http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/03_Tech/030521.barcoding.humans.html
16 And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead,
17 and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the Beast or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the Beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six (666). (Revelation 13:16-18
The painless procedure barely lasted 15 minutes. In his South Florida office, Dr. Harvey Kleiner applied a local anesthetic above the tricep of my right arm, then he inserted a thick needle deep under the skin.
''First we locate a prime spot,'' he said. ''The next thing is to release the button that triggers the injection mechanism, and that's it, the cargo's been delivered.''
The ''cargo'' was a half-inch-long microchip inside a glass and silicone cylinder that carries my permanent identification number. For an instant, I remembered the famous scene in the movie ''Fantastic Voyage'' in which a miniaturized Raquel Welch and her companions are inserted, submarine and all, into the vein of a patient. In my case, the tiny chip inside me can transmit personal information to anyone with a special handheld scanner.
Theoretically, this VeriChip will allow doctors to call up my medical records even if I'm too badly hurt to answer questions. It is also supposed to allow me to get money from an automatic teller machine by flashing my arm instead of punching in my PIN number. Or reassure airport security that I am a journalist, not a terrorist.
And, though the VeriChip strikes critics as Orwellian, its makers think the surgically implanted IDs could be the Social Security numbers of the future in a nervous world.
''I believe the day will come when most of us will have something similar to the VeriChip under our skin,'' said Scott Silverman, president of Florida-based Applied Digital Solutions. ''People will regard that its benefits -- in terms of financial, security, and health care -- far outweigh the possibility of loss of privacy.''
Right now, I am part of a very small club, the 18th person in the world -- and the first journalist -- to get ''chipped.'' Most of the others are ADS employees along with one Florida family who have been jokingly dubbed ''the Chipsons'' in a play on the old Jetsons cartoon.
The idea of a system that gives emergency workers and others immediate access to potentially lifesaving information is exactly what drew the Jacobs family of Boca Raton to the VeriChip. At the request of their 14-year-old son, Derek, the Jacobses got chipped last year.
''My husband has cancer and we've experienced the frustrating delays of trying to provide urgent medical history information every time he is rushed into the emergency room,'' says Leslie Jacobs.
Since the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, she continues, ''we know that our lives are increasingly vulnerable. If we want increased safety, security, and peace of mind, we need to take positive steps. We've decided that having a VeriChip is one way to do just that.''
But critics see surveillance technology like the VeriChip as a growing threat, giving potentially dangerous new power to businesses and government alike. In a report issued in January by the American Civil Liberties Union, Jay Stanley and Barry Steinhardt warned that an explosion of technology has already created a ''surveillance monster.''
''Scarcely a month goes by in which we don't read about some new high-tech way to invade people's privacy, from face recognition to implantable microchips, data mining, DNA chips, and even `brain wave fingerprinting,' '' they wrote. ''The fact is there are no longer any technical barriers to the Big Brother regime portrayed by George Orwell [in his novel `1984'].''
16 And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead,
17 and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the Beast or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the Beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six (666). (Revelation 13:16-18
The painless procedure barely lasted 15 minutes. In his South Florida office, Dr. Harvey Kleiner applied a local anesthetic above the tricep of my right arm, then he inserted a thick needle deep under the skin.
''First we locate a prime spot,'' he said. ''The next thing is to release the button that triggers the injection mechanism, and that's it, the cargo's been delivered.''
The ''cargo'' was a half-inch-long microchip inside a glass and silicone cylinder that carries my permanent identification number. For an instant, I remembered the famous scene in the movie ''Fantastic Voyage'' in which a miniaturized Raquel Welch and her companions are inserted, submarine and all, into the vein of a patient. In my case, the tiny chip inside me can transmit personal information to anyone with a special handheld scanner.
Theoretically, this VeriChip will allow doctors to call up my medical records even if I'm too badly hurt to answer questions. It is also supposed to allow me to get money from an automatic teller machine by flashing my arm instead of punching in my PIN number. Or reassure airport security that I am a journalist, not a terrorist.
And, though the VeriChip strikes critics as Orwellian, its makers think the surgically implanted IDs could be the Social Security numbers of the future in a nervous world.
''I believe the day will come when most of us will have something similar to the VeriChip under our skin,'' said Scott Silverman, president of Florida-based Applied Digital Solutions. ''People will regard that its benefits -- in terms of financial, security, and health care -- far outweigh the possibility of loss of privacy.''
Right now, I am part of a very small club, the 18th person in the world -- and the first journalist -- to get ''chipped.'' Most of the others are ADS employees along with one Florida family who have been jokingly dubbed ''the Chipsons'' in a play on the old Jetsons cartoon.
The idea of a system that gives emergency workers and others immediate access to potentially lifesaving information is exactly what drew the Jacobs family of Boca Raton to the VeriChip. At the request of their 14-year-old son, Derek, the Jacobses got chipped last year.
''My husband has cancer and we've experienced the frustrating delays of trying to provide urgent medical history information every time he is rushed into the emergency room,'' says Leslie Jacobs.
Since the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, she continues, ''we know that our lives are increasingly vulnerable. If we want increased safety, security, and peace of mind, we need to take positive steps. We've decided that having a VeriChip is one way to do just that.''
But critics see surveillance technology like the VeriChip as a growing threat, giving potentially dangerous new power to businesses and government alike. In a report issued in January by the American Civil Liberties Union, Jay Stanley and Barry Steinhardt warned that an explosion of technology has already created a ''surveillance monster.''
''Scarcely a month goes by in which we don't read about some new high-tech way to invade people's privacy, from face recognition to implantable microchips, data mining, DNA chips, and even `brain wave fingerprinting,' '' they wrote. ''The fact is there are no longer any technical barriers to the Big Brother regime portrayed by George Orwell [in his novel `1984'].''
