Chips under your skin?

So, what do y'all think about this? Radio Frequency ID chips the size of a grain of rice which are injected under the skin. They're touting that hand-held scanners will get your "number", which allows them to look up your "number" on a data base to find your medical records.

But privacy concerns abound. What do you think? Are RFIDs necessary? Or just another way to infringe upon privacy? Would you consider getting one? Why or why not?

Highlights from the article:

This summer, Rafael Macedo de la Concha, Mexico's attorney general, announced that he and scores of his subordinates had received implanted chips that control access to a secure room and documents considered vital in Mexico's struggle with drug cartels.

...a British company, Surge IT Solutions, ... said (it) intended to use the technology to control access to government facilities.

In March, the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona began offering VeriChips to regular patrons who wanted to dispense with traditional identification and credit cards. About 50 "V.I.P.'s" have received the chip so far, according to a spokesman, which allows them to link their identities to a payment system. The program has been expanded to a club in Rotterdam also owned by Baja, and about 35 people there have signed up for the implants, the company said.

But real privacy concerns have emerged. "At the point you place the chip beneath the skin, you're saying you will not have the ability to remove the ID tracking device," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest advocacy group in Washington. "I think, increasingly, if this takes off - and it's still not clear that it will - the real social debate begins around prisoners and parolees, and perhaps even visitors to the U.S. That's where the interest in being able to identify and track people is."

But critics say that if the technology gains a foothold, employers, government authorities and others with power over individuals could dictate how it is used. For instance, if chips were to replace dog tags as military identification, the decision would not be up to the discretion of individual soldiers.

The evolution of radio identification technology also concerns some critics. Passive tags like VeriChip do not broadcast radio waves and cannot now be used to track a person's movements. And current scanners cannot read the passive chip from more than a few feet away. But design advances or the addition of a separate power source for the chip could expand those ranges and make tracking possible.

Mr. Silverman has said that the current chip could help managers of high-security installations like nuclear power plants locate people in the building because scanners in doorways should be able to track who enters and leaves a room.

...surveys had shown that 14 percent to 22 percent of people would consider having the implant, but more than 80 percent of those surveyed said they would consider having the implant if the question was framed to show a medical benefit from the chip.