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 Technology News | January 2007 
Mexico's AG Finds Security in Microchip Implants
 The Canadian
| | Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha and 160 of his employees were implanted at a cost to taxpayers of $US 150 for each rice grain-sized chip. |
The spectre of international fascism legitimated by "anti-terrorism" laws has apparently additionally reached 160 people in the Office of the Attorney General in Mexico - they have reportedly been implanted with microchips that get them access to secure areas of their headquarters.
Mexico's top federal prosecutors and investigators began receiving chip implants in their arms in November 2006 in order to get access to restricted areas inside the attorney general's headquarters, said Antonio Aceves, general director of Solusat, the company that distributes the microchips in Mexico.
Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha and 160 of his employees were implanted at a cost to taxpayers of $US 150 for each rice grain-sized chip. More are scheduled to get "tagged" in coming months, and key members of the Mexican military, the police and the office of President Vicente Fox might follow suit, Aceves said. Fox's office which is an ideological ally of Bush regime did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Aceves said his company eventually hopes to provide Mexican officials with implantable devices that can track their physical location at any given time, but that technology is still under development.
The chips that have been implanted are manufactured by VeriChip Corp., a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solutions Inc. of Palm Beach, Fla. They lie dormant under the skin until read by an electromagnetic scanner, which uses a technology known as radio frequency identification, or RFID, that's now getting hot in the inventory and supply chain businesses. Erik Michielsen, director of RFID analysis at ABI Research Inc., said that in theory the chips could be as secure as existing RFID-based access control systems such as the contactless employee badges widely used in corporate and government facilities.
In addition to the chips sold to the Mexican government, more than 1,000 Mexicans have implanted them for medical reasons, Aceves said. Hospital officials can use a scanning device to download a chip's serial number, which they then use to access a patient's blood type, name and other information on a computer. Still, Silverman said that his company has sold 7,000 chips to distributors across the United States and that more than 1,000 of those had likely been inserted into U.S. customers, mostly for security or identification reasons.
Because the Applied Digital chips cannot be easily removed - and are housed in glass capsules designed to break and be unusable if taken out - they could be even more popular someday if they eventually can incorporate locator capabilities. Already, global positioning system chips have become common accouterments on jewelry or clothing in Mexico. In fact, in March, Mexican authorities broke up a ring of used-car salesmen turned kidnappers who were known as "Los Chips" because they searched their victims to detect whether they were carrying the chips to help them be located. |
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