or purse is really not practical.

I met the owner of the club, Conrad Chase, who had come up with the idea when trying to develop the ultimate in membership cards and was the first person implanted with the capsule, made by VeriChip Corporation. With a waiver in his hand Conrad asked me to sign my life away, confirming that if I wanted the chip removed it was my responsibility.

Like a scene from a sci-fi movie, latex gloves and syringes were laid out on the table as the DJ played loud dance tunes that made my heart thump, or was it just fear? Questions were going through my mind.

Would it hurt? What are the risks? What if I want to get it out? I ordered another drink. Laia started by disinfecting my upper arm and then administered a local anaesthetic to numb the area where the chip would be implanted.

With the large needle in her hand, she tested the zone which made me flinch and led to another dose of the anaesthetic. With a numb arm, Laia held up the rather large needle containing the microchip and inserted it beneath the layer of skin and fat on my arm. She pressed the injector and it was in - my very own 10 digit number safely located in my body.

The chip is made of glass and is inert so there is no risk of it reacting with my body. It sits dormant under the skin sending out a very low range radio frequency so it will not set off airport security systems.

The chip responds to a signal when a scanner is held near it and supplies its own unique ID number. The number can then be link ed to a database that is linked to other data, at the Baja beach club it make charges to a customers account.

If I want to leave the club then I can have it surgically removed - a pretty simple procedure similar to having it put in. Now, the question of did it hurt. Having the chip inserted was a breeze, no real pain to report of.

The House Republican leadership's new bill to restructure the nation's intelligence bureaucracy would turn driver's licenses issued by the 50 states into a de facto national ID card, say privacy activists. The House bill, set for committee markups this week, is expected to be merged with a Senate version and voted on before the Nov. 2 election.

But among the little-known provisions of the "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act" are new requirements for state driver's licenses that have very little to do with driving, say critics. According to the legislation, within three years of its enactment, no federal agency may accept for any official purpose a driver's license or identification card issued by a state that does not require applicants to provide Social Security number and "facial imaging capture."

Washington would also require all states to share digital data acquired in the process of licensing to other st ates. Privacy experts say that national standards that require states to add a fingerprint or other biometric data to driver's licenses might effectively create a national ID card.

Driver's licenses are not the only form of identification changing. Next year, both U.S. passports and foreign visitor passports will be issued with a special computer chip woven into the cover. The chip will include a photograph of the traveler, and face-recognition technology will be used to make sure the passport presenter is the same as the person who applied for the document.

That seems to be what the House bill is requiring for driver's licenses of the future, too. This change will be gradual in the United States. All new passports will include the chip by next year, but those holding valid passports won't be required to upgrade until their current ones expire.

On the other hand, citizens of countries in the U.S. visa waiver program, such as Britain and Spain, will have to arrive on U.S. sho res with a biometric chip in their passport beginning in October of next year.

[Where are all those who emailed me laughing at this chip when I first revealed it a couple years ago? Not so funny now is it!...therev]

Imagine a chip implanted in your body that carries all your pertinent information as well as your current body temperature and, of course, your exact location. Sounds harmless when applied in commerce to track shipments or in the livestock industry to monitor animals.

But when the idea is broached of injecting the chip into political prisoners, as is rumored in China, or into convicted sex offenders, a proposal in this country, then the name of George Orwell quickly surfaces.

Matthew Brzezinski explores this high-tech surveillance technology and other new and often frightening frontiers in a post-9/11 USA in his riveting Fortress America. A siege mentality — a maximum security state similar to Israel — is emerging in the USA, he says.

The manufacture of such sophisticated hardware as the RFID — radio frequency identification — is easy, but moving it into place and solving delicate legal issues before another terrorist attack is the tricky part. "The technological and legal foundations for blanket surveillance had already been laid in 2003," Brzezinski writes.

"All that was lacking was the political and social will to bring all this technological wizardry to bear in the war on terror. It wouldn't happen overnight or without another catastrophic incident, something that upped the ante and put America in the same survival mode on par with Israel: a nuclear detonation, a biological outbreak, a mass casualty event.

But if the stakes were high enough, would we be more willing to accept life in a maximum security surveillance state?" As for RFID, the future is here. Brzezinski writes, "Special Ops forces reportedly had tiny chips injected in their hips on sensitive missions where they could not wear dog tags."

And as the 9/11 Commission reported, Brzezinski confirms that the USA is vulnerable to attacks on its under-protected chemical and natural gas depots. Readers are asked to contemplate the unthinkable. One doctor tells Brzezinski, "If I were al Qaeda I'd send twenty terrorist martyrs infected with smallpox or pneumonic plague to crisscross the country on as many domestic flights as possible."

Brzezinski writes that "75 million people could be infected" within a month's time from the suicide infectors. At the heart of Brzezinski's solid reporting and evenhanded summaries is this question: How much disruption will the American people tolerate as its government tries to find "the balance between security and liberty"?

A new theme park in Florida is fitting all patrons with wristbands that include tracking chips in them to allow visitors to keep track of one another. Wannado City issues bands with radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology to all its patrons, according to a statement from the maker of the bands, Texas Instruments and RF Code. Located in the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., area, Wannado City is an indoor role-playing theme park for children that opened last month.

The purpose of the bands is to provide a way for family members to always know where their loved ones are within the 140,000-square-foot facility. Kiosks within the park can be used by a parent, for example, to determine where his or her children are. Locations are identified on a map. "Groups can easily and securely access the real-time location of their members, on a map of the park, at any time of day in English or Spanish simply by scanning their Wa nnaFinder wristbands at any kiosk," the Texas Instruments statement said.

"The instant, real-time location of group members and amenities enables parents and guardians to know where their kids are, while at the same time empowering them to explore career roles with their young peers with unprecedented freedom and safety." RFID technology has been used in myriad ways, including as locators for those carrying subdermal chips and as a way to keep track of store inventory.

RFID is going to happen, given the mandates of key retailers and the Department of Defense to their suppliers. For now, suppliers and retailers are dealing with the early-stage problems and promise of the technology, but already watchdog groups and politicians are questioning the technology's evolution, whether that will present challenges to individuals' privacy, and how they or the industry can minimize any such threats.

At this point, RFID tags are being affixed mostly to cases and pallets, but the day will come when they are affixed to individual products, too. Maybe they'll have a kill switch so that consumers can disable the tags when they leave the store, or maybe they won't. Whatever direction the industry at large takes, your business must operate on the Spider-Man principle: With great power comes great responsibility.

Where privacy and data collection are concerned, privacy professionals understand that with more data comes greater responsibility and legal risks. If the industry reaches a point where it can somehow use RFID tags to track a product all the way into consumers' homes and beyond, the industry also must ensure that it's protecting the privacy rights of the individuals who buy that product.

For instance, imagine a shopper is buying an RFID-tagged sweater using a credit card. At the point of sale, the shopkeeper scans the sweater's RFID tag, and the sweater's unique information is combined with the customer's name and other identifying information. Now fast-forward a few months, and imagine this same shopper returns to the store wearing that same RFID-tagged sweater.

Unbeknownst to the shopper, un-manned readers throughout the store can scan and collect the data on the sweater's RFID tag--pinging the tag multiple times as the shopper walks around the store and then leaves empty-handed--and then send that info to a back-end database holding the original record of that sweater and the shopper's name, address, etc.

Reporting and analysis tools can be applied to the record to glean that the customer returned to the store, spent 30 minutes there, and didn't buy anything. Armed with that information, the store could opt to mail a coupon to the shopper to encourage her to buy the next time she visits.

But that data, like any data that is combined with personally identifiable information, had better be stored securely, and access to it had better be supervised and monitored. And companies had better work on the idea that they're collecting only the data they need, had better ask whether it's important to make that data personally identifiable, and had better check that they're following any regulations of their industry or special privacy rules or practices that they themselves or their industries adhere to.

But how well do these apply to the new technologies with shifting points of collection and no way of giving notice or consent? And how well do notice and implied consent work when the use of the data may shift over time, or later become combined with personally identifiable information from other sources? Any consents obtained now are likely not to expand to future uses.

Whether we know enough to object or not, some of the proposed applications of RFID are likely to freak out most people. An RFID supplier was recently given the go-ahead to test RFID tags that can be implanted in humans, though the Food and Drug Administration is still reviewing usage of the technology in this way.

It's currently being proposed as a security/biometric technology, allowing or preventing access to certain areas of health-care facilities based on the facility's rules. (The manufacturer has used this technology previously to track pets and livestock.) Is providing an easier way to identify who can pass certain thresholds in a health facility really worth implanting RFIDs into our muscles? Can't good old-fashioned biometrics work just as well?

In the rush to adopt RFID, businesses have not paid enough attention to legal and consumer-relations risks. And, until consumers are convinced that the benefits of RFID outweigh their privacy and security concerns, this may be a very serious risk indeed.

In Germany there are at least 500,000 surveillance cameras, mostly in public places and shopping centers. Security and crime prevention are however not the only use for modern surveillance technology.

Implanted micro-chips and finger-scans are used in night clubs as payment and for access to VIP lounges. Polylux meets party people who have made their bodies to voluntary data-banks

When it comes to radio frequency identification tags for humans, the people have spoken. They hate it. CNET News.com recently ran a report on companies with technologies that involve implanting RFID chips under people's skin or inside a bracelet. Advocates say the tags could help paramedics deliver medical help to people in the field, reduce prison violence or give police a way to track victims of kidnapping, a major problem in Latin America.

Nearly every reader who wrote News.com about the story expressed outrage and disdain. "I couldn't help but notice that one of the most effective uses for the RFID tags on humans was in a prison setting--which is exactly what society in general would become, if this particular technology were mandated somehow," Harold Davis of Syracuse, N.Y., wrote.

The fear that the technology will enable governments to keep tabs on everyone was the concern raised most often. Hypothetically, law enforcement agencies or even private security companies will be able to track where you've been, with whom you associate and what you own with this technology. Imagine a semiretired senior citizen in a rented maroon blazer knowing everything about your day. Worse, t hat person could begin to bombard you (or at least your cell phone) with ads or messages.

"What can transmit signals may also be capable of receiving signals from a central computer. Now there's something to think about, eh?" a News.com reader named Max wrote from the United Kingdom. "This biochip project has been in the pipeline for decades. It is now about to bear fruit, to the detriment of all free-thinking people."

A large number of letters also asserted that human RFID tags are a demonic tool. Several pointed out that in the Bible, Revelations 13:16-17 read: "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name." A few anatomical inconsistencies aside, the description is kind of close.

On top of this, a beach resort in Spain does in fact use implanted RFID tags as part of a paym ent system. "When our society reaches the point that credit cards can easily be faked, look for a push to implant a chip that will take over our trade institutions," reader Jeff Phelps wrote. "I can assure you the resistance to this will be very strong from Christians.

You will see tens of millions refuse this chip, even when it means great personal suffering will ensue." To top it off, others noted that even the so-called advantages are minor at best. "What if I want to go to Wal-Mart? I get a basket, get the stuff I need and literally walk out. Oh! Slow down, beating heart," Bob Cowger of Poteet, Texas, wrote. "Or I go to the local library. Pick what I want from the shelves.

Walk out the door with everything being okayed by the computer system because I have MY RFID CHIP implanted. Oh! Joy!" As for kidnap protection, Cowger predicted that RFID tags will send a signal to police, who will pursue kidnappers, who in turn will toss the victim on the freeway. As a consolation, t he paramedics would have known what medicines not to give the deceased victim.

The tenor of the debate indicates a few harsh realities for those promoting this technology, a list that includes Royal Philips Electronics, IBM, Intel, Wal-Mart Stores and the technology ministries of Japan and South Korea. For one thing, this is going to be one long, ugly, uphill battle. The issue has united people with fairly strong religious beliefs and libertarian privacy advocates.

That doesn't happen often. On the other hand, the relationship between consumers and industry isn't even close to a crisis point. At the turn of the last century, corporate leaders often faced assassination attempts, and striking factory employees sometimes got shot. Try to double-park in front of, or across the street from, an office of J.P. Morgan Chase. Private security officers will immediately shuffle you away, the legacy of a 1920 bombing at the financial institution's New York offices.

On a gut level, I thi nk that much of the antagonism against the technology is rooted in a general distrust of large institutions. Anyone who has been stuck on hold when phoning for help knows that the standard of customer service continues to plummet. But in the end, people distrust RFID, I believe, because it forces people to get tagged like a circus bear so that an already overpaid executive can obtain a bonus for cutting costs. If companies want to win the public over to this technology, they are going to have to be the ones jumping through hoops.

Big pharmaceutical companies are testing new tracking technology they hope will help them spot counterfeit drugs before they reach consumers' medicine cabinets. By putting tags that transmit radio waves on medicine bottles sent to drug stores, company officials think they will be able to detect fake drugs that aren't moving through usual supply chains.

The drug companies' concerns about counterfeiting have aroused skepticism among some who see the issue as a way to scare Americans away from buying cheaper drugs from foreign countries. Still, efforts to implement radio frequency identification technology, or RFID, are gaining momentum.

"We think it could have a variety of purposes, such as tracking products through our distribution network, seeing where products may be diverted or stolen, thereby reducing incidence of theft, and creating a reliable tag that could help identify counterfeit products and prevent their distribution," said Johnson & Johnson spokesman Marc Monseau.

The RFID tags look like ordinary labels but are really computer chips with antennas wrapped around them. Sensors at distribution centers use radio waves to activate the tags, which are read electronically and stamped with a record of where they have been. Some groups wonder if the FDA and drug companies have ulterior motive s with the counterfeiting issue, which has grown in prominence as more Americans order less expensive drugs from Canada and other foreign countries.

The Canadian International Pharmacy Association, which represents 48 mail-order pharmacies in the country, estimates that 2 million Americans are buying $1 billion-worth of Canadian medications every year. Hintlian believes widespread use of RFID is possible by 2007 to 2008. "The fact that we've started to embark at this pace and this focus suggests this is the direction we're going," Hintlian said.

The first project in Europe to use satellites to track paedophiles and other offenders has been launched in Manchester. The new technology, described by David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, as a "prison without bars", can pinpoint a criminal's position to within six and a half feet.

Mr Blunkett visited Manchester for a demonstration of a pilot scheme in which up to 120 offenders will be fitted with satellite tags. The technology will be used for sex offenders, domestic violence offenders and prolific offenders, including juveniles.

It uses Global Positioning System satellites, backed up by mobile phone technology in some cases, to monitor offenders' movements. The system will alert police if an offender enters an area from which they have been banned, such as a playground or school. It could also provide evidence that a tagged burglar was near the scene of another offence which he or she is suspected of committing.

Mr Blunkett said it would help ensure offenders were abiding by the terms of their licences and "staying away from crime". "This technology will allow us to develop and promote the tough community sentences which are vital if we are to prevent re-offending and give non-violent offenders a chance to serve an effective sentence in the community," he said.

"The public have to be confident that this 'prison without bars' works and that it gives the police and probation services the tools they need to protect them." Offenders will be tracked following their release from jail or as part of a new community penalty - the exclusion order - which courts can impose to prevent an offender going to specific locations.

It will also be used as part of existing Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programmes for persistent juvenile offenders. Satellite tags will be available for up to 40 offenders in each of the three pilot areas at any one time.

A uniform-supply company says it uses microchips to better track the garments, but privacy watchdogs are concerned the tiny electronic devices also could be used to track the people wearing the clothing. Grantex is a pioneer in the field of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), sewing microchips into the uniforms it rents to clients including Steelcase Inc. and General Motors Corp.

Grantex uses the low-frequency "smart tags" to automatically track and sort its thousands of uniforms. After the chips are programmed, a computer scans the garment to tally how many times it has been laundered or if it needs to be mended or undergo special cleaning.

Company president Douglas Singer said he and vice president Gordon Reynolds looked into RFID and determined it would cut down on sorting time, improve efficiency and capacity, and reduce labor costs. The chips cannot keep track of garments or their wearers away from Grantex 's sorting facility in the Grand Rapids suburb of Wyoming, Singer said.

Still, the company had to persuade skeptics who had removed the microchips from their uniforms that the quarter-sized tags did not threaten their privacy. "The first thing people thought we were doing is following and monitoring them by satellite," Reynolds said. "Really, only one or two people out of thousands were concerned."

Those concerns are not ill-founded, say privacy advocates who fear that companies could use the tags to track customer movements and buying habits and that law enforcement agencies could use the technology to monitor citizens. "It's things that people are actually spending real money to do already," said Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of C.A.S.P.I.A.N., a consumer-advocacy group focusing on privacy issues.

"It is just about as worrisome as having a tracking beacon in your flesh, because you are required by your employer to wear (a microchipped uniform), and you can't get away from them." At the least, companies should tell their employees about how RFID is being used, Albrecht said. The technology was developed years ago and is used to make computerized cards to enter buildings, parking lots and ramps. Smaller, cheaper versions have led to more large-scale uses.

"It's going to take time for its acceptance, but it's one of the fastest growing technologies in the U.S. today, and it's going to get to the point when it's exponential," said Herb Markman, chief executive of Positek RFID. The Norristown, Pa., company sells RFID systems to companies like Grantex.

An Israeli firm has developed a miniature system that can provide unobtrusive lie detector tests for commercial air travelers deemed suspicious.

The system uses a miniature computer chip that can provide voice analysis of those responding to questions from screeners at airports.

Executives said the technology which they termed Poly-Layered Voice Analysis, measured voice for such traits as deception, excitement, stress, concentration, hesitation, anger, love and lust. The chip can be inserted in an eyeglass frame and allow screeners to determine with 98 percent accuracy whether a suspicious traveler has intentions to launch an attack during flight, Middle East Newsline reported.

The new technology has been relayed to the United States for marketing by a New York-based company V Entertainment, which markets a product to allow screeners to process a would-be airline passenger within 30 seconds.

Executives said a chip small enough to fit in an eyeglass frame could read a subject's voice frequency. The chip was meant to provide nine analyses and flash a light upon detection of a lie. Conventional lie detectors measure the heart beat in an effort to detect whether a subject is telling the truth.

People fed up with the proliferation of credit cards, IDs and key cards that fill their wallets to bulging may soon have an alternative. New technology could bundle such functions into just one item: your cell phone.

Near Field Communication technology, jointly developed by Sony and Royal Philips Electronics, lets wireless devices connect to other devices nearby and transfer data, from payment information to digital pictures.

Samsung Electronics and Philips say they are developing cell phones with embedded NFC chips that could double as debit cards or electronic IDs. The companies plan to begin field trials toward the end of the year

British bobbies are all set to wear jackboots with built in microchips as part a drive to make policing the British capital safer. According to The Mirror, the British Home Office plans to use the microchip boots not only to locate cops on the beat, but also to reach them in an emergency.

This whole move is part of the police's five-year strategy to keep beat officers in touch with their bases. Emphasising the need for modern technology, Home Office brass said that though the dangers of misuse could not be ruled out, it was still necessary. "We must ensure that the police have access to sophisticated technology they need to stay one step ahead.

I want to ensure the police service is equipped with the best tools and techniques available to enable them to work with maximum effectiveness and efficiency. New communications and information systems mean that officers can spend more time on the streets with local people and less time tied up in the station with paperwork," the paper quoted Home Office Minister Caroline Flint as saying.

Soon, customers may not even have to slow down in the drive-through lane at McDonald's thanks to coming technology from a Santa Clara firm. VeriFone Inc., a maker of credit card readers for retailers, was chosen by McDonald's Corp. to provide its restaurants with a wireless credit card system offered by MasterCard International that uses RFID technology.

McDonald's customers can wave their PayPass card near the Verifone card reader and the device will charge the purchase to their MasterCard account. Verifone already makes card readers that require a person to "swipe" the card through a narrow track on the reader.

The device reads the information on the magnetic stripe on back of the credit card to complete the transaction. McDonald's, Oak Brook, Ill., already uses those credit card readers at 4,500 of its 13,500 U.S. restaurants. The wireless PayPass will be tested at McDonald's in New York City and Dallas before being rolled out further.

The PayPass is another application of radio frequency identification technology, which is being developed to track inventory and complete sales transactions wirelessly and more efficiently. Mobil Oil Co. introduced a Mobil Speedpass four years ago that uses RFID. Customers could gas up at a Mobil station, wave their Speedpass in front of the pump and their purchase would be charged to their Mobil credit card. The Speedpass can also be used at Exxon and Esso stations.

CNET News.com reports: “There's not a lot of middle ground on the subject of implanting electronic identification chips in humans.

Advocates of technologies like radio frequency identification tags say their potentially life-saving benefits far outweigh any Orwellian concerns about privacy. RFID tags sewn into clothing or even embedded under people's skin could curb identity theft, help identify disaster victims and improve medical care, they say.

Critics, however, say such technologies would make it easier for government agencies to track a person's every movement and allow widespread invasion of privacy. Abuse could take countless other forms, including corporations surreptitiously identifying shoppers for relentless sales pitches. Critics also speculate about a day when people's possessions will be tagged--allowing nosy subway riders with the right technology to examine the contents of nearby purses and backpacks.

‘Invasion of privacy is going to be impossible to avoid,’ said Katherine Albrecht, the founder and director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, or CASPIAN, a watchdog group created to monitor the use of data collected in the so-called loyalty programs used increasingly by supermarkets. Albrecht worries about a day when ‘every physical item is registered to its owner.’

The overriding idea behind tagging people with chips--whether through implants or wearable devices such as bracelets--is to improve identification and, consequently, tighten access to restricted information or physical areas.

But on top of civil liberties and other policy issues, such technologies face visceral objections from many people who frown on the idea of being implanted with tags that can track them like migrating tuna. Complaints have led several companies to abandon plans to use RFID technologies in products, much less in human bodies…”

RFID tags will be mandatory in DOD contracts issued as of Oct. 1, 2004, for delivery of materiel on or after Jan. 1, 2005. The department published its policy guidelines in three appendixes to a memo from Acting Undersecretary of Defense Michael Wynne, dated July 30. The memo states that all contracts with the DOD shall require that passive tags be applied to cases and pallets and to individual high-value items (those currently requiring the military's Unique Identification code, or UID).

Portuguese Government Taps RFID Microchips for Mandatory Pet Identification Project

Digital Angel Corporation, an advanced technology company in the field of rapid and accurate identification, location tracking, and condition monitoring of high-value assets, announced today that it has won a contract from the Portuguese Ministry of Agriculture to launch the first phase of a national mandatory dog identification project using the Company's proprietary implantable RFID (radio frequency identification) microchip.

This contract is valued at approximately $600,000 and shipments have begun and are expected to be completed in the third quarter. The Portuguese Ministry of Agriculture's RFID chip implants for dogs is one of many in the planning stages throughout Europe. The Portuguese dog identification program is being conducted in conjunction with the country's annual rabies vaccination drive.

The Portuguese ministry was prompted to undertake the project because other countries in Europe had experienced excellent results with their pet identification campaigns and the injectable electronic identification of pets is rapidly growing in popularity throughout the world

Crime has become such a problem in Mexico that the government has created a fleet of cyborgs to fight it. Call them Mexico's "Robocops."

Sure, the transformation of the 170 or so law-enforcement officials isn't as dramatic as the 1987 movie, where the protagonist was part man, mostly machine.

The Mexican officials have been injected with a microchip the size of a grain of rice. Implanted beneath the skin of their arms, it allows them to access a high-level crime database and, they hope, track them if they're kidnapped.

With the acquisition of OuterLink, Digital Angel Corp. will focus on location technology and condition monitoring for high-value assets, enhancing Company's ability to meet needs of existing and potential government and commercial customers, such as Homeland Security and the DOD.

Radio frequency identification tags aren’t just for pallets of goods in supermarkets anymore. Applied Digital Solutions (ADS) of Palm Beach, Fla., is hoping that Americans can be persuaded to implant RFID chips under their skin to identify themselves when going to a cash machine or in place of using a credit card.

Chipmaker Texas Instruments on Monday announced a wireless identity chip aimed at clothing going through the dry cleaning process, creating a new market for a technology that is expected to revolutionise the way products -- and people -- are tracked and identified.

Silicon.com reports: “One German start-up has created an alternative to RFID that is likely to get under consumers' skin.

Ident Technologies has dreamt up Skinplex - which could be used in all the same ways as RFID and Bluetooth - but uses a different transmitter: human skin.

Like RFID, Skinplex works by reading a unique identifier remotely using an electromagnetic signal, normally between a microchip and a reader. Unlike RFID, however, Skinplex uses the skin to transmit the signal and an identifier carried on a person. The signal is transmitted when the carrier touches the receiver.

The Skinplex system can also be worked from a distance of 50cm, transmitting through the ether.

One possible use for the technology the company is touting is for unlocking car doors remotely. With the car owner carrying his own unique code, the idea is Skinplex becomes an anti-theft device, with only the car owner being able to get in the car without setting off an alarm.

With RFID set to become a billion-dollar market by 2010, the idea of keeping the costs down might tempt some the way of Skinplex.

Some hospitals are even talking about implanting staff and patients with RFID technology, potentially opening up a huge market for humans to carry RFID chips or Skinplex identifiers…”

One US state reckons it's cracked how to keep track of all of its 44,000 prison inmates - RFID-chip them. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRH) has approved a $415,000 contract to trial the tracking technology with Alanco Technologies. The pilot project will run at the Ross Correctional Facility in Chillicothe, Ohio. If all goes well, the technology could be rolled out to all of the state's inmates in 33 separate facilities. Inmates will wear "wristwatch-sized" transmitters that can detect if prisoners have been trying to remove them and send an alert to prison computers.

"The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has approved a $415,000 contract to try out the tracking technology"

Who doesn't like chips? The only dispute is usually about personal favorites — potato, corn, banana, veggie, ridged or flavored. Or micro, the latest thing in chips. Some people find them hard to swallow, but they seem to be catching on. They can even get under your skin. Radio-frequency identification tags, or RFIDs, are microchips that bounce back a signal from an RFID scanner. The tiny tags can carry more information than a bar code or security label. RFIDs are finding more personal applications.

Authorities in the Japanese city of Osaka said earlier this month that they plan to "chip" the kids in one elementary school because of concerns about their safety. All pupils will get an RFID tag that can be attached to their clothing or schoolbags. Scanners to read the tags will be installed at the school entrance and also at locations considered dangerous for children. When the kids are scanned at school, the time and location will be sent home by e-mail or automatic phone message.

The same thing will happen when they leave. Parents will be able to track children through the day and know when to expect them home.But the system isn't foolproof. Tags and badges can be lost or stolen. You get around that problem by using implants. It may sound like science fiction, but the attorney general of Mexico, Rafael Macedo de la Concha, told reporters this month that he and at least 160 people in his office have had microchips implanted in their arms — "only for access, for security," he said, as a requirement to enter a new federal anti-crime information center.More are scheduled to get chipped, or tagged, in the months ahead. Badges? We don't need no stinking badges.

We have implants. The chips, each one the size of a grain of rice, are similar to ones already implanted in more than 25 million animals — pets and livestock — around the world. They're made by VeriChip Corp. , a subsidiary of Florida-based Applied Digital Solutions. The company says the chips are now used mostly for security or identification purposes but believes they also have valuable medical potential, because of the patient information they can carry.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved their use in health care, but Solusat, the chip's Mexican distributor, says more than 1,000 Mexicans have had them implanted for medical reasons. Eventually, Solusat says, the chips could make door keys obsolete. You'd only have to wave your tagged arm at a scanner-equipped door to unlock it.

And you wouldn't need to carry a wallet if your credit-card information was encoded, another practical application. And while the technology is still being developed, according to Solusat, the company also hopes to provide Mexican officials with implants that can track their locations at any time, using global positioning satellites. They call this the Personal Locator Device. I don't know if Osaka would adopt those for its children, but it does call to mind a schoolyard game. Tag. You're it.

[NOTE: When I first reported this RFID chip a couple of years ago I took a lot of flak from well meaning Christians asking "did I really believe it could be the mark." I said then and still say it now, I do not know! However, as time passes the more likely that possibility becomes. Can you think of a better or easier way to get people to accept it??? "Why" it is only for better health care and we need you to have it to treat you in the hospital. "Why" you do not want a mix up and get the wrong treatment meant for someone else do you??? The picture shows how it is done for the "elite" at a Baja Club in the Caribbean because there is no place in their swim suits for a wallet so the chip serves as "MONEY" The dimensions as shown are 2.1 millimeters deep by 12 millimeters long. ...therev]

CNET News.com reports: “VeriChip, the company that makes radio frequency identification--RFID--tags for humans, has moved one step closer to getting its technology into hospitals.

The Federal Drug Administration issued a ruling Tuesday that essentially begins a final review process that will determine whether hospitals can use RFID systems from the Palm Beach, Fla.-based company to identify patients and/or permit relevant hospital staff to access medical records, said Angela Fulcher, vice president of marketing and sales at VeriChip.

VeriChip sells 11-millimeter RFID tags that get implanted in the fatty tissue below the right tricep. When near one of Verichip's scanners, the chip wakes up and radios an ID number to the scanner. If the number matches an ID number in a database, a person with the chip under his or her skin can enter a secured room or complete a financial transaction.

‘It is used instead of other biometric applications,’ such as fingerprints, Fulcher said.

The approval process does not center on health risks or implications, Fulcher said. VeriChip can already sell implantable RFID chips in the United States for standard security applications and the financial market. The company's basic technology has also been used in animals for years.

Instead, the FDA may mostly examine privacy issues, Fulcher indicated. In other words, the agency will look at whether the technology will lead to situations where confidential information can get improperly disclosed…”

As it is, you don't leave home without it. In a world of cashless payment, why not simply make your cell phone a wallet? Japan has long been phasing out the hassle of coins and bills with microchip-laden "smart cards," which let people make electronic payments for everything from lunch to the daily commute.But even smart cards could be on their way out, their plastic presence overtaken by virtual-wallet technology now available in the everyday cell phone. Other nations, led by South Korea, already have so-called mobile commerce payment schemes in place that let people punch keys on their cell phones so that the devices trigger transactions.

But a series of phones going on sale this summer in Japan, for use on NTT DoCoMo's wireless network, are the world's first with an embedded computer chip that you can fill up with electronic cash. To pay you simply wave your cell phone within a few inches of a special display f ound in stores, restaurants and vending machines around Japan. A fairy-like tinkling sound means your purchase is being deducted from the embedded chip using radio-frequency ID technology. It's instantaneous.

Unlike infrared or other mobile payment schemes that require clicks on the handset, you don't even need to open your clamshell-shaped phone, the style of choice here. It's also an idea that makes sense, given that almost every Japanese has a cell phone and relies on it so much that being stranded in the street without one almost causes panic. There are 81.5 million cell phones in this nation of 127 million people. For the wallet phone tech to really take off, stores, theaters and restaurants that accept electronic payments need to become more widespread. They total around 9,000 in Japan so far, and the number is quickly growing.

To buy a diet Pepsi from a vending machine, I pushed an "electronic payment" button on the machine and pushed another button to pick the soda. When a display the size of a small greeting card lit up with the price, I put my phone next to the display. Shazaam. The soda pop rolled out, and the display blinked with the amount of money left in the phone. To pay for my fried-rice lunch at a restaurant in our office building, I brought my bill to the register and told the clerk I wanted to pay electronically.

When he rang it up, the little display lit up with the price. I just flashed my phone. I also played Virtua Fighter arcade games at one of the two Sega amusement centers in Japan where the phone payments work. And I bought gum and bottled tea at a convenience store with the phone. Computer experts have suggested that hackers could develop a way to pickpocket cell phone wallets merely by getting close to people's handsets. That hasn't happened - yet. Another concern is that a telecom company - or a government - could find out too much about your spending proclivities and your physical movements.

But other features on Japan's richly endowed cell phones offer marketers plenty of information on consuming habits as it is: Almost all phones have e-mail and Internet connections for restaurant searches, ringtone downloads, news and weather. Later this year, Japanese credit-card company JCB Corp. plans to offer a service that will let corporate clients use chip-embedded phones as electronic keys to get into office buildings. And if you lose your wallet phone? Well, DoCoMo can lock it. Which means no one else can use it for calls. And no one else would be able to add more money to the cash-dispensing chip. But whatever money is stored on the phone is like a virtual wad of cash. The clerk at the DoCoMo store repeatedly told me not to put any more money into the phone than I could afford to lose.

Ten years ago, few imagined how pervasive the Net would be, let alone how it would change commerce, culture and communication. Today it's RFID (radio frequency identification), the tiny communicating chip that you can stick on or in just about anything -- like Canada's new e-Passport that we heard about this week. When you look around the world, the initial implementations are curious, sometimes twisted, RFID Rorschach reflections of economic cultures. Consider that the hottest RFID project going is good ol' American productivity and business process improvement.

Chances are if you've heard of RFID it's because of a plan by Wal-Mart and other retailers to use it to replace the venerable bar code. Their idea is to cut inventory and personnel costs by the hundreds of millions of dollars, eradicate theft and improve just-in-time shelf stocking. Wal-Mart, with suppliers like Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola goes liv e next year. Further to my point, the second-hottest project is by -- you guessed it -- the U.S. military, which mandated the use of RFID on equipment in the Iraqi theatre and elsewhere. These U.S. RFID exemplars are only the beginning. Let's tour.

You point your mobile phone at a poster near a public transit stop. Moments later you're on the bus grooving to Moby's latest. You've bought, paid for and downloaded it to your mobile music device. This Moby mobile music machine is Magic Touch, a brand name of an alliance in a hurry that includes Nokia, Philips and Sony. Their RFID Rorschach is evident: a triad of electronic entertainment firms from edgy Finland (Nokia), the Netherlands (Philips) and Japan (Sony). Nokia already has a Magic Touch RFID in a wireless handset. It will communicate with suitably equipped posters (like our Moby tune shop), objects (like office door locks), and other devices (for example, to exchange ring tones between phones).

The possible uses are limit ed only by your imagination. Already, a German security firm uses a Magic Touch prototype with sensors at points along its guards' patrol routes. The employee touches his handset to a tag and his boss immediately knows where he is and whether he's on schedule. Meanwhile in another telling initiative, last week, Mexico's Attorney-General Rafael Macedo de la Concha and 160 federal prosecutors, investigators and other employees were implanted with rice-grain-sized RFID chips for secure access to a new anti-crime information centre. "It's only for access, for security," the minister said.

The project is expected to expand quickly; President Vicente Fox and his staff may get chipped in the near future. Some speculate the measure is partly designed to reduce official corruption, Mexico's biggest security problem.Across the pond at the European Union, government ministers aren't being tagged (yet?). But its bureaucrats are into the RFID act. They've mandated that all dogs, cats and ferrets travelling into and between EU member countries must have embedded tags by 2012 (in the interim they must bear either a tag or a special tattoo).

Makes sense: anyone who's been to a Paris restaurant knows how much the French, at least, adore their dogs and ferrets. Meanwhile, nearby at the Barcelona Baja Beach Club, in an RFID Rorschach of a different sort, VIP customers have embedded chips under their skin so staff can treat them with the fawning respect they deserve, and they can buy bebidas without bumbling. RFID: The oh so invisible pass card for chic bathers in skimpy suits. No slackers in RFID Rorschach, the Japanese also use the tool to track humans.

Alarmed at a series of violent crimes involving children, next month a school in western Japan will introduce RFID cards that let parents keep tabs on their kids all day. Pupils scan their cards across readers at the school entrance and then the time and location are recorded and sent via e-mail or phone to their homes. Kids also scan on their way out, so parents will know what time to expect them. Many Japanese pupils play sports long after school and then spend several hours at private crammer schools.

Ten-year-olds often travel on public transport late at night. Telling as all this may be, you are probably wondering about an RFID thingy for a Report on Business reader's Rorschach. You know, the type -- like you, maybe -- who's in the global virtual community that spends half its leisure time hunting for lost golf balls in the rough. I've found it. Radar Golf (based in Roseville, Calif.) has embedded RFID chips inside golf balls.

It offers a kit including balls and handheld tracker for $150 (U.S.). Slice into the woods, grab the tracker off your bag, point, find, and retrieve in moments as your ball beams its location straight to you. Only problem is, Radar's having trouble selling the idea to a golf ball industry whose $1.5-billion business model needs the average weekend duffer to lose four balls per game.

While radio frequency identification technology (RFID) may offer potential benefits, it also raises privacy fears. Despite these fears, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) argues in a recent report that these fears should not lead to legislative controls of RFID. Rather, the CEI believes that "prompt deployment of, and experimentation with, RFID would best serve the interests of the public and the economy." Perhaps, but those people harmed by perceived privacy invasion will not be pleased in the meantime.

So, what exactly is RFID and how does it provide possible advantages over bar codes and static ID cards? RFID, as described by the CEI, implements the radio frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to identify objects uniquely. Radio communications and new efficiencies in fabrication and miniaturization feed into RFID devices that in turn can assist in the production and delivery of goods, and spe cifically to enable unique identification in new and more effective ways. RFID is moving along such that it is soon to be ready for prime time as a real alternative to bar codes (Uniform Product Codes — boxes of vertical bars and spaces). Most of us are readily familiar with bar codes on most consumer goods.

RFID already is being used in the shipping and logistics industry, in transportation access cards, and for use in some identification cards. In terms of personal identification, RFID already enables key card holders to enter secure buildings and pass through toll gates rapidly.

The promise of RFID is that as the technology advances and is deployed more and more, products shipped on trucks, trains and planes and stored in warehouses regularly will be inventoried without unloading and ferreting through pallets and packaging. Furthermore, RFID apparently could assist consumer ease by allowing receipt-free returns and thwarting post-sale theft.

But not all is clean and easy with RFID, as it has raised significant enough privacy concerns to cause alarm among activist groups, state legislators to consider restrictive legislation, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to conduct hearings aimed at potential regulation. The privacy concerns that have been voiced relate to direct monitoring and indirect monitoring. In terms of direct monitoring, the expressed fear is that someone in the manufacturing or sales chain may use information obtained from RFID systems to learn information about or track a consumer against her interests.

As an example provided by the CEI, RFID could be implemented to understand a particular consumer's purchases from a store and then ascertain when the consumer returns to the store. This type of information could lead to the store developing a "file" about the consumer and her purchasing activities. This also could cause the store to focus specific marketing efforts at that consumer. Use of information like this from RFID very well may offend some consumers' privacy standards. Indirect monitoring can occur when an outsider to an RFID network uses the existence of RFID "tags" to read and collect personally identifiable information against the interests of the people being monitored. As an example set forth by the CEI in this context, union personnel at a right-to-work rally surreptitiously could scan RFID tags on clothing, ID cards and the like.

When a person whose RFID tag's serial number was scanned at the rally later shows up at a union hall, she could face retaliation from the union. This type of monitoring likely would offend notions of privacy held by many people. Notwithstanding the above privacy concerns, the CEI feels legislation is inappropriate at this time to restrict or control RFID because "there is little real-world experience" based on the limited deployments of RFID tags so far.

That indeed may be the case. But the CEI g oes farther, stating that "as RFID technology comes into full use, various social forces will constrain it more suitably than would government regulation," as "RFID users face economic incentives and consumer preferences that will direct the technology's evolution in harmony with consumer interests," and because "consumers' easy access to defensive techniques and counter-technologies will complement existing laws that already protect privacy."

That all is much easier said than done. Self-regulation has been proposed before as technologies developed, and after privacy violations occurred and the self-regulation did not get the job done completely, the law came marching in — such as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, the Financial Services Modernization Act (Gramm-Leach-Bliley), and other privacy laws. RFID is off the ground and we will see where this new technology takes us. Let's watch closely to ensure that our privacy is not further encroached as the world gets smaller and smaller.

When more than 100 top executives gathered at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., campus a few months ago for the company's annual CEO Summit, a technology experiment took place right beneath their noses. Radio-frequency identification tags, attached to the attendees' name badges, emitted signals that were used to facilitate seating at the opening reception. "Definitely, this is a revolutionary technology," Bill Gates told his influential guests, before informing them their badges were equipped with the wafer-thin tags.

What Gates didn't reveal was that his company was already working on something much more ambitious. For months, Microsoft has been ramping up development as it prepares to enter the RFID market in the first half of next year. Its engineers are coding RFID specifications into three of the company's enterprise-resource-planning applications--the Axapta, Great Plains, and Navision suites--and into BizTalk Server, which plays a central data-integration role in Windows environments. Windows may get an RFID injection next.

"The platform will be RFID-enabled," says Paul Flessner, senior VP of Microsoft's server platform division. Within the operating system, RFID support probably would be akin to a device driver, the piece of code that allows a printer or a network device to work with a computer. Microsoft is aiming for a share of the burgeoning market for RFID readers, which will grow 50% next year, to 1.5 billion devices, research firm Venture Development Corp. estimates. "If one reader costs $1,000 or more, we want to bring down that cost significantly by taking a zero off that number," says Drew Gude, a Microsoft program manager.

While some companies, such as TrenStar Inc., have done the work themselves to load Microsoft's mobile operating system, Windows CE, onto handheld RFID readers, Microsoft is assessing whether to create a version of Windows CE tailored for RFID readers, according to a source. A Microsoft spokeswoman , however, says that's not an area of focus right now. Partners and customers feel the gravitational pull of Microsoft's growing interest. An RFID Council, launched by Microsoft in April, already includes more than 30 technology companies, and compatibility testing is under way in an RFID lab on the Redmond campus.

Matrics Inc. last week sent its RFID readers and other infrastructure products to be reviewed there. Microsoft's goal, says Girish Rishi, Matric's senior VP of marketing, is to "understand RFID, how it operates, what players you need, what layers exist, back-end systems requirements, and what applications work best in specific markets." In short, Microsoft is sizing up the RFID market, from top to bottom, to see where it should push hardest. "Microsoft's expanding activity will influence the broader market," Rishi predicts. "Microsoft is expected to drive standards and influence how data is managed as it's transmitted from readers."

Customers are watching closely to see if that translates into applications that are easier and cheaper to implement. Microsoft isn't alone in going after that business. This week, IBM will unveil an enhanced Websphere Product Center that, among other things, will let companies more easily associate data generated by RFID readers with product data stored in enterprise databases. Lyle Ginsburg, a partner with Accenture, believes the entrance of big players such as IBM and Microsoft should help drive down costs. "Companies want a low-cost, shrink-wrapped platform," he says. That "will play right into Microsoft."

It is hard enough to keep track of a child when there is a full-time parent at home to supervise. In the single-parent household or the dual-income family, maintaining balance between work and parenting is difficult, and providing much-needed supervision is almost an impossibility without substantial help. Developed for the military, Global Positioning System (GPS) technology has been with us for some time.

It is most commonly used in the consumer space for navigation. Originally, fears of being attacked by enemy cruise missiles made the technology impractical for tracking people. But toward the end of the last decade, accuracy improved to allow us to triangulate a location to within one or two yards, which now makes the technology useful for keeping track of children. The most interesting product in this class is the GPS Locator for Children by Wherify Wireless.

This device, worn by a child, can locate a child that has wandered off. The device looks like a large watch and it can be customized by the child to make it personal. It could fool a kidnapper. More appropriate for older children, one of the easiest ways to track a child is through a GPS-enabled phone. By using a product like AccuTracking, a child who has the related phone can be located on a Web page and tracked.

Something we do to locate our own lost pets is place a passive microchip under their skin so they can be scanned if they find their way into an animal control facility. A similar technology has been created to address parental concerns about kidnapping. Called the VeriChip, it arrived with significant controversy. It uses a passive technology with limited range. Basically, the child would need to be scanned with a hand-held radio to pull off the information on the chip.

That information would link the interested party into an online repository that would contain contact information, allergies, medical coverage, med ical history and additional information deemed relevant to the parent using the service. The chip could be removed when the child becomes an adult. Or it could be left in, depending on the privacy concerns at that time. This technology has been most visibly used in Mexico to locate missing children, where an estimated 133,000 are kidnapped every year.

The Washington Post reports: “The long arm of the law has gone bionic. Mexico's attorney general, Rafael Macedo de la Concha, announced this week that he has a microchip implanted in one of his arms. The chip, enclosed in a sleek capsule about the size of a grain of rice, emits a low-frequency radio wave that can be used to locate Macedo, as he told reporters, ‘at any moment, wherever I am.’

The chips also function as an electronic identification that grants Macedo and about 160 of his lieutenants access to a suite of offices on the third floor of the attorney general's headquarters, which houses a state-of-the-art, $30 million computerized database of crime, which President Vicente Fox inaugurated Monday.

A scanner at the door reads the identification numbers in the chips. Once scanned and recognized, Macedo and the others are permitted to enter the offices, where officials are focused on using computers to organize and analyze crime statistics. Analysts said Mexico's lack of centralized and computerized crime data is a key reason that most crimes here are never solved…

The chips, injected through a syringe-like device, are the latest and most high-tech weapons in the government's offensive against crime, prompting jokes in Wednesday's newspapers that Macedo was Mexico's ‘Robocop.’…

About 1,000 people in Mexico have had the VeriChip implanted, said Antonio Aceves, president of Solusat, the Mexican distributor of the chip, which was created by a Florida company, Applied Digital Solutions. He said most of the customers have been people with medical problems, including diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. The chip can be programmed to carry medical information, which can be read by scanners that several Mexico City hospitals now have, he said.

Aceves said only a few people had bought the chip for security purposes, including one family that had one implanted in their 2-year-old daughter. He said the company hopes that the chips can ultimately make door keys obsolete; he said home doors could be equipped to read the chips of residents…”

The rights and wrongs of RFID-chipping human beings have been debated since the tracking tags reached the technological mainstream. Now, school authorities in the Japanese city of Osaka have decided the benefits outweigh the disadvantages and will now be chipping children in one primary school.

The tags will be read by readers installed in school gates and other key locations to track the kids' movements. The chips will be put onto kids' schoolbags, name tags or clothing in one Wakayama prefecture school. Denmark's Legoland introduced a similar scheme last month to stop young children going astray. RFID is more commonly found in supermarket and other retailers' supply chains, however, companies are now seeking more innovative ways to derive value from the tracking technology.

US airline Delta recently announced it would be using RFID to track travellers' luggage.

[picture is of a child wearing a GPS wrist locator - blue watch like item on the left wrist]

Forget the notebook and the multicolored pen, a Japanese firm has developed the latest in school supplies -- chip-embedded student ID cards. The cards make it easier for parents to keep tabs on their youngsters, said Toru Hasegawa, a spokesman for software firm NAJ Corp, based in western Japan.

International Business Machines Corp opened a test center for radio tags in Nice, France on Thursday to keep up with fast growing interest from retailers, manufacturers and transport firms. Radio tags, supercharged versions of the barcode, can help to track goods, automate banking services, improve product quality and ultimately even prevent someone from washing a new red t-shirt with the white laundry.

"This is acknowledgment that the market is moving so fast that we need more resources," said Faye Holland, IBM's global chief of radio frequency identification, or RFID, business. Some 1,000 IBM employees work part-time or full-time on RFID. Top retailers like U.S.-based Wal-Mart, Germany's Metro and Britain's Tesco have said they will use the chips that allow product information to be read automatically and wirelessly by readers built into cargo docks and cash tills or the doors of offices and buses.

The U.S. Department of Defense is planning to require its suppliers to attach RFID tags to their shipments. Holland said potential customers include all major ports, airports and airlines in Europe and the Asia Pacific region to tag and track baggage and cargo. "We're talking to all major ones," she told Reuters in an interview.

"Still in 2004 and early 2005 there will be lots of pilots, but by mid-2005 I expect to see a lot of real implementations," Holland added. Commercial adoption is expected to accelerate after this summer, when new standards will be introduced to regulate radio frequency bands. The company has also opened test centers in the United States and Asia, but IBM's Holland said Europe was ahead of those regions in terms of acceptance and interest.

Concerns about privacy, a big issue in the United States, appear to be less prominent in Europe where strict privacy laws have been implemented, she added. Mass adoption, when every item from stockings and milk carts to credit cards and aircraft engines are labeled with the chips, is still some time away because they are currently priced between 0.10 euro and 0.50 euro ($0.12-$0.61), others said. "We don't see item-level tracking within next 10 years. But you will see us on high-level items, like jewelry and consumer electronics," a spokesman for Philips' semiconductors unit said.

Dutch electronics maker Philips is one of the producers of RFID chips. Together with Japan's Sony Corp, credit card company Visa and handset maker Nokia it is pushing an advanced version called Near Field Communication which can be used for wireless electronic payments and other transactions by using a phone.Fifty percent of all items will be tagged by 2005, IBM estimates, which is when billions of products will be smart enough to know what they are and when they were manufactured.

If Radio Frequency Identification tags will track a myriad of products in the coming years, who then will keep track of the billions of RFID tags in existence? Why, the same company that keeps track of Web addresses: Verisign. The RFID revolution is often compared to the birth of the Internet, so it's appropriate that one of the fundamental technologies that will make it work is similar to one of the underpinnings of the Internet itself. Every time a Web address is typed into a browser, that browser software instantaneously does what is called a Domain Name Service lookup, in effect asking a computer called a root nameserver where more information about the Web address request can be found.

Verisign, the company that handles the DNS system for domains ending in .com and .net, says its servers process about 11 billion DNS queries every day. A similar system will be needed for RFID tags. Earlier this year, EPCGlobal , an industry consortium pushing RFID adoption, awarded Verisign a contract to run such a system, dubbed the Object Naming Service. The ONS will match RFID tags to information about the products to which they're attached.

If the number of RFID tags in circulation reaches as high as some say it will--into the billions--then root ONS servers would handle trillions of queries per day as RFID tags get attached to cases and pallets of products (tagging of individual products is still years away), says Jon Brendsel, director of the ONS project at Verisign's headquarters in Dulles, Va. "Our estimates call for us to be handling hundreds of billions of queries a day within a five-year time frame," he says. Here's how it will work. When pallets or cases of RFID-tagged Campbell's Soup come through a distribution warehouse, readers at that warehouse will scan the tags.

The critical data the readers will get is a series of numbers called an Electronic Product Code (EPC), which is unique to each tag. Using the EPC codes, the readers will query root ONS servers via the Internet for directions to other places on the Net where they can find more information about the EPC codes assigned to those cans of soup. Verisign's servers won't store product information, but rather point to servers of other companies elsewhere on the Internet, where that information is stored. All these servers will make up what Verisign calls the EPC Network.

The kinds of information related to each EPC code can range from where and when the product was manufactured to storage temperature requirements, shipping and receiving information, and other information that could guard against counterfeiting. Brendsel is betting the demand is coming, particularly as RFID tagging moves from the case and pallet level down to individual items. "We see it as being very similar to what the growth in Internet traffic was like in 1993," he says. "There were very low numbers of users at first. Obviously a lot of things have to happen first, but we do see this as a business that is five to ten years in the making."

Reuters reports: “Forget the notebook and the multicolored pen, a Japanese firm has developed the latest in school supplies -- chip-embedded student ID cards. The cards make it easier for parents to keep tabs on their youngsters, said Toru Hasegawa, a spokesman for software firm NAJ Corp, based in western Japan.

Students scan ID cards on passing through the school entrance and the time is recorded and sent via email to their parents' mobile phones or computers, he said. Parents are also alerted if their child fails to arrive at school. The same happens when school is over, so parents know when to expect their children to arrive home, Hasegawa said.

The system, which will go on sale in August, was conceived in response to growing concern about violence in Japan, he said. ‘Being able to quickly get the information that their kids are leaving school is a relief for parents,’ he said.

Japan has long prided itself on being relatively crime-free but has been horrified in recent years by increasingly violent crimes committed by ever-younger children. Despite safety worries, many education-obsessed parents send small children to late-night cram schools. It is not unusual for primary or junior high school students to be returning home at 10 p.m., Hasegawa said…”

Japan's top phone producers want to develop cell phones into an extension of your mind and body. Inventors said phones of the future will not just get smaller, but they will use your body as an extension of the phone. The finger whisper is a wearable phone in development that will send vibrations up your finger to make and receive calls. Inventor Masaaki Fukumoto explained that the key to the phone uses a microphone and receiver placed on the tendon in your wrist.

"This phone uses bone conduction," he explained. "The vibrations travel up your finger and echo in your ear canal, so it's the only sound you hear." NTT Docomo envisions a world where videophones are sewn into clothing or used for an impromptu medical examination on the road. Godo Irukayama explained that a phone will soon be able to keep an eye on your home while you're away -- closing curtains and turning on lights at the touch of a button -- all moni tored by video on your phone. It also tells you when an intruder has broken into your home so you can send him a message.

"Pretty soon, the only thing you will need when you walk out the door is a phone and a handkerchief. You can shop with your phone, organize your schedule, monitor your home, everything," Irukayama said. Irukayama insists that the new phones will not just benefit humans. In consumer tests, feeding your pet through your phone was one of the most popular uses.

Parents taking their children to Legoland theme parks this summer need not worry about losing little Johnny, Jesper or Johan thanks to advances in RFID technology. Children entering the parks will be fitted with an RFID bracelet that can be tracked anywhere within its boundaries - meaning that should they run off and find themselves lost, the parks' staff will easily be able to track them down and alert parents via SMS.

The scheme launched in Denmark last month and if successful it's likely to be seen in other amusement parks in the group - such as Legoland Windsor in the UK. The 'Kidspotter' scheme represents the latest in a string of innovative uses for RFID technology. However, not everybody is convinced that Lego's motives are as well-intentioned as the reassuring marketing for the scheme would suggest. Leo Steiner, vice president for on-demand sales at IBM, who works closely with RFID, said: "Lego will now know exactly where each customer is, how long they are spending in each area and which products are proving to be most popular."

The knock-on effect of parents' making use of the scheme could be a more concerted and insightfully targeted marketing campaign for the perennially popular Lego brick toy sets. But are privacy concerns simply a case of worrying for the sake of it? If it means their children are safer and never truly 'out of sight', then rec iprocating with a little more marketing data is something many parents may not begrudge.

Debbie Allen, a mother of two, told silicon.com: "When you go to these theme parks, you tend to spend so much time trying to keep your children by your side that they get resentful and a little frustrated. If I were given the chance to feel a little more relaxed, I would jump at the opportunity; if they then used the information they had for marketing then I really don't see the harm."

To John Kendall, casino gambling will soon look like this: A player sits down at a blackjack table and bets a stack of chips, which Kendall hopes are manufactured by his company, Chipco International of Raymond, Maine. Sensors trained on the betting area of the table scan tiny computer tags embedded in the chips, and electronically report the amount of the bet to a security control room. "If at table 17, player 4 has been betting $5, and all of a sudden he bets $500, they want to be notified," said Kendall, whose firm is investing heavily in technology known as RFID -- radio frequency identification -- to make the tags work.

"Our reporting will tell the casino manager that this person has just changed his betting habits," perhaps because he is cheating. Chipco, which hopes to introduce its new chips late this year, is one of many companies placing bets on RFID these days. The technology has been around for a decad e -- including use in the E-ZPass system that helps speed drivers through toll booths on many East Coast highways -- but RFID is now robust enough, and getting cheap enough, that it is beginning to transform numerous sectors of the economy by allowing unparalleled tracking of products and people.

Early this month, Reston-based Accenture LLP won a contract worth as much as $10 billion from the Department of Homeland Security that will include using RFID at U.S. border checkpoints. In Great Britain, officials are weighing proposals to embed tags in vehicle license plates. International Business Machines Corp. is seeking to convince banks that their best customers could be issued cards with the tags, allowing them to be immediately recognized when they enter the bank and given red-carpet treatment. But RFID initiatives alarm privacy advocates, as well as some federal government officials and state legislators, who understand the benefits but worry about the possibility of abuse in the tracking of goods and people.

For example, an RFID tag on a medication bottle might one day be used to alert a relative at another location that an elderly father forgot to take his pills. But electronic readers in office buildings might detect the types of medicines being carried around by employees, which many would regard as an invasion of privacy. Other uses are proliferating as well. One California company has developed a soap dispenser capable of reading employee tags to let restaurant managers know whether their workers washed their hands while in the bathroom.

A charter school in Buffalo uses tags on its students as a way of taking attendance in the mornings. "RFID has tremendous potential for improving productivity and security, but it also will become one of the touchstone privacy issues of our times," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who foresees congressional hearings on the issue. "Before RFID becomes ubiquitous throughout our society and economy, we need to s tart paying more attention to the privacy side of the equation." Kevin Ashton, former executive director of a joint corporate and academic RFID research center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a promotional video that the organization's mission was to "create a single global technology that will enable computers to identify any object, anywhere, automatically."

Microsoft's MSN Money website is currently running a poll asking its readers if they would voluntarily have an RFID tracking chip implanted in their body. Rather disturbing is that fact that at the time of this writing, only 81 percent are against the notion. That means almost two in ten people want a microchip in their body allowing the government to track their movements.

All ships entering Israeli ports will need to be equipped with new electronic identification devices starting next week, Israel's Transportation Ministry announced yesterday.The device, which will need to be installed on both domestic and foreign ships wishing to dock in Israel, has an electronic tag that emits a special detection code, enabling Israel to decide whether to grant authorization before the ship reaches shore.

Microsoft plans to publish this fall details of forthcoming products that support radio frequency identification, a wireless technology that could help retailers keep track of merchandise. Javed Sikander, Microsoft's RFID program manager, said on Thursday that the company plans to add support for the wireless technology to its core software and is also working on RFID products for small businesses. "Major retailers like Wal-Mart and Tesco rely on small suppliers, who often can't afford to buy expensive RFID services from several different suppliers," Sikander said. "They need an out-of-the-box RFID solution that they can just plug in."

The tracking technology uses chips fitted with radio antennas to send information about individual products, such as razors, to a store's computer network. Analysts say that the adoption of RFID technology could help retailers cut costs and improve delivery of supplies. Sikander, w ho was speaking at the RFID Networking Forum in London, added that Microsoft was working to add functionality for the technology to its back-end software, so that other companies could develop services for large customers.

However, he declined to reveal full details of Microsoft's plans, explaining that the company was attending the Forum to "share its vision and direction, not its detailed road map." More details of Microsoft's strategy should be unveiled in the next three months. "Some RFID products and services will be launched by Microsoft next year," Sikander said, adding that this would cover both the high-end market and the small and midsize market. Microsoft published a survey on Thursday that found that 60 percent of companies either haven't heard about RFID or think they don't really understand it. According to Sikander, more effort needs to be made to persuade companies that RFID has genuine potential and can generate a significant return on investment.

A surgical implant that stimulates the brain should get government approval to treat chronic depression, an expert panel of federal experts said yesterday -- marking the first time an implanted device has been recommended for the treatment of a psychiatric disorder. Using a technique known as vagus nerve stimulation, the device uses electrodes implanted in the neck to activate brain regions that are believed to regulate mood. The decision by an expert advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration came after a day of clashing scientific opinions about whether the data submitted by the manufacturer were adequate for approval.

Proponents of the device prevailed, citing the desperate need of patients with chronic depression that does not respond to existing treatments. The manufacturer, Cyberonics Inc. of Houston, hopes to expand its market: Fifteen to 25 percent of the 19 million Americans with depression may no t respond to available treatments, Rush said. The implant involves connecting a wire to the left vagus nerve in the side of the neck; a battery is implanted high in the left chest or under the armpit, and the amount of current can be regulated externally. Typically, the implant sends a 30-second pulse of current followed by a five-minute pause, 24 hours a day.

The UK-based vehicle licence plate manufacturer, Hills Numberplates Ltd, has chosen long-range RFID tags and readers from Identec Solutions to be embedded in licence plates that will automatically and reliably identify vehicles in the UK.The new e-Plates project uses active RFID tags embedded in the plates to identify vehicles in real time. The result is the ability to reliably identify any vehicle, anywhere, whether stationary or mobile, and - most importantly - in all weather conditions. (Previous visually-based licence plate identification techniques have been hampered by factors such as heavy rain, mist, fog, and even mud or dirt on the plates.)

The plates are the same shape and size as conventional plates, and are permanently fitted to the vehicle in the same way. But each e-Plate contains an embedded tag with a unique, encrypted identification number that is transmitted by the tag for detection by RFID readers. Multiple tags can be read simultaneously by a single reader at speeds of up to 320km per hour (200mph), up to 100 metres (300 feet) away. A key benefit of the e-Plate is that the tag provides an encrypted and secure ID code which is registered in the UK Ministry of Transport's vehicle database. This code prevents tampering, cloning, or other forms of fraud that can currently happen with camera-based systems.

Additionally, the e-Plate is designed to shatter if anyone tries to remove or otherwise tamper with it, and the tag can be programmed to transmit a warning if any attempt is made to dislodge the plate. The system is expected to be used to identify vehicles for applications such as security, access control, electronic payment, tracking and processing, traffic management, and customer service. Commercial applications could include car dealerships, rental companies, insurance companies, fleet operators, and parking garages. In the public sector, the main applications wou ld include enforcement (compliance with road tax, insurance, and mechanical checks), access control to restricted areas, combating vehicle theft and associated crime, and traffic flow counting and modelling.

RFID is poised to be the next big thing in corporate IT spending, according to a new Forrester Research brief. According to senior analyst Christine Spivey Overby, 37 per cent of companies surveyed expect RFID deployments to increase over the next year. The biggest interest in RFID is in the consumer products and retail industries, which account for 31 per cent of the of the companies planning to increase their deployment..

Moreover, companies that already have substantial investments in supply chain management technologies are most likely to be ready to surf the RFID wave. "Companies that are increasing their RFID efforts are further along with technologies that can unlock RFID's value," Spivey Overby writes, noting that 70 per cent of the companies which are increasing their RFID spending have either piloted or deployed supply chain applications.

The UK-based vehicle license plate manufacturer, Hills Numberplates Ltd, has chosen long-range RFID tags and readers from Identec Solutions to be embedded in license plates that will automatically and reliably identify vehicles in the UK.

Manukau Libraries manager Chris Szekely inked a contact on Friday with RFID specialist Checkpoint Meto which will provide a "total hardware and software solution" for the new community library, which is due to open by the end of the year. Checkpoint Meto is the New Zealand arm of US-based RFID giant Checkpoint Systems.

The first generation tags can save 64 data points but generation two will hold 512 data points." “Each tag has a small battery so data points can go into memory. The first generation tags can save 64 data points but generation two will hold 512 data points. You can turn a Pocket PC into an RFID reader and with GPRS you can get data instantaneously.

Tiny silicon identity chips being put in everyday objects and even implanted under the skin are changing the way we consume. Will they also invade our privacy? Antoine Hazelaar has a chip on his shoulder—or rather just beneath the skin of his left arm. It's a piece of silicon the size of a grain of rice, and it emits wireless signals that are picked up by scanners nearby. Ever since the 34-year-old Web-site producer had the chip implanted in his arm, he's enjoyed VIP status at Barcelona's Baja Beach Club.

Instead of queuing up behind velvet ropes, Hazelaar allows the bouncer to scan his arm, and strolls right in. If he wants a drink, the bartender waves an electronic wand that deducts from the 100 Euro tab on Hazelaar's chip. Such sci-fi clubbing is made possible by Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, technology—tiny digital chips that broadcast wireless signals. RFID tags are cheap and small enou gh to be disposable, and they're getting cheaper and smaller by the day. Retail stores are beginning to use them as glorified bar codes, putting them on cases of bananas or crates of Coke so they can keep track of their inventory.

The technology has the potential to transform our relationship to the objects around us. In theory, stores could dispense with checkout counters—instead, you'd grab items off the rack or shelves and walk out the door, while an RFID reader takes note of the items and takes the money right out of your e-wallet. Your clothes could tell your washing machine what settings to use.

"RFID could help give inanimate objects the power to sense, reason, communicate and even act," says Glover Ferguson, chief scientist for the consulting firm Accenture. The prospect is exciting, but it raises troubling questions about the invasion of privacy.

Developer Trolley Scan has achieved this by repackaging its super sensitive reader in a new lightweight case that it claims is suitable for mass manufacture, and yet maintains a high standard of performance and electromagnetic compatibility with other users in the RF spectrum.

Businesses are all too keen to talk up the potential of radio frequency ID (RFID) while privacy campaigners are similarly vocal in calling for some hardcore data protection to go with the new tagging technology, and one of the emerging battlegrounds is all about when exactly the tracking chips need to die. Item-level tagging is some way off yet, mainly due to cost rather than retailers' lack of enthusiasm but, when it does kick off in earnest, it's worth putting money on consumers being at loggerheads with retailers over when exactly to switch off and kill the chips. RFID tags can be read--either by a store or by an unrelated third party--unless they're shut down by the company that installed them in the product. While a consumer might quite fancy the idea of walking up to the checkout and having his new $9,000 plasma-screen TV scanned instantaneously, he might not be so pleased that any passer-by with a reader ca n find out what he's got in the back of his car. He may also just not like the idea of a supermarket being able to scan his goods after he's left the store. But when should the tag's tracking powers be turned off? Kill commands, as they're known, do exist. The idea is that when a shopper passes a certain point, any active RFID chip essentially shuts itself down (German supermarket Metro tried similar technology with its RFID rollout and was rather red-faced to find its kill commanders were more like a nasty-kick-in-the-shins commands). The question remains: why would we want to keep the tags active once we've left our local Tesco and should retailers be allowed to?

Advancements in biotechnology have culminated in its integration with semiconductor technologies such as micro-electromechanical systems, resulting in the evolution of biochips. Biochips provide pharma companies with sophisticated tools for speedy development of drugs and accurate diagnosis and understanding of biological mechanisms.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Thursday that it was about to begin testing a new technology designed to help more closely monitor and assist the nation's homeless population. Under the pilot program, which grew out of a series of policy academies held in the last two years, homeless people in participating cities will be implanted with mandatory Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags that social workers and police can use track their movements.

"begins tracking pallets and cases of product with EPC tags at one of its distribution centers and seven of its stores in Texas as part of a test being conducted with eight suppliers."

In 1974, The Six Million Dollar Man made its debut. Not that anybody has built a bionic person who can run in slow motion to a strange clicking sound. But a number of things have been popping up that begin to meld humans and machines, blurring distinctions between the two. For instance, there's the important and deeply scientific experiment being conducted among the barely clothed patrons of Baja Beach Club in Barcelona.

They're getting electronic credit cards implanted under their skin. Beautiful club-goers have a problem: If you're going to wear a halter top and micro-skirt, there's not much of anywhere to put a wallet. And who wants to carry a purse when you're there to dance? Luckily, a company called VeriChip this year unveiled a solution based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. It's a slender glass capsule about as long as a dime is wide.

Inside sits a computer chip, which stores a unique code that can identify an individual -- sort of an electronic Social Security number. The capsule also holds a tiny antenna, which can radio that code to a receiver many feet away. At the Baja Beach Club, Tuesdays are VeriChip implantation days. Stop in and a ''nurse'' -- the club's word -- uses a syringe to inject a VeriChip capsule under your skin. There don't seem to be any rules about where on the body it has to be placed.

If you think this sounds like something you'd never do, then you're not the kind of person who goes to clubs wearing your bestest nose ring. Once implanted, you become your own credit card. Need to pay for a drink? Wave your implant near a reader, and you're done. VeriChip has dreams of going global with its ''human implantable ID technology'' -- once implanted, you could wave a body part to pay for a burger at Wendy's, a beer at a baseball game, or whatever. There are a few kinks to be worked out, like the fact that you can't turn the chip off. Privacy groups are going to dog-pile on that one.

Why bother with national ID cards? Some in America have sought such cards for years. The most recent type comes with magnetic strips and biometric identifiers. It's being peddled by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) in concert with federal officials in the Department of Justice, Department of Transportation, the General Services Administration, and elsewhere. Yet these ID cards would be technologically obsolete before the system could be implemented. And think of the problems: physical cards can be counterfeited, damaged, misused, and more. Way too low-tech. In their struggle to come up with a politically palatable national ID system, proponents of the ID card are being far too timid. So here's a modest proposal: Why not implant a microchip under everyone's skin?

Am I going off the deep end by putting reports like this up? OR, am I doing my job to warn this "*UNTOWARD" generation to GET RIGHT WITH GOD!...therev

The latest internet "hoax du jour" is the ID SNIPER RIFLE by EMPIRE NORTH - a futuristic long barreled rifle with high tech optics that fires GPS microchips, with great effectiveness into unsuspecting humans. At first glance it looks right out of a weapons catalog or brochure of any authentic government defense contractor, and knowing what we know about the globalists plans for "getting us all Chipped," upon further inspection, the website address boasts proof of this monstrous invention with a "bono-fide" list of exhibitors (3M, Bell Helicopters, GM, Honda, etc.) at the China Police 2002 trade show in Beijing.

"YES," it probably is a hoax...at least for now... but this world is headed fast toward the FULFILLMENT of the Biblical MARK of the BEAST SYSTEM. Is the GPS microchip going to be the Mark? I do not know, but I do know God's word says there will be a mark, where it will be on the body, but not exactly what it will look like. Today's Science Fiction can and does become tomorrows reality. Those who believe we will be raptured before it and those who do not are "entitled" to their own opinions. The fact still remains, there "WILL BE A MARK" in the "appointed time"!

2 not favorable or fortunate; adverse, inauspicious, etc. "untoward circumstances"

REVELATION 13:15-17 "And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 16. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17. And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name."

The San Francisco Library Commission -- despite concerns over privacy and civil liberties -- approved a plan to use microchips to keep track of books and other library material. Library officials will seek about $300,000 in the city's 2004-05 budget to begin the program, which could take at least six years to fully implement and ultimately cost millions of dollars. Critics of the proposal argue that the microchips, called radio-frequency identification devices, or RFID, could be used by the government to track San Francisco residents, their reading habits and their personal information. "This is a potentially privacy shredding issue,'' said Peter Warfield, the founder of a library users group. "Stick to the bar code.'' David Molnar, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering at UC Berkeley, has been studying RFID technology and told the commission Thursday that a secure way to use the devices had yet to be developed. "Anyone can read these tags,'' he said. "There is no way to stop it.''

information underneath the skin of humans is just one of 20 new technologies chosen by the government to be showcased today and Friday at the Healthier U.S. Summit in Baltimore, Md. The VeriChip Corporation, maker of the microchip, was invited to participate in Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson's "Technology Showcase" following a selection process whereby government "e-health" experts nominated, discussed and selected 20 technologies believed to have significant potential to boost preventative health care for the public. The VeriChip is a radio frequency identification (RFID) implantable microchip containing a unique 10-digit identification number that can be "read" by a handheld scanner or by a subject walking through a portal reader. The identification number can then be relayed to a database containing the individual's personal information, or that information can be stored as data directly on the chip, which is wirelessly writeable. The chip can also be placed in a wristband. The storing of medical records on the chip would require FDA approval. The company is also marketing the chip to a variety of sectors including homeland security as a form of identification and access control where readers would be installed at all entry and exit doors of a building or residence.

At a Hewlett Packard (HP) conference in Taipei yesterday on RFID (radio frequency identification) chips, Lucien Repellin, the company's representative for RFID technology and solutions said that RFID chip prices should drop by as much as US$0.20 from the current US$0.25-US$0.35. Repellin anticipates the cost will drop significantly this year as adoption of RFID technology increases. As RFID technology is implemented worldwide, chip prices should level out at around US$0.05, Repellin also said. HP plans to establish a local RFID solution center in Taiwan, called the Center of Excellence, to help local companies introduce the technology. Taiwan-based Quanta Computer, a major HP supplier, has already started including RFID tags in their products, according to company president C.C. Leung. Leung said that the RFID technology will officially be implemented in January 2005. Forrester Research predicts that 25% of global suppliers will use the RFID standard by January 2005

Contributing to this technology explosion in China is Wal-Mart Stores Inc. From 2005 to 2007, the retailer's suppliers are estimated to use 5 billion tags annually on cases and pallets" "China also has initiated several national projects. For example, Chinese citizens will receive an identification card, meaning more than 1 billion RFID-enabled cards. Shi says China wants to eventually combine all applications, such as banking, driver's license, and credit, into one card.

NOTE: I wonder if many of those who emailed and laughed two years or so ago when I first began reporting the existence of this "666 CHIP" are still laughing now as more and more reports come in of it being used in a possible way that scripture describes as the "Mark Of The Beast"! ...therev

A new computer chip promises to keep police guns from firing if they fall into the wrong hands. The tiny chip would be implanted in a police officer's hand and would match up with a scanning device inside a handgun. If the officer and gun match, a digital signal unlocks the trigger so it can be fired. But if a child or criminal would get hold of the gun, it would be useless.

The technology is the latest attempt to create a so-called ``smart gun'' and could be marketed to law enforcement agencies within a year, according to Verichip Corp., which has created the microchip. Verichip president Keith Bolton said that the technology could also improve safety for the military and individual gun owners.

``If you let your mind wander to other potential uses, you can imagine the lives that could be saved,'' he said. Verichip, which has marketed similar microchips for security and medical purposes, announced Tuesday a partne rship with gun maker FN Manufacturing to produce the smart weapons. The companies have developed a prototype and are working to refine its accuracy, Bolton said.

The chip needs no battery or power source. It works much like those that have been implanted in pets over the past decade so they can be identified if they get lost. Verichip, estimates that about 900 people worldwide have been implanted with them.

The chips can be used instead of security key cards at office buildings or to use global positioning satellites to keep track of a relative who might suffer from Alzheimer's. It can store medical information that emergency rooms could read or financial and identification information to prevent fraud. The chip, about the size of a grain of rice, is inserted into an arm or hand with a syringe _ much like a shot is given.

The technology is the latest attempt to create a so-called ``smart gun'' and could be marketed to law enforcement agencies within a year, according to Verichip Corp., which has created the microchip.

Verichip president Keith Bolton said that the technology could also improve safety for the military and individual gun owners

The chip, about the size of a grain of rice, is inserted into an arm or hand with a syringe _ much like a shot is given.

The CEO of VeriChip, Mr. Bolton, said that there was a plan to use the VeriChip as a global implantable identity system.

The VeriChip company also said that the Italian government was preparing to implant all of their government workers.

For years, futurists have dreamed of machines that can read minds, then act on instructions as they are thought. Now, human trials are set to begin on a brain-computer interface involving implants. Cyberkinetics Inc. of Foxboro, Mass., has received Food and Drug Administration approval to begin a clinical trial in which four-square-millimeter chips will be placed beneath the skulls of paralyzed patients. If successful, the chips could allow patients to command a computer to act - merely by thinking about the instructions they wish to send. Cyberkinetics founder Dr. John Donoghue, a Brown University neuroscientist, attracted attention with research on monkeys that was published in 2002 in the journal Nature. Three rhesus monkeys were given implants, which were first used to record signals from their motor cortex - an area of the brain that controls movement - as they manipulated a joystick with their hands. Those s ignals were then used to develop a program that enabled one of the monkeys to continue moving a computer cursor with its brain.

Forget about using a pen to sign a credit card slip, or even tapping in a secret number. In the future, you could authorise payments by simply moving your finger over your flexible friend. A leading professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has suggested using radio tags in credit cards as a kind of virtual signature. Professor Ted Selker said the way someone moved their finger over the card would alter the radio transmission, producing a signal unique to that person. "I could have some gesture and that would be my signature," he said, "it would be like a personal handshake." The idea of putting radio tags in credit cards is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Mastercard has been experimenting with the technology, known as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). The use of the technology in credit cards has been tested by Mastercard. Last year it ran a nine-month pilot in the US, involving some 15,000 co nsumers. People could pay for goods by waving their cards near special tills, which would receive the information transmitted by the cards. Prof Selker has suggested taking the technology a step further and using the properties of radio waves as a security check.

Civil liberties groups from both sides of the Atlantic have joined forces to oppose the proposed introduction and cross-border sharing of biometrics and RFID in more than one billion passports worldwide. Human rights organisations from Europe, North America, Australia and Asia have sent an

Baja Beach Club owner Conrad Chase wanted something unique to identify his VIP patrons. Other clubs had special jewelry or key chains, but he was looking for something special. After brainstorming, he came up with the idea to implant his VIP members with VeriChip's implantable microchip. Alex has spoken many times over the years about how the making the chip "fun" and how by giving it an elite status soon an entire of young teenagers will be arguing with their parents demanding that they let them be implanted so that they can be in the "in" crowd. The Baja Beach Club and Chase have proved that the trend has started. When I spoke to Mr. Chase this morning he told me that his implant launch had gotten the international media's attention. He himself was implanted at the media launch of the VIP implant system along with stars from the Spanish version of the TV Show, "Big Brother,". He also told me that he had been in touch with the VeriChip Corporation and that there were several new developments with their implant system including the Belgian subsidiary of firearm company, FN Herstal, which manufactures Browning and Smith and Wesson firearms, launching a implant-firearm system which would make a firearm functional only to the individual implanted with its corresponding microchip. The objective of this technology is to bring an ID system to a global level that will destroy the need to carry ID documents and credit cards. The veriChip the we implant in the Baja will not only be for the Baja, but is also useful for whatever other enterprise that makes use of this technology.

Conrad Chase Director of the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, Spain. Chase launched a microchip implant system for the VIP members at this club. He himself was implanted on March 25th.

Imagine having a microchip inside your body that would store your identity and important medical information, and might even tell people where you are. Is it a sign of the end times or simply a sign of progress? Microchip technology is no longer just for Palm Pilots and cell phones, now people can store important information about themselves right beneath their skin. A chip about the size of a Tic Tac can carry up to six lines of text, readable with a scanner. Science fiction has become reality. A Florida company plans to bring their new VeriChip to the market this year. It's a product that excites a lot of people, but worries many others."The VeriChip is an advanced, digital identification technology," explained Doctor Keith Bolton, the vice president and chief technology officer at Applied Digital Systems in Palm Beach, Florida. It will be the first company in the world to offer the microchip for insertion into humans.

It is being reported that the RFID chip-mobile may start moving out from Florida to other areas. Will your town or city be next?

NewsMax.com reports: "The Transportation Security Administration is examining the use of so-called 'RFID-tagged' airline boarding passes that could allow passenger tracking within airports, a proposal some privacy advocates call a potentially 'outrageous' violation of civil liberties, according to a report in Computer World.

Anthony Cerino, communications security technology lead at the TSA, said the agency believes the use of boarding passes with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips could speed up the movement of passengers who sign on to the agency's 'registered traveler' program. This would permit them to pass through a secure 'special lane' during the boarding process.

Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, a privacy group that has fought the use of RFID tags by retailers and other organizations, called the idea a potentially 'shocking and outrageous' violation of civil liberties.

She called the use of RFID to track people a 'nightmare scenario' that uses technology to invade privacy. 'Are they going to track how long I spend in the ladies room?' Albrecht asked, adding that the TSA idea is 'why people are so upset about the technology.'…"

NATO will establish a pilot radio frequency identification program to manage its supply chain between Europe and Afghanistan. The goal eventually is to create a system compatible with the Defense Department's RFID network. The pilot, announced Tuesday at the Defence Logistics and Materiel Support 2004 conference in London, is a first step toward creating a system that would let NATO tap the Defense’s RFID-enabled logistics network

It had to happen. A company is now seeking approval to manufacture and market computer chips that would be implanted in humans as a form of identification and to store health information. But the new technology presents us with more questions than it answers. Will it be used simply for security reasons at nuclear and government facilities, or will its intended purpose be to track us, making it nothing more than a LoJack system for humans?

VeriChip Corporation Signs Four New Distributors for Subdermal RFID VeriChip Products. The distributors have collectively agreed to quotas to purchase 66,763 VeriChips and 4,945 scanners over the terms of the agreements.

Come 2005, radio frequency identification will no longer be an option for the U.S. military. It will be the law. For the Pentagon, RFID systems are part of a major logistics revamp. And the deadline for suppliers to attach RFID tags to many of the goods they ship to the American armed forces is indeed looming. The military has spent about $100 million in implementing the technology over the last decade. The buildup is aimed at reducing the loss or misplacement of supplies that added to the costs of the 1991 Gulf War. Another goal is to stop critical shortages of ammunition, fuel and water that plagued American troops during and after the invasion of Iraq a year ago. In early April, Estevez will be part of a Pentagon delegation meeting with suppliers to discuss the impending deadline. He talked recently with CNET News about the Department of Defense's history in deploying RFID systems and the future of the technology in the military.

Library officials grilled on plan to put RFID trackers in books: San Francisco library officials hosted a public forum Thursday night to take up the thorny issue of radio frequency identification tags, small, paper-thin devices that the city's library system wants to put in books to improve inventory control. Critics of the idea say there are serious privacy concerns about exactly what information would be contained on the tags and how secure the devices would be. They fear third parties, bored hackers or the federal government, might find a way to surreptitiously find out who's reading what.

Consumer Groups, Lawmakers Scrutinize Retail RFID Systems: Electronic tags used to track in-store inventory have just reached the testing stage, yet it's already clear that the success of the technology expected to dramatically change global supply chains will depend on whether retailers and vendors can satisfy concerns over consumer privacy. Consumer groups are no longer alone in demanding guarantees that radio frequency identification tags will not compromise the privacy rights of individuals. Lawmakers are also sending up red flags to businesses in the form of legislation. The latest RFID-targeted bill was introduced late last month in California . The proposed legislation would apply to any business using an RFID system capable of tracking products and people. Those companies would be required to tell customers that an RFID system is in use and get permission before tracking and collecting information. The bill also requires businesses to detach or destroy product-att ached RFID tags before the customer leaves the store.

SOUTH ST. PAUL, MN – NOVEMBER 3, 2003 – Digital Angel Corporation (AMEX: DOC), majority owned by Applied Digital Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSX), today announced that it has agreed to appoint Mr. Van Chu, currently CEO of OuterLink Corporation, as its new Chief Executive Officer. As a natural evolution of its traditional animal applications and military GPS business lines, the Company will focus on location technology and condition monitoring for a broad array of high-value assets, including people, pets, livestock, fish/wildlife, commercial/private vehicles, military vehicles, commercial/private aircraft, commercial/private watercraft, military watercraft and stationary assets in remote locations.

CASPIAN REPORTS: Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble conducted a secret RFID trial involving Oklahoma consumers earlier this year, the Chicago Sun Times revealed. Customers who purchased P&G's Lipfinity brand lipstick at the Broken Arrow Wal-Mart store between late March and mid-July unknowingly left the store with live RFID tracking devices embedded in the packaging. Wal-Mart had previously denied any consumer-level RFID testing in the United States.

Wal-Mart plans to spend $3bn (£1.8bn) over the next few years on a new inventory tracking technology that uses radio frequency signals to keep tabs on merchandise, sources familiar with the project said.

MORE RFID CHIPS New EU passports will be embedded with a radio frequency ID chip that contains biometric data, after standards bodies put the technology on a fast-track to deployment

Royal Philips Electronics and Visa announced an alliance to promote and develop a contactless chip technology, a short-range wireless technology that would allow people to pay for goods by waving a smart card in front of a sensor

A group of academics and business executives is planning to introduce next month a next-generation bar code system, which could someday replace with a microchip the series of black vertical lines found on most merchandise.

The future of barcodes could be in jeopardy after two major technology giants announced a partnership to make the chips and systems to replace them. IBM and Philips said they are to jointly develop RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology for shops.

A Florida company has announced plans to develop a service that would allow consumers to pay for merchandise using microchips implanted under their skin.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) will give radio frequency identification (RFID) technology a massive boost with a new policy requiring suppliers to use RFID chips.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is ending a four-year collaboration with dozens of blue-chip companies that set out to advance a new frontier of information technology known as radio frequency identification.

"IF" THEY CAN DO IT TO COWS THEY CAN DO IT TO YOU... REVELATION 13: 16. "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17. And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name."

WorldNetDaily.com reports: "A lawmaker has introduced a bill that would require the government to use controversial satellite-tracking technology to monitor livestock from birth to slaughter. U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., wants the U.S. Department of Agriculture to immediately establish a nationwide livestock identification system. The company she has in mind for the project is Digital Angel Corporation, originally formed to produce implantable tracking systems for humans.

'The safety of our food supply is critical to our families,' said McCollum, who introduced the legislation Wednesday. 'This technology will allow the Department of Agriculture to track an incidence of 'mad cow' or other diseases in livestock like chronic wasting disease discovered in the United States within 48 hours. We are fortunate to have a pioneer in this important technology right in my home town of South Saint Paul, Minnesota.'

The first U.S. case of mad cow disease was reported Dec. 23 in an imported Holstein in Washington state. An infectious degenerative brain disease occurring in cattle, 'mad cow' disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is believed to have the potential to infect humans who consume beef products from infected livestock. The resultant human disease is a variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease.

The one reported case of CJD in the United States is in a young woman who contracted it while residing in the UK and developed symptoms after moving to the U.S. McCollum's legislation would result in the secretary of agriculture considering a variety of existing technologies. The measure also provides producers with financial aid from the USDA in order to hasten transitioning to such a system…"

Heart, lungs, and liver, nerves, veins and bones -- the Pentagon wants to digitally recreate every element of a soldier's body, and embed it all on a chip in the soldier's dog tags. Officials at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, claim that sometime in the future this Virtual Soldier program could help battlefield medics make quicker, more accurate diagnoses of combat trauma. And that should help save soldiers' lives.

The Globe and Mail reports: "Researchers have discovered a technique for communication between snail brain cells and a microchip, a breakthrough that may one day help restore sight to the visually impaired, turn back the clock on memory loss and allow better control of artificial limbs. In the study, soon to be published in the international journal Physical Review Letters, the scientists also discovered that the brain cells showed signs of memory.

'This study is the first to provide the complete interfacing, or a complete link, between an electronic device and the mind or the brain,' said Naweed Syed, a University of Calgary neurobiologist and co-author of the paper. Dr. Syed said the implications of the research could be enormous and potentially lead to the development of microchips that would stimulate activity when implanted in the retinas of the visually impaired, in the brains of amputees and in the brains of people suffering memory loss. As well, he said, the findings could lead to 'thinking' computers…"

Spain will introduce pioneering electronic identity cards to help boost internet security by giving people unique digital signatures, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said on Friday. The 150 million euro ($192 million) scheme, due to be rolled out from 2005 after a pilot version at the end of this year, will replace current identity cards with a version that looks similar but carries a small chip packed with extra information. "The electronic (identity card) will allow people to work on public and private communications networks, registering their identity and their digital signature", adding that the electronic signature would carry the same legal weight as a conventional one. The government also hopes the cards could evolve into more than just a reliable identity document. "In principle the aim is that it is a single card that we could use in future for (anything) from public administration to, if it were possible, getting money out of a cash machine,".

The joint marketing initiative pairs the RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology of Digital Angel Corporation, South St. Paul, Minn., with the livestock herd-management software marketed by Herd-Pro Software Inc., New Richmond, Wis.

Microsoft is hard at work solving the problems of moneyed illiterates who hate to cook. Those who can't quite manage to interpret the microwaving instructions printed on a cup of dehydrated soup no longer need to worry: the Microsoft Kitchen is alive with RFID (radio frequency identification) transponders that tell the microwave oven how long and at what intensity to nuke your soup powder or Macaroni & Whey Dinner for perfect results every time.

It is being reported...Japan's most recent cellphone fad, a built-in camera that lets users take pictures and send them to other handsets or computers, proved so popular that about 50 million of Japan's 80 million cellphone users now own a camera-equipped model. DoCoMo, the world's second-biggest mobile phone operator, and Sony, Japan's fifth-biggest cellphone seller, have teamed to add a smart-card computer chip called FeliCa to phones. Developed by Sony, the feature will be tested by DoCoMo this year in phones made by Sony and NEC. The chip allows handsets to become payment cards. Instead of swiping a card, users can place their phones on a cashier's sensors to pay bills. Payment is automatically deducted from stored value on the chip. Some phones sold in Japan already include navigation systems, which let users find their way to a restaurant or track the whereabouts of other users. They also have Internet access, removable memory cards that can store images and music, and a television cable link to view videotaped programs.

It is being reported... Looking to insert its chips into smaller devices, Transmeta Monday introduced two new processors based on its Crusoe core. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based firm said its new TM5700 and TM5900 chips are available in a 21mm x 21mm package, making them good fits for devices like thin clients, blade servers, printers, copiers, point-of-sale terminals, smart displays, portable consumer devices and set-top boxes. Both chips already have begun sampling with Transmeta's customers and will be in production in January 2004. Transmeta also envisions the chips working in new form factors, such as what the company calls "Ultra Personal Computers" or a "Mobile Computer Core." The latter is a wallet-sized CPU and memory device that can pop in and out of a dummy terminal on a desktop and then be carried around and accessed like a PDA.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips are being called the next technological revolution by some experts and, thanks to Wal-Mart, may be coming sooner than you think. Wal-Mart believes RFID is the future of inventory management and has set a deadline of January 2005 for its top 100 suppliers to fit their products with the chips. Other suppliers have until 2006 to implement the technology, providing the push necessary for RFID to one day replace the barcode.RFID tags contain a small chip that stores data, which can be broadcast by a small antenna. Radio frequency readers pick up the data, which communicates item identification and location. The tags are very similar to product barcodes except that there is much less need for human interaction, making RFID tags much easier to use.

2004 will be a crucial year for radio frequency identification (RFID), with large-scale deployments bringing the controversial technology into the mainstream. Manufacturers and distributors of RFID are "scrambling" to meet the requirements of high-profile deployments from organisations including Wal-Mart and the US Department of Defence, according to IDC. The analyst group predicts that RFID spending for the US retail supply chain will grow from $91.5m in 2003 to nearly $1.3bn in 2008.

While 2003 was the year that saw the emergence of RFID, with household names such as WalMart jumping on the bandwagon, several retailers got cold feet and ditched the technology. Not so this year, say analysts – big business is crying out for the technology and, more importantly, the tide of public opinion is set to turn – as companies lure consumers with cold, hard cash. A report from Forrester Research has found that consumers wouldn't mind being tracked with the radio tags if it meant cheaper shopping. The survey of US consumers found that, when questioned, people admitted they wouldn't mind giving up certain information about themselves via RFID, including location, if it saved them time or money – with over half of consumers saying they'd be happy to be tracked in a supermarket if they were given money-off coupons for their groceries.

It is being reported...Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips are being called the next technological revolution by some experts and, thanks to Wal-Mart, may be coming sooner than you think. Wal-Mart believes RFID is the future of inventory management and has set a deadline of January 2005 for its top 100 suppliers to fit their products with the chips. Other suppliers have until 2006 to implement the technology, providing the push necessary for RFID to one day replace the barcode.RFID tags contain a small chip that stores data, which can be broadcast by a small antenna. Radio frequency readers pick up the data, which communicates item identification and location. The tags are very similar to product barcodes except that there is much less need for human interaction, making RFID tags much easier to use.

It is being reported...Digital Angel Corporation (Amex: DOC), an advanced technology company in the field of rapid and accurate identification, location tracking, and condition monitoring of high-value assets, today announced that it has named veteran Hughes Electronics Corporation senior executive and former DirecTV Latin America Chairman, Kevin N. McGrath, to its Board of Directors, effective immediately. Digital Angel Corporation develops and deploys sensor and communications technologies that enable rapid and accurate identification, location tracking, and condition monitoring of high-value assets. Applications for the Company's products include identification and monitoring of pets, fish and livestock through its patented implantable microchips; location tracking and message monitoring of vehicles and aircraft in remote locations through systems that integrate GPS and geosynchronous satellite communications; and monitoring of asset conditions such as temperature and movement, through advanced miniature sensors.

The familiar process of buying something with a credit card -- handing the plastic to the clerk or swiping it yourself, then waiting for approval and signing the receipt -- could be headed the way of the mechanical brass cash register. For more than a year, MasterCard and American Express have been testing "contactless" versions of their credit cards. The cards need only be held near a special reader for a sale to go through -- though the consumer can still get a receipt. The card companies say the system is much faster and safer because the card never leaves a customer's hand.

Spy chips that can trigger sneak mug shots of consumers and have prompted buyer boycotts of major retailers overseas have arrived in Australia. Coles Myer has confirmed that Gillette Mach 3 razor blade packages sold in its stores contain tiny radio frequency identification chips with radio antennas. In a British trial, the Gillette chips triggered a camera each time a shopper took a package off the shelf, and later at the check-out. Gillette bought 500 million of the chips in January and plans to use them to help cut down on theft, but there are fears that big retailers will use the technology to profile or even track shoppers. The giant Wal-Mart retailer in the US is ordering its suppliers to insert chips in all products by 2005.