3 posts tagged “verichip”

Missouri to build interface for Real ID

This article found online at:
http://www.fcw.com/online/news/152924-1.html#

Missouri to build interface for Real ID
By Ben Bain
Published on June 20, 2008

The Homeland Security Department today announced it has awarded $17 million to Missouri's state government to lead the development of a common interface that states will use to verify documents that individuals use to apply for state-issued identification as part of the Real ID program.  

The “verification hub” will act as a central router that states can use to confirm the documentation against other states’ databases, as well as federal document issuing authorities. DHS also announced grants of $1.2 million each to Florida, Indiana, Nevada and Wisconsin to test and implement the initiative.

The Real ID final rule published in January set a minimum standard for state issued identification and requirements for how data is stored and shared between states' department of motor vehicles.  By May 11, 2011, states must have completed the information technology and communication infrastructure necessary for Real ID.

DHS’ Real ID program is meant to implement requirements laid out by the Real ID Act of 2005.

DHS said the system would “be built and governed by the states.” Critics of the REAL ID program have voiced concerns that the program represents movement toward a national ID card.

However, several state legislatures have passed legislation preventing states from spending money on the program, setting up a potential showdown between the federal agency and state governments. That will not happen until Dec. 31,  2009, as DHS granted extensions even to states that were prevented from complying but had implemented their own security measures that coincided with those required by Real ID.

The “verification hub” awards made today were announced as part of $79 million worth of fiscal 2008 REAL ID Demonstration Grants. DHS said it had previously awarded $58 million in Real ID implementation assistance.

VeriChip Markets Its Implantable RFID Tags and Services Direct to Consumers
 
The company has launched a three-month advertising campaign for its newly rebranded Health Link system, and hopes to convince 1,000 South Floridians to get injected with rice-grain-sized transponders linked to health records.
By Claire Swedberg

April 28, 2008—VeriChip has launched a direct-to-consumer initiative known as Health Link, making its RFID system—previously branded as VeriMed—available to customers in South Florida's tri-county area. For $149, a consumer can have a passive 134 kHz RFID chip, compliant with the ISO 11784 and 11785 standards, implanted in his or her arm, with the transponder's unique 16-digit ID number linked to a database containing that individual's medical records and, if they so choose, a living will.

VeriChip is partnering with hearing care provider HearUSA to make the chips available. With the system, consumers can call an 800 number for additional information. HearUSA telemarketing personnel will answer questions about the system and direct interested parties to HEARx stores in their area. Customers can visit one of HearUSA's eight HEARx locations in Florida's Palm Springs, Martin and St. Lucie counties, and have a VeriChip-licensed nurse implant the transponder there in the store. Consumers need not be HearUSA or HEARx customers to have the chip implanted.
According to Scott Silverman, CEO and chairman of VeriChip, the company changed the name of its system from VeriMed to Health Link because the new moniker is expected to have a wider appeal for consumers. Health-care data resides on a Web-based server hosted by VeriChip. After the first year, a patient pays $9.99 per month to keep that information active on the server.

Thus far, about 900 hospitals on the East Coast have agreed to participate in the VeriChip system. These hospitals have received RFID interrogators that can be used to read a patient's embedded VeriChip RFID transponder to automatically access that person's medical records. Of those hospitals, Silverman says, about 200 have completed VeriChip training on using the system, and have been provided access to the VeriMed database, as well as interrogators to scan unconscious or unresponsive patients. At present, 16 South Florida tri-county regional hospitals—including Bethesda Healthcare System, Good Samaritan Medical Center, JFK Medical Center, Jupiter Medical Center and St. Mary's Medical Center—participate in the Health Link system.

The RFID microchip is injected under the surface of a patient's skin, in the rear upper portion of the right arm. If a Health Link member arrives at a hospital's emergency department unconscious, unresponsive or confused, medical personnel can use the Health Link interrogator to retrieve that person's identification number to access his or her personal health record.

Thus far, Silverman says, only about 600 people in the United States have embedded VeriChip transponders. However, the company expects that number to rise as hospital employees gradually make it a standard practice to scan the arms of unresponsive patients being admitted to an emergency room in order to access their identity and medical records immediately.

In 2007, Alzheimer's Community Care (ACC)—a West Palm Beach, Fla., provider of support to Alzheimer's patients and their caretakers—began implanting RFID chips in about 200 volunteers who are clients of the organization (see Alzheimer's Care Center to Carry Out VeriChip Pilot). That pilot is still ongoing, according to Silverman.

Because only 600 people currently have the chips, Silverman says, hospital personnel interrogating patients' arms are unlikely to detect any embedded tags. As such, making the scanning process an automatic part of the check-in procedure for incapacitated patients is a challenge. Silverman indicates he expects that problem to be alleviated as more consumers opt to have the implants done. "That's been part of the frustration we have today," Silverman says. "We need examples of the system saving lives." To date, he explains, there haven't been enough chips in use for that to happen.
The direct-to-consumer campaign began Monday with a Web site, HealthLinkinfo.com, and television ads in southern Florida's tri-county area displaying the 800 number and promoting the health advantages of having an RFID chip implanted in one's arm. "We intend to appeal through advertising to high-risk patients and their loved ones," Silverman states. The 30- and 60-second ads will air for three months, and the company also intends to run newspaper ads in the Florida Sun Sentinel and Palm Beach Post.
Silverman hopes to enroll at least 1,000 new participants in the Health Link system. If he reaches that number, he says, he will consider the campaign a success. After three months, if the campaign is successful, VeriChip plans to expand the Health Link system to other regions of the country, most likely beginning in northern New Jersey, where a relatively large percentage of hospitals participate in the VeriMed system.

"Assuming we reach our goal of 1,000, we are prepared to expand," Silverman says, noting that HearUSA has locations throughout the country. "There are lots of companies we could work with." He adds, "If, three months from now, nobody gets the chip, we will have to look at our business model."

 

Professor Calls For "Google Type" Brain Chip Implants
Category: News and Politics

Professor Calls For "Google Type" Brain Chip Implants
Touts exact mirror of DARPA control project in New York Times' "Idea Lab"

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Monday, April 14, 2008

A New York Professor has advocated the idea of Google type brain implant chips that would "improve human memory", an idea which mirrors already active projects funded by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

"However difficult the practicalities, there's no reason in principle why a future generation of neural prostheticists couldn't pick up where nature left off, incorporating Google-like master maps into neural implants." writes New York University professor of psychology Gary Marcus.

"This in turn would allow us to search our own memories — not just those on the Web — with something like the efficiency and reliability of a computer search engine." he postulates.

"How much would you pay to have a small memory chip implanted in your brain if that chip would double the capacity of your short-term memory? Or guarantee that you would never again forget a face or a name?"

Clearly DARPA would pay quite a lot, given that the research arm of the US military continues to fund scientific development of that exact technology.

The justification for the continued funding of such research is to develop a substitute for damaged or diseased brain regions, holding promise for victims of Alzheimer's disease, stroke and other brain traumas.

Yet even the scientists currently at work on such projects know that the real application for the implant devices would be in the commercial and military sectors. After all, why would the Pentagon have such a keen interest in curing Alzheimer's?

In 2003 Popular Science reported:

Medicine aside, Biomedical engineer Theodore Berger sees potential commercial and military applications for the brain chip, which is partially funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Learning how to build sophisticated electronics and integrate them into human brains could one day lead to cyborg soldiers and robotic servants, he says.

In his Times piece, New York Professor Gary Marcus concludes:

"Would this turn us into computers? Not at all. A neural implant equipped with a master memory map wouldn't impair our capacity to think, or to feel, to love or to laugh; it wouldn't change the nature of what we chose to remember."

Clearly Mr Marcus has not considered that there is a very good reason why the human brain blocks out certain memories or feelings and why it correlates information in the way that it does.

Furthermore, cataloguing a person's memories on an external source invariably means that an entity external to that particular person, be it a company, corporation or government, could conceivably gain access to those memories.

The more that entity knows about the population, the more it can and inevitably will use that information to control it for their own benefit and profit.

This concept may seem completely outlandish to many, yet it has been the central focus of DARPA activities for some time with projects such as LifeLog, which seeks to gain a multimedia, digital record of everywhere a person goes and everything they see, hear, read, say and touch.

Wired Magazine has reported:

On the surface, the project seems like the latest in a long line of DARPA's "blue sky" research efforts, most of which never make it out of the lab. But DARPA is currently asking businesses and universities for research proposals to begin moving LifeLog forward.

"What national security experts and civil libertarians want to know is, why would the Defense Department want to do such a thing?" the article asks. The answer lies in the stated goal of the US military - "Total Spectrum Dominance".

Furthermore, Mr Marcus' assertions that the neuro technology would not be in any way dominant over a person's capacity to think, does not tally with DARPA's Brain Machine Interfaces enterprise, a $24 million project reported on in the August 5, 2003 Boston Globe.

The project is developing technology that "promises to directly read thoughts from a living brain - and even instill thoughts as well... It does not take much imagination to see in this the makings of a matrix-like cyberpunk dystopia: chips that impose false memories, machines that scan for wayward thoughts, cognitively augmented government security forces that impose a ruthless order on a recalcitrant population." The Globe reported.

Government funded advances in neurotechnology which also focus on developing the ability to essentially read people's minds should also set alarm bells ringing.

It is also well documented that the military and the federal government have been dabbling in mind control and manipulation experimentation for decades.

Mr Marcus may be a well meaning scientist and may very well see such technology as progressive for humanity, but when it is being developed by military commanders under governments that have killed and oppressed billions across the globe in the last century alone, the prospect becomes somewhat sullied to say the least.

While neuro implants represent the second phase of implantable chips, the technology has been in existence for over a decade and discussions on simple ID chipping of humans is now in the news regularly.

Tommy Thompson, the former Health and Human Services Secretary in the Bush administration, promised to have a chip implanted and is subsequently toured the country lauding the virtues of ID chips. During the the confirmation hearings for John Roberts Jr., George W. Bush's nominee for Supreme Court chief justice, Roberts was questioned by Senator Joseph R. Biden on whether he would rule against a mandatory implantable microchip to track American citizens.

Last year there was a congressional debate on whether airport workers could be mandated to have microchip implants.

Other workers have already been forced to take the chip.

Government workers in Mexico are being forced to take the chip or lose their job. Staff of Mexico's attorney general had to take the chip in order to access secure areas.

In February, a Cincinnati surveillance equipment company became the first U.S. business to use this application when a handful of employees voluntarily got implants to allow them to enter secure rooms.

In a trail blazing act in 2006 however, Governor Jim Doyle of Wisconsin signed a law declaring it a crime to require an individual to be implanted with a microchip. The people of Wisconsin welcomed the RFID law which imposes fine of up to $10,000 per day for a violator. The Bill was introduced by Rep. Marlin Schneider, D-Wisconsin.

A spotlight has recently been placed on chip implants by the London Times which ran a piece asking whether children should be implanted in the wake of the kidnapping of British toddler Madeleine McCann.

Debate also exists on the chipping on inmates, sex offenders and other vilified groups.

Another area in which the debate over chips rages is the medical profession. Last year, leaked British policy review documents revealed that the government has considered the notion of implanting anyone considered mentally unstable with a microchip.

We have also previously highlighted how implantable chips are being used for recreational purposes, to pay for drinks in bars. The Baja Beach club in Barcelona has championed the technology for years. Leading sports figures now carry chips in their clothing to track their performances, implantation has already been debated as the next step.

All manner of things from commerce to transport could one day forge the way towards a microchipped society.

Last year award winning director Aaron Russo, appearing on the Alex Jones show, stressed that the true intentions of the global elite, in particular the Rockefeller family, is a microchipped society. A society where you have no privacy, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, whether you're innocent, guilty, indifferent or impaired.

Consider that the first use of the technology was in tracking and tracing cattle and other animals.

A microchipped society sounds like something from a horrific science fiction movie, as ever fiction is being mirrored by reality as we now see it being debated in Congress.

The Age in Australia reported that within ten years the chip will be as common as cell phones are today. If the scheme became commonplace then it is estimated that around 75% of the population would be mandated to take the chips.

By pure coincidence (ahem) IBM, the company behind Verichip, the major retailer of implantable chips, also ran the cataloging system used by the Nazis to store information on Jews in Hitler's Germany.

To understand just how easily a microchipped society could quickly become reality, read this excellent piece from 2006 by Kevin Haggerty of the Toronto Star.