Will Your ID Soon Be a Microchip Under Your Skin? | Hacker News Reader

Will Your ID Soon Be a Microchip Under Your Skin?

singularityhub.com

6 pointskkleiner18 comments

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I don't want a chip in me and I'm obviously not the only one

Do you have specific reasons for not wanting a chip if so would you share what they are?

What if it could self-regulate drug delivery so you wouldn't have to take a pill every four hours?

What if it could track and store fine-grain biometrics and thereby better help your doctor make treatment decisions?

What if it could monitor your health, and contact your doctor if you're incapacitated?

What if it could save your life in some other way?

I am sure that's fine. People get pacemakers all the time without a second thought. What the OP doesn't want is a remotely readable chip that stores your identity.

All good and well but to go at your list in order:

I am in a healthy state at this point in time I don't find taking pills or medication at specific intervals hard or even bothersome, I can even time it out with my cellphone reminders.

As it goes with the healthy state I don't think this much matters if it could do that over say one of those annoying heart monitors a friend has to do every year I'm sure he would do it but that isn't really what we are discussing.

This is already a lot of what ifs and this is something I most definitely would not want as it would also require that my exact position be available so emergency services could get to me.

I'm all for life and everything but if I need a chip to save me I'm probably in the middle of nowhere away from any contact or emergency services that could get me in time.

I am really fine with the current U.S. identification system as I had my identity stolen once by an illegal immigrant but it was easily solved with a birth certificate, social security cards and a credit lock. These devices factor in too much extra risk especially since it says its basically the same technology as the wireless poll paying system how do you know you won't walk by someone and your identity is just taken like that?

Those arguments remind me of the OnStar "MY BABY! SAVE MY BABY!" sort of arguments.

Somehow I don't think an RFID chip can do many of the things you list there.

I have a rfid chip in my wrist. One of my friends owns a chain a piercing shops and offered it to me for free so I got it done.

I unfortunately haven't had time to build anything to make use of it though so it's been of little use to me except as a conversation starter but he has his set to unlock his apartment door.

Range isn't huge a couple inches is pushing it so I'm not really worried about tracking me(I don't rub my wrist against every rfid receiver I come across). Besides with facial recognition available today if someone wants to track me around a city they would do a lot better using security cameras than trying to install rfid receivers everywhere.

I don't rub my wrist against every rfid receiver I come across

Really? If I had an rfid chip, that's exactly what I'd be doing, just to see what happens.

I did that a bit when I first got it but most of the time I forget its there now a days. It's like my tattoo when I first got it I noticed it every time I moved my arm. Now unless someone points it out I forget it's even there.

Yeah, There's no way I'd let a microchip under my skin.

"If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresisting-ly allow itself to be boiled to death."

(Also yes, for those of you pedantic enough I'm aware the story is not biologically accurate, but the metaphor remains valid)

Good thing those chips are in no way spoofable from a distance.

Oh wait...

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/02/video-hacker-war-drives-s...

Unless they can embed a cell-phone in my skin, I'd rather use my phone as an ID card / cash / credit card. For someone that wants to steal my identity, it is much easier to slice off my arm than to guess my password.

Would the threat of slicing off your arm not work equally well in getting you to give up your password? It certainly would for me.

Passwords are better in a number of ways. If the data is really important, you can always carry around a suicide pill, and know that if you die, your data dies.

For more normal data, you have the opportunity to give up your data in tiers. If someone threatens to cut off your arm, give them a password that unlocks most of your data. You can have another password for the super-secret stuff. They are happy that they got your data, and you get to keep your arm (and super-secret data).

Basically, you can have decoy passwords and accounts, but you can't have a decoy arm-with-RFID-chip.

Why not just a watch?

Or a keychain, or a ring?

Or an ID with rfid in your wallet?

Why the intrusiveness?

I am far more likely to lose all of these things than the lower quarter of my arm.

At least until the Yakuza find out about it.

In nearly 35 years, I have not lost a watch, nor a wallet. I have nearly lost a finger a few times (don't turn on a drill while you are messing with the chuck).

I have also lost a lot of skin from different parts of my body.

For a chip to stay, would need to be somewhere inconvenient and deep. Certainly nowhere convenient that a reader could reach, unless its RFID style in which case I have other concerns...

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