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How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with Radio Frequency Identification

"Imagine a world of no more privacy.

"Where your every purchase is monitored and recorded in a database, and your every belonging is numbered. Where someone many states away or perhaps in another country has a record of everything you have ever bought, of everything you have ever owned, of every item of clothing in your closet -- every pair of shoes. What's more, these items can even be tracked remotely.

"Once your every possession is recorded in a database and can be tracked, you can also be tracked and monitored remotely through the things you wear, carry and interact with every day.

"We may be standing on the brink of that terrifying world if global corporations and government agencies have their way. It's the world that Wal-Mart, Target, Gillette, Procter & Gamble, Kraft, IBM, and even the United States Postal Service want to usher in within the next ten years.

"It's the world of radio frequency identification.

"Radio frequency identification, RFID for short, is a technology that uses tiny computer chips -- some smaller than a grain of sand -- to track items at distance. If the master planners have their way, every object -- from shoes to cars -- will carry one of these tiny computer chips that can be used to spy on you without your knowledge or consent."

Those are the opening words of the book, "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID." Today we are joined by one of the co-authors of "Spychips" - Liz McIntyre.

• Liz McIntyre, a consumer privacy expert and author of "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID." She serves as the Communications Director for CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), a grass-roots organization that has been tackling consumer privacy issues since 1999. She also writes about consumer issues as the MoneyMom, a syndicated family money writer and columnist.
  - Website: Spychips.com 
• Annalee Newitz, freelance journalist. She writes about the intersection of technology science and culture and is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine. She recently had an RFID implanted in her arm.
  - Website: Techsploitation.com

AMY GOODMAN: We welcome you to Democracy Now!

LIZ MCINTYRE: Hi, Amy. How are you?

AMY GOODMAN: It is good to have you with us.

LIZ MCINTYRE: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Why don't you tell us about what spy chips are?

LIZ MCINTYRE: Well, as you said, radio frequency identification, or RFID and they are very tiny computer chips. Some of these are smaller than a grain of sand, and they are connected to miniature antennas. The combination is called an RFID tag. Now each of these chips has a unique identification number. It is sort of like a Social Security Number for things in that the plan is that no other item would have a chip with the same number on it. Big companies you named like Procter and Gamble and Wal-Mart want one of these tags on every manufactured product on planet earth, and of course, there's a company called Verichip that would like one of these RFID devices in everyone's flesh.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, who is pushing this?

LIZ MCINTYRE: Well, right now the 800-pound gorilla of RFID in retail is Wal-Mart. Procter and Gamble is another big player. Basically any major company you can think of is very interested in the technology. Of course, also our own government is starting to put RFID tags in U.S. Passports this year. And we are concerned they may also try to use this in other ways. Already they are experimenting with the technology with the U.S. Visit program attaching RFID tags to visitor documents, and of course, recently, we revealed that we found an R.F.I., a Request for Information, that shows the Department of Homeland Security is looking for beefed up RFID that could be read from up to 25 feet away, that can be read in cars speeding by. So, potentially, a visitor who has an RFID tag on a document could be scanned without his knowledge or consent as he drives by. Of course, you know, RFID works with electromagnetic radio waves, sort of like the radio waves you listen to your favorite FM program on, your radio program, and they travel in space through solid objects like purses, backpacks, wallets, and these tags, while they are passive -- there's no battery -- any time they are within range of a reader device, this unique number can be scanned and you would never know it.

AMY GOODMAN: We are also joined on the telephone by freelance journalist Annalee Newitz. She writes about the intersection of technology, science and culture, a contributing editor at Wired magazine. She's redefining ‘embedded journalist.’ She just had an RFID embedded in her arm. Welcome to Democracy Now!

ANNALEE NEWITZ: Hi.

AMY GOODMAN: It is good to have you with us. Can you explain what you did?

ANNALEE NEWITZ: Sure. So I had been researching an article for Wired about security issues and RFID's, and I read some publicity materials from Verichip in which the company claimed that its chip was -- couldn't be counterfeited, so it was the perfect anti-theft key because, you know, the implication was that no one could steal your keys without actually cutting off your arm -- although they didn't actually say that in the advertising materials. So that sounded very curious to me because I hadn't heard of any RFID's that were completely secure like that so I decided to find out if it was true. A very nice doctor at UCLA agreed to implant me with one of them, very quick operation, and then I visited with an RFID expert named Jonathan Westhughes who has a little Ipod-sized device that he made himself, a quite cheap homemade thing, and it is designed to clone RFID chips which means make a duplicate copy of them basically. And in about 10 minutes, we sat down in a restaurant, crowded place, and he was able to duplicate the signal from my RFID, which meant that if my RFID had been used to open vaults or locks, he would have been able to duplicate that signal simply by basically bumping into me with his device and then going ahead and using what he picked up from it to open up a door.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you back up a minute, Annalee. Describe the operation. The -- getting the implant, you mean?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes.

ANNALEE NEWITZ: So -- basically, the RFID is quite small. It’s just a Microchip attached to a very tiny antenna, and it’s imbedded in doped glass, that’s a surgical glass, that’s safe. It is just like the tags that you put into your pet or into your cow if you are a farmer. And they take a needle, a hollow needle, and basically just shoot the chip under your skin.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you still have this implant?

ANNALEE NEWITZ: I do, yes. Unfortunately, as it turns out, they are somewhat difficult to remove because they are so small that, although it is easy to put them in, the surgeon explained to me you kind of have to dig around a little bit to find it, to remove it. So, so far, yeah, I have kept it in.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you set off any alarms with it?

ANNALEE NEWITZ: No. You don't. Actually, the read range on these, the range that you need to be -- You need to be quite close to them to read them. So you really have to be within a couple of centimeters. So it isn’t going to set off anything particularly.

AMY GOODMAN: Liz McIntyre. Have you found that people who have these chips embedded in them might set off something, either in an airport or a drugstore, a metal detector?

LIZ MCINTYRE: I haven't heard any reports of that, no. In fact, there are very few people that have even gotten one of these things, been crazy enough to do it. So, you know, we don't have a lot of feedback on what the ultimate effects of this will be.

AMY GOODMAN: I understand that in New Orleans, they are putting these in corpses. Is that true?

LIZ MCINTYRE: Yes, after Hurricane Katrina, the coroner's office met with Verichip, and of course, Verichip was interested in promoting their technology, and they thought this was a great opportunity. It was like the vultures circling after the tragedy, and they swooped in with their Verichip equipment and had the coroners implant these chips into the remains of the victims and also into the remains of some of the deceased that had been washed up from their graves.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted the read to you from a piece in the Guardian, the headline is, “Girl to Get Tracker Implant to Ease Parents' Fears.” It says, “The parents of an 11-year-old girl are to take the extraordinary step of having her fitted with a microchip so that her movements can be traced if she's abducted. Danielle Duvall will have the device implanted in her arm in the next few months. The scientist assisting the plan claimed the miniature chip will apparently send a signal via a mobile phone network to a computer which will be able to pinpoint her location on an electronic map.” That was a piece written a few years ago. Liz McIntyre, is this a trend?

LIZ MCINTYRE: Actually, I spoke with a Verichip people about this. They actually are talking about at some point having people report back to some home station through the Verichip and some kind of a telephone system. They are very excited about the idea of parolees perhaps reporting to parole officers remotely through a combination of an implanted chip and a telephone of some kind. So, yes, I understand that that is possible. I wonder how that little girl feels being uniquely numbered and tracked.

AMY GOODMAN: The Food and Drug Administration has approved putting these chips in children?

LIZ MCINTYRE: Well, they approved the chip as a medical device. Now, you should understand that that does not mean that they did extensive testing on it. They simply made recommendations about when kinds of things companies with these microchip implants should do to make sure they are somewhat safe. We have yet to see some evidence from the Verichip Corporation on things like tests run on people who have gone through MRI's. In fact, their literature that they hand to patients, the fine print on the back, they make them basically sign away their lives saying that the Verichip may not be merchantable or fit for the purpose, saying that the database linking their information may not be available at some point, that the chip may not be readable at some point in areas where there are ambient radio waves. So, you know, the device right now is just -- it is pretty much, as Annalee said, pretty much worthless as a security device, has questionable value as a medical device when linked to medical records, and as a security, tracking kind of a thing, it is just -- I just don't understand why anybody would want such a faulty, invasive process -- procedure.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to break. When we come back, I want to ask you about chipping as a way for advertisers to target their consumers better. We are talking to Liz McIntyre, consumer privacy expert. She is co-author of Spy Chips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID, also Annalee Newitz, who writes for Wired and had a chip implanted in her. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: Let's turn to a clip of the young woman who was at a technology fair talking about the implanting of this chip.

WOMAN: They were putting in the numbing into my hand. I passed out, and I have never passed out before, so it was quite shocking when I was waking up and I had no idea where I was. They hadn’t even put the chip in yet, so I had to lie down and kind of like regain consciousness and think about where I was and what I was doing, all of that.

AMY GOODMAN: That is one person's experience getting this chip put into their hand. Liz McIntyre, how well known is this becoming? Are doctors actually doing this?

LIZ MCINTYRE: Yes, there are some doctors. In fact, at the Verichip website you can find them. They are in several states across the country. It is being sold to them to increase their revenue for their practices, of all things. It is being pushed a lot to doctors that deal with geriatric patients because they feel like there will be a big market there. So, yeah, we are seeing more on the Verichip front although only about 70 people so far have been implanted. Of course, what you were just talking about are people who we call ‘do-it-yourself implanters,’ people who are putting little chips between the webbing, in the webbing between their thumbs and their pointer fingers, and this is being done by people -- not very many, just kind of 20 and 30 tech types who want a cutting-edge way to, say, open their front doors, access their computer systems, that kind of thing. Many of these chips that they are using are hobbyist’s chips you can buy for under $3. They may not even be sterilized. Our concern here is they are setting an example for young people, sort of breaking down a mental barrier to getting uniquely numbered, and of course, the precursor to being monitored and tracked in society. And the other thing is that, you know, they are getting them to stick these devices in themselves like piercings almost, and I can see where some high school kids might think this is really cool and not consider they could do serious damage to their hands. There could be infection that could result from it. And just the fact that making a part of your body a key to any kind of a valuable asset could be asking for some serious trouble.

AMY GOODMAN: You have a chapter in your book, Liz McIntyre, called "Adapt or Die: How RFID backers hope to get you onboard.” What do you mean? Adapt or die?