Jan 24, 2005This article was originally published by RFID Update.
January 24, 2005—The VeriChip is ostensibly a technology to improve the provisioning of healthcare in a system rife with disorganization and errors. The FDA approved it for that purpose in October, 2004. But some Christians, devoted privacy advocates, and merely concerned citizens are wary of a technology that could potentially be used to track humans in much the same way the retail sector is hoping to track goods. You're no doubt already familiar with their concerns, and you may or may not agree. But who is correct? The pro-RFID crowd dismisses the dissent as exaggerated conspiracy theories from paranoid luddites; the "conspiracy theorists" in turn call the proponents naive, claiming that governments and corporations will invariably abuse power.
One indication of where human-chipping is headed is to look at the companies already associated with it. One example is Metro Risk Management Group, who, according to VeriChip's site, appears to be the company's South American distributor. Metro Risk bills itself a "leading information management and technology company" that "can locate almost anyone, find deep background and historical information, and shorten research time and costs. [Online service] MetroProbe provides aliases, historical addresses, relatives, associates, neighbors, assets, non-primary residence information and more." The company was formed in 1998 by "a group of former government agents and operatives...to serve the needs of multinational corporations, government and non-government agencies in the areas of security and investigative matters."
Reading between the not-so-subtle lines, one concludes that Metro Risk uses a combination of computerized records and field research to provide its clients with, among other things, comprehensive profiles on individuals like you and me.
Metro Risk's line of business is nothing new (such services have been around for years), but its strong embrace of VeriChip may give pause to those who believe that human-chipping will never be exploited in a way that invades privacy. At the very least, it appears to lend credence to some of the darker predictions regarding future VeriChip uses, rendering them less far-fetched than before.
Take a look at Metro Risk Management Group's site
