Get Implanted with the Chip?

[A Veteran]

http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/136744

One generation is all they need
Published On Sun Dec 10 2006

Kevin Haggerty Special to the Star

By the time my four-year-old son is swathed in the soft flesh of old
age, he will likely
find it unremarkable that he and almost everyone he knows will be
permanently implanted
with a microchip. Automatically tracking his location in real time, it
will connect him
with databases monitoring and recording his smallest behavioural traits.

Most people anticipate such a prospect with a sense of horrified
disbelief, dismissing it
as a science-fiction fantasy. The technology, however, already exists.
For years humane
societies have implanted all the pets that leave their premises with a
small identifying
microchip. As well, millions of consumer goods are now traced with tiny
radio frequency
identification chips that allow satellites to reveal their exact
location.

A select group of people are already "chipped" with devices that
automatically open doors,
turn on lights, and perform other low-level miracles. Prominent among
such individuals is
researcher Kevin Warwick of Reading University in England; Warwick is a
leading proponent
of the almost limitless potential uses for such chips.

Other users include the patrons of the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona,
many of whom have
paid about $150 (U.S.) for the privilege of being implanted with an
identifying chip that
allows them to bypass lengthy club queues and purchase drinks by being
scanned. These
individuals are the advance guard of an effort to expand the technology
as widely as
possible.

From this point forward, microchips will become progressively smaller,
less invasive, and
easier to deploy. Thus, any realistic barrier to the wholesale
"chipping" of Western
citizens is not technological but cultural. It relies upon the visceral
reaction against
the prospect of being personally marked as one component in a massive
human inventory.

Today we might strongly hold such beliefs, but sensibilities can, and
probably will,
change. How this remarkable attitudinal transformation is likely to
occur is clear to
anyone who has paid attention to privacy issues over the past
quarter-century. There will
be no 3 a.m. knock on the door by storm troopers come to force implants
into our bodies.
The process will be more subtle and cumulative, couched in the
unassailable language of
progress and social betterment, and mimicking many of the processes that
have contributed
to the expansion of closed-circuit television cameras and the corporate
market in personal
data.

A series of tried and tested strategies will be marshalled to
familiarize citizens with
the technology. These will be coupled with efforts to pressure tainted
social groups and
entice the remainder of the population into being chipped.

This, then, is how the next generation will come to be microchipped.

It starts in distant countries. Having tested the technology on guinea
pigs, both human
and animal, the first widespread use of human implanting will occur in
nations at the
periphery of the Western world. Such developments are important in their
own right, but
their international significance pertains to how they familiarize a
global audience with
the technology and habituate them to the idea that chipping represents a
potential future.

An increasing array of hypothetical chipping scenarios will also be
depicted in
entertainment media, furthering the familiarization process.

In the West, chips will first be implanted in members of stigmatized
groups. Pedophiles
are the leading candidate for this distinction, although it could start
with terrorists,
drug dealers, or whatever happens to be that year's most vilified
criminals. Short-lived
promises will be made that the technology will only be used on the
"worst of the worst."
In fact, the wholesale chipping of incarcerated individuals will quickly
ensue,
encompassing people on probation and on parole.

Even accused individuals will be tagged, a measure justified on the
grounds that it would
stop them from fleeing justice. Many prisoners will welcome this
development, since only
chipped inmates will be eligible for parole, weekend release, or
community sentences. From
the prison system will emerge an evocative vocabulary distinguishing
chippers from
non-chippers.

Although the chips will be justified as a way to reduce fraud and other
crimes, criminals
will almost immediately develop techniques to simulate other people's
chip codes and
manipulate their data.

The comparatively small size of the incarcerated population, however,
means that prisons
would be simply a brief stopover on a longer voyage. Commercial success
is contingent on
making serious inroads into tagging the larger population of law-abiding
citizens. Other
stigmatized groups will therefore be targeted. This will undoubtedly
entail monitoring
welfare recipients, a move justified to reduce fraud, enhance
efficiency, and ensure that
the poor do not receive "undeserved" benefits.

Once e-commerce is sufficiently advanced, welfare recipients will
receive their benefits
as electronic vouchers stored on their microchips, a policy that will be
tinged with a
sense of righteousness, as it will help ensure that clients can only
purchase
government-approved goods from select merchants, reducing the always
disconcerting
prospect that poor people might use their limited funds to purchase
alcohol or tobacco.

Civil libertarians will try to foster a debate on these developments.
Their attempts to
prohibit chipping will be handicapped by the inherent difficulty in
animating public
sympathy for criminals and welfare recipients - groups that many
citizens are only too
happy to see subjected to tighter regulation. Indeed, the lesser public
concern for such
groups is an inherent part of the unarticulated rationale for why
coerced chipping will be
disproportionately directed at the stigmatized.

The official privacy arm of the government will now take up the issue.
Mandated to
determine the legality of such initiatives, privacy commissioners and
Senate Committees
will produce a forest of reports presented at an archipelago of
international conferences.
Hampered by lengthy research and publication timelines, their findings
will be delivered
long after the widespread adoption of chipping is effectively a fait
accompli. The
research conclusions on the effectiveness of such technologies will be
mixed and open to
interpretation.

Officials will vociferously reassure the chipping industry that they do
not oppose
chipping itself, which has fast become a growing commercial sector.
Instead, they are
simply seeking to ensure that the technology is used fairly and that
data on the chips is
not misused. New policies will be drafted.

Employers will start to expect implants as a condition of getting a job.
The U.S. military
will lead the way, requiring chips for all soldiers as a means to
enhance battlefield
command and control - and to identify human remains. From cooks to
commandos, every one of
the more than one million U.S. military personnel will see microchips
replace their dog
tags.

Following quickly behind will be the massive security sector. Security
guards, police
officers, and correctional workers will all be expected to have a chip.
Individuals with
sensitive jobs will find themselves in the same position.

The first signs of this stage are already apparent. In 2004, the Mexican
attorney
general's office started implanting employees to restrict access to
secure areas. The
category of "sensitive occupation" will be expansive to the point that
anyone with a job
that requires keys, a password, security clearance, or identification
badge will have
those replaced by a chip.

Judges hearing cases on the constitutionality of these measures will
conclude that
chipping policies are within legal limits. The thin veneer of
"voluntariness" coating many
of these programs will allow the judiciary to maintain that individuals
are not being
coerced into using the technology.

In situations where the chips are clearly forced on people, the
judgments will deem them
to be undeniable infringements of the right to privacy. However, they
will then invoke the
nebulous and historically shifting standard of "reasonableness" to
pronounce coerced
chipping a reasonable infringement on privacy rights in a context of
demands for
governmental efficiency and the pressing need to enhance security in
light of the still
ongoing wars on terror, drugs, and crime.

At this juncture, an unfortunately common tragedy of modern life will
occur: A small
child, likely a photogenic toddler, will be murdered or horrifically
abused. It will
happen in one of the media capitals of the Western world, thereby
ensuring non-stop
breathless coverage. Chip manufactures will recognize this as the
opportunity they have
been anticipating for years. With their technology now largely bug-free,
familiar to most
citizens and comparatively inexpensive, manufacturers will partner with
the police to
launch a high-profile campaign encouraging parents to implant their
children "to ensure
your own peace of mind."

Special deals will be offered. Implants will be free, providing the
family registers for
monitoring services. Loving but unnerved parents will be reassured by
the ability to
integrate tagging with other functions on their PDA so they can see
their child any time
from any place.

Paralleling these developments will be initiatives that employ the logic
of convenience to
entice the increasingly small group of holdouts to embrace the now
common practice of
being tagged. At first, such convenience tagging will be reserved for
the highest echelon
of Western society, allowing the elite to move unencumbered through the
physical and
informational corridors of power. Such practices will spread more widely
as the benefits
of being chipped become more prosaic. Chipped individuals will, for
example, move more
rapidly through customs.

Indeed, it will ultimately become a condition of using mass-transit
systems that officials
be allowed to monitor your chip. Companies will offer discounts to
individuals who pay by
using funds stored on their embedded chip, on the small-print condition
that the merchant
can access large swaths of their personal data. These "discounts" are
effectively punitive
pricing schemes, charging unchipped individuals more as a way to
encourage them to submit
to monitoring. Corporations will seek out the personal data in hopes of
producing ever
more fine-grained customer profiles for marketing purposes, and to sell
to other
institutions.

By this point all major organizations will be looking for opportunities
to capitalize on
the possibilities inherent in an almost universally chipped population.
The uses of chips
proliferate, as do the types of discounts. Each new generation of
household technology
becomes configured to operate by interacting with a person's chip.

Finding a computer or appliance that will run though old-fashioned
"hands-on"'
interactions becomes progressively more difficult and costly. Patients
in hospitals and
community care will be routinely chipped, allowing medical staff - or,
more accurately,
remote computers - to monitor their biological systems in real time.

Eager to reduce the health costs associated with a largely docile
citizenry, authorities
will provide tax incentives to individuals who exercise regularly.
Personal chips will be
remotely monitored to ensure that their heart rate is consistent with an
exercise regime.

By now, the actual process of "chipping" for many individuals will
simply involve
activating certain functions of their existing chip. Any prospect of
removing the chip
will become increasingly untenable, as having a chip will be a
precondition for engaging
in the main dynamics of modern life, such as shopping, voting, and
driving.

The remaining holdouts will grow increasingly weary of Luddite jokes and
subtle
accusations that they have something to hide. Exasperated at repeatedly
watching
neighbours bypass them in "chipped" lines while they remain subject to
the delays,
inconveniences, and costs reserved for the unchipped, they too will
choose the path of
least resistance and get an implant.

In one generation, then, the cultural distaste many might see as an
innate reaction to the
prospect of having our bodies marked like those of an inmate in a
concentration camp will
likely fade.

In the coming years some of the most powerful institutional actors in
society will start
to align themselves to entice, coerce, and occasionally compel the next
generation to get
an implant.

Now, therefore, is the time to contemplate the unprecedented dangers of
this scenario. The
most serious of these concern how even comparatively stable modern
societies will, in
times of fear, embrace treacherous promises. How would the prejudices of
a Joe McCarthy,
J. Edgar Hoover, or of southern Klansmen - all of whom were deeply
integrated into the
American political establishment - have manifest themselves in such a
world? What might
Hitler, Mao or Milosevic have accomplished if their citizens were
chipped, coded, and
remotely monitored?

Choirs of testimonials will soon start to sing the virtues of implants.
Calm reassurances
will be forthcoming about democratic traditions, the rule of law, and
privacy rights.
History, unfortunately, shows that things can go disastrously wrong, and
that this happens
with disconcerting regularity. Little in the way of international
agreements, legality, or
democratic sensibilities has proved capable of thwarting single-minded
ruthlessness.

"It can't happen here" has become the whispered swan song of the
disappeared. Best to
contemplate these dystopian potentials before we proffer the tender
forearms of our sons
and daughters. While we cannot anticipate all of the positive advantages
that might be
derived from this technology, the negative prospects are almost too
terrifying to
contemplate.
--
Karma, What a concept!