Surveillance firm workers agree to ID chip implants

The implantation is raising some privacy concerns.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- Tiny silicon chips were embedded into two workers who volunteered to help test the tagging technology at a surveillance equipment company, an official said Monday.
The so-called RFIDs -- for radio frequency identification chips -- are similar to ones Mexico's attorney general had implanted in some employees in 2004 to allow them to enter restricted areas.
Implanting them in workers at CityWatcher.com is believed to be the first use of the technology in living humans in the United States.
Sean Darks, chief executive of the company, has one of the chips used to access secure vaults.
"I'm not going to ask somebody to do something I wouldn't do myself," Darks said. "None of my employees are forced to get the chip to keep their job."
About the chip
The chip, the size of a grain of rice, is implanted just under the skin in his forearm, Darks said. It lets him and similarly implanted employees into restricted areas, the same way many commercial buildings require a key card to enter offices.
CityWatcher.com has contracts with six cities to provide cameras and Internet monitoring of high-crime areas, Darks said. The company is experimenting with the chips to restrict access to vaults where data and images are kept for police departments.
"There's a reader outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it opens the door," Darks said.
The technology predates World War II. Modern adaptations include tracking pets, vehicles and commercial goods at warehouses.
After Hurricane Katrina, some morgue workers in Mississippi used the tiny computer chips to keep track of unidentified remains.
VeriChip Corp., a Florida company that makes the chips, says they can be useful in tracking hospital patients and nursing home residents who tend to "wander."
The implants used by CityWatcher.com don't enable the company to track employees' movements, Darks said.
"It's a passive chip. It emits no signal whatsoever," Darks said. "It's the same thing as a key card."
Privacy concerns
Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate who specializes in consumer education and RFID technology, said such devices have a huge potential for abuse.
"Is this a tracking device? The way CityWatcher is using it, possibly not," she said. "But down the road, there are companies that have this in mind."
Darks said the implants are an intermediate form of security.
"Key card access is basic level," he said. "To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques. The implants aren't any different from a retina scan or fingerprinting. They're all just different levels of security."
Darks said he has received e-mail messages regarding privacy issues.
"It's kind of like you would think that we were going around putting chips in people by force, and that's not the case at all," he said.
Darks said it's up to employees to decide whether to get the implant. Besides, "You can always have it taken out," he said.