States Look At Microchipping Employees
Pastor Dale Morgan
States Look At Micro-chipping Employees*
Apr 12th, 2007 7:27 AM
A Georgia legislative committee recommended in February that the state
ban employers from implanting microchips in their workers' arms to track
their whereabouts, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. You'd
think it might go without saying that such conduct would be a no-no for
employers. Yet Georgia is not the first state seeking to get in front of
the issue, fearing potential abuse of the rapidly emerging technology.
States attempt to get ahead of the issue. Georgia's House Study
Committee on Biological Privacy, which was created to look at ways to
protect "biometric" information, issued the recommendation to ban
implanting microchips on February 6, along with its findings. The
microchip ban is one of several actions proposed in the individual
privacy realm, but this threat seems the most ominous. However, "[the
legislative proposal] is not a provocative thing we cooked up," said
State Rep. Ed Setzler (R), who chairs the committee, as quoted in the
AJC. "It actually has been done in another state."
Indeed it has. Last May, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle signed 2005
Wisconsin Act 482 into law. The statute prohibits the required
implanting of microchips in humans, and violations carry a $10,000 fine
per day. While that state's Legislative Reference Bureau noted it was
the "first law of its kind in the nation," at least 17 additional states
are considering such measures, including Michigan, Oklahoma and North
Dakota. A pending New Jersey bill provides that individuals could not be
coerced into being implanted with such devices, would require written
informed consent before implantation, and would require that those
implanted with chips could remove the devices at any time.
According to Dale L. Deitchler, shareholder in the Minneapolis office of
Littler Mendelson, P.C., Florida legislators have also addressed the
issue, proposing standards applicable for bail bond employees relating
to Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID). He says, however, that
the legislation is designed more from a technical/security perspective
than as employee protection legislation. The Florida legislation has not
passed.
Deitchler also pointed out Rhode Island legislation, proposed in 2005,
that would have restricted RFIDs for public employees, and, according to
Deitchler, in late 2006 New York legislators proposed an RFID task force
that would evaluate, among other things, use of RFIDs by employers. “At
the federal level, a senate bill was introduced in July 2006 that would
have banned involuntary implantation of microchips by private companies
or the government,” said Deitchler, who continued, “none of this
legislation has passed.”
In January, Colorado State Rep Mary Hodge introduced House Bill 1082,
which would make it a misdemeanor in the state to "microchip" people to
track workers' movements or for other unsavory purposes, the Rocky
Mountain News reported. The measure has since been put on hold for
further research—and after considerable ridicule in the statehouse.
“Of course employers interested in microchipping employees in all states
need to be concerned with a whole range of issues relating to the common
law of privacy (and diminishing or extinguishing expectations of
privacy), occupational safety and health concerns and labor law
bargaining requirements, to name just a few,” said Deitchler.
Microchipping employees may not be least intrusive means. Is this a
solution without a problem? Is the ridicule justified? After all,
microchips—“RFIDs," or radio frequency identification devices, which the
FDA cleared for human use for medical purposes in 2004—are already used
to ensure "wander prevention" of long-term care residents, to protect
infants in hospital maternity wards, even to locate missing pets. Some
healthcare practitioners praise the use of such devices as a
revolutionary and potentially life-saving means of quickly accessing
patient health information.
The information emitted from a microchip is a mere number or code which
is recognizable by the receiving database, but has no meaning without
being cross-referenced against information in that database. Therefore,
the information emitted by an RFID chip would not be usable to someone
who intercepted that information. On the other hand, the slippery slope
is here in sharp relief. Columbian President Alvaro Uribe suggested
Columbian seasonal workers should have microchips implanted before being
allowed to enter the United States, according to U.S. Senator Arlen
Specter (R-Pa). Such a proposal begs the question: does this seem benign?