They Want Their ID Chips Now
By Julia Scheeres
2:00 a.m. Feb. 6, 2002 PST
Meet the Jacobs family: Jeffrey, Leslie and their son, Derek. They're a
fairly typical American family, middle class and ambitious. The father
is
a dentist, the mother is an account executive at an interior design
magazine and the 14-year-old son plays jazz and tinkers with computers
in
his spare time.
But one thing may soon make the Jacobses stand out: They could become
the
first family in the world to be implanted with microchips that contain
their personal information.
The chip in question, the VeriChip, is similar to the biochips that have
been used to identify pets and livestock for years.
Made by Applied Digital Solutions (ADS), the VeriChip stores six lines
of
text and is slightly larger than a grain of rice. It emits a 125-kHz
radio
frequency signal that can be picked up by a special scanner up to four
feet away.
The company initially plans to market the chip in the United States as a
medical device that would allow hospital workers to simply scan a
patient's body in an emergency situation to access their health record.
The Jacobses, who live in Boca Raton, Florida, first heard about the
microchip in a television news report.
"Derek stood up and said, 'I want to be the first kid to be implanted
with
the chip,'" Leslie Jacobs said. "For the next few days all he did was
talk
about the VeriChip."
Derek, an eighth-grader who became a Microsoft Certified Systems
Engineer
at age 12, fantasizes about merging humans and machines. Jeffrey Jacobs,
who is severely disabled, was interested in the device for health
reasons.
So Leslie called up Palm Beach-based ADS and offered her family as
guinea
pigs once the microchip is approved for testing by the FDA.
ADS chief technology officer Keith Bolton said he was a bit wary about
the
family's motives at first, but the Jacobses quickly convinced him they'd
be perfect subjects. Since the VeriChip was announced in December, the
company has been bombarded with queries from people interested in the
device, Bolton said.
"Right now we have over 2,000 kids who have e-mailed, wanting to have
the
chip implanted," he said. "They think it's cool."
Derek, for one, dreams of a day when he'll be able log onto his
computers
or unlock his house and turn on the lights without lifting a finger,
functions that British professor Kevin Warwick was able to do in a 1998
experiment with an implanted microchip.
Derek was also inspired by Richard Seelig, the company's director of
medical applications, who injected two VeriChips into himself after
hearing stories of rescue workers at the World Trade Center scrawling
their names and Social Security numbers onto their bodies in case they
didn't make it out of the rubble alive.
"I think it's one more step in the evolution of man and technology,"
said
Derek, who once needed to move into the family room after his
electronics
equipment crowded his bedroom. "There are endless possibilities for
this."
(Currently the chip is immutable once the device is injected via a
syringe, using local anesthetic. In future applications, the chip may
include a GPS receiver and other advanced features, company officials
said.)
Jeffrey, a 48-year-old cancer survivor, has more practical reasons for
wanting the VeriChip.
"If something happens to me and there's no one that knows anything about
my medical history, any paramedic or hospital worker, if they have the
scanner -- which hopefully everyone will have at some point -- will be
able to scan all my information," he said. "It could save my life."
Leslie, 46, said she was motivated by security concerns. The Sept. 11
terrorist attacks hit close to home: Her family lives in South Florida,
where authorities say 14 of the 19 hijackers lived. Her office is a
block
away from tabloid publisher American Media, where a photo editor died
after contracting anthrax.
The world would be a safer place if authorities had a tamper-proof way
of
identifying people, she said.
"I have nothing to hide, so I wouldn't mind having the chip for
verification," Leslie Jacobs said. "I already have an ID card, so why
not
have a chip?"
Pilots could be chipped and scanned before they entered the cockpit, she
suggested, to ensure the person sitting at the controls was indeed an
airline employee. Her husband went further, suggesting that violent
criminals and known terrorists should be routinely chipped as a matter
of
policy.
The idea of requiring people to be implanted was brought up by Applied
Digital Solutions CEO Richard Sullivan in an interview with the Palm
Beach
Post, in which he suggested microchips be used to track foreigners
visiting the United States. (The company has since downplayed his
comments.)
But an X-Files-type scheme where everyone is forcibly marked and
monitored
by the government worries both civil libertarians and Christians, who
believe new technologies such as biometrics and biochips may be the
feared
"Mark of the Beast" of Biblical lore that is described in Revelations
13:16:
"He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and
slave,
to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one
could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast
or the number of his name."
Gary Wohlscheid, the president of The Last Day Ministries -- a group
espousing the belief that humanity is on the verge of an apocalyptic
showdown between the forces of good and evil -- believes the VeriChip
could be this mark. Although the chip is not yet small enough to be
injected into the forehead or right hand at the moment, it could be in
the
future, he said.
"Out of all the technologies with potential to be the mark of the beast,
the VeriChip has got the best possibility right now," he said. "It's
definitely not the final product, but it's a step toward it. Within
three
to four years, people will be required to use it. Those that reject it
will be put to death."
Wohlscheid felt so strongly about this possibility that he created a Web
page to warn others of the microchip's evil potential.
To quell Christians' fears, Bolton, the Jacobses and a theologian
recently
appeared on the 700 Club, hosted by televangelist Pat Robertson.
Privacy expert Richard Smith scoffed at the Jacobses' plans.
"Sounds like a publicity stunt and nothing more," he said. "Being
chipped
today has no value because hospitals and the police don't have the
reader
units."
Although the VeriChip is awaiting FDA approval in the United States, the
company recently announced a deal to market the chips to potential
kidnap
victims living in South America, such as corporate executives. The
device
could be used to identify abduction victims who are unable to
communicate
with their rescuers because they are unconscious, drugged or, in a
worst-case scenario, dead.
The company hopes to get the FDA green light in the next couple of
months.
When and if that happens, the Jacobses would be among the first subjects
to receive the VeriChip, company officials said.
************************
73
André N4ICK
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