Posted on 12/28/2007 7:56:43 PM PST by SwinneySwitch
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico is going high tech to better track the movements of Central Americans who regularly cross the southern border to work or visit.
Starting in March, the National Immigration Institute will distribute cards containing electronic chips.
Those items will record every arrival and departure of so-called temporary workers and visitors, mostly from Guatemala.
The cards will replace a non-electronic pass formerly given to area residents.
Officials say the purpose is to guarantee security for workers and visitors.
Statistics from the institute show that more than 182,000 undocumented migrants were detained in Mexico in 2006. Most were Central Americans from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador en route to the U.S.
There you go!
But could you imagine the outrage from the Mexican Consulate if we proposed doing the same thing?
Ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
We need to sub-contract the Mexicans to control OUR border.
Here we go .... Foreigners report to the closest Mexican Police Station or Military Facility to have a chip embedded inside your skull. Mexican Nationals you are free to come and go as you please.
Fox, meet henhouse.
Unbelievable. They can secure their borders but we can’t.
..adjustment: We want secure borders, our Congress won't
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1578032/posts
Posted on 02/13/2006
Excerpts:
(snip)
The Mexico attorney general’s office implanted the so-called RFIDs — for radio frequency identification chips — in some employees in 2004 to restrict access to secure areas. Implanting them in the workers at CityWatcher.com is believed to be the first use of the technology in living humans in the United States.
Sean Darks, chief executive of the company, also had one of the chips embedded.
“I have one,” he said. “I’m not going to ask somebody to do something I wouldn’t do myself. None of my employees are forced to get the chip to keep their job.”
(snip)
They work “like an access card. There’s a reader outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it opens the door,” Darks said.
(snip)
CityWatcher.com has contracts with six cities to provide cameras and Internet monitoring of high-crime areas, Darks said. The company is experimenting with the chips to identify workers with access to vaults where data and images are kept for police departments, he said.
(snip)
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1641913/posts?page=30#30
Chip Implanted in Mexico Judicial Workers
Associated Press | July 14 2004
MEXICO CITY (AP) - Security has reached the subcutaneous level for Mexico’s attorney general and at least 160 people in his office - they have been implanted with microchips that get them access to secure areas of their headquarters.
It’s a pioneering application of a technology that is widely used in animals but not in humans.
Mexico’s top federal prosecutors and investigators began receiving chip implants in their arms in November in order to get access to restricted areas inside the attorney general’s headquarters, said Antonio Aceves, general director of Solusat, the company that distributes the microchips in Mexico.
Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha and 160 of his employees were implanted at a cost to taxpayers of $150 for each rice grain-sized chip.
More are scheduled to get “tagged” in coming months, and key members of the Mexican military, the police and the office of President Vicente Fox might follow suit, Aceves said. Fox’s office did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
A spokeswoman for Macedo de la Concha’s office said she could not comment on Aceves’ statements, citing security concerns. But Macedo himself mentioned the chip program to reporters Monday, saying he had received an implant in his arm. He said the chips were required to enter a new federal anti-crime information center.
“It’s only for access, for security,” he said.
The chips also could provide more certainty about who accessed sensitive data at any given time. In the past, the biggest security problem for Mexican law enforcement has been corruption by officials themselves.
Aceves said his company eventually hopes to provide Mexican officials with implantable devices that can track their physical location at any given time, but that technology is still under development.
The chips that have been implanted are manufactured by VeriChip Corp., a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solutions Inc. (ADSX) of Palm Beach, Fla.
They lie dormant under the skin until read by an electromagnetic scanner, which uses a technology known as radio frequency identification, or RFID, that’s now getting hot in the inventory and supply chain businesses.
Scott Silverman, Applied Digital Solutions’ chief executive, said each of his company’s implantable chips has a special identification number that would foil an impostor.
“The technology is out there to duplicate (a chip),” he said. “What can’t be stolen is the unique identification number and the information that is tied to that number.”
Erik Michielsen, director of RFID analysis at ABI Research Inc., said that in theory the chips could be as secure as existing RFID-based access control systems such as the contactless employee badges widely used in corporate and government facilities.
However, while those systems often employ encryption, Applied Digital’s implantable chips do not as yet. Silverman said his company’s system is nevertheless save because its chips can only be read by the company’s proprietary scanners.
In addition to the chips sold to the Mexican government, more than 1,000 Mexicans have implanted them for medical reasons, Aceves said. Hospital officials can use a scanning device to download a chip’s serial number, which they then use to access a patient’s blood type, name and other information on a computer.
The Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve microchips as medical devices in the United States.
Still, Silverman said that his company has sold 7,000 chips to distributors across the United States and that more than 1,000 of those had likely been inserted into U.S. customers, mostly for security or identification reasons.
In 2002, a Florida couple and their teenage son had Applied Digital Solutions chips implanted in their arms. The family hoped to someday be able to automatically relay their medical information to emergency room staffers.
The chip originally was developed to track livestock and wildlife and to let pet owners identify runaway animals. The technology was created by Digital Angel Corp. (DOC), which was acquired by Applied Digital Solutions in 1999.
Because the Applied Digital chips cannot be easily removed - and are housed in glass capsules designed to break and be unusable if taken out - they could be even more popular someday if they eventually can incorporate locator capabilities. Already, global positioning system chips have become common accouterments on jewelry or clothing in Mexico.
In fact, in March, Mexican authorities broke up a ring of used-car salesmen turned kidnappers who were known as “Los Chips” because they searched their victims to detect whether they were carrying the chips to help them be located.
Tidbit, below it says: >>>”In Mexico, we have more than 150,000 missing kids,” said Aceves of Solusat.<<<
Solusat is a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solutions, Inc. like VeriChip. Applied Digital allows for independent branding with affiliates.
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1641913/posts?page=49#49
Implantable Chips Get Under Skin of Security Experts
Charles J. Murray
26 July 2004
Electronic Engineering Times
Copyright (c) 2004 CMP Media LLC
Chicago - The science-fiction-like prospect of planting chips inside the human body took on a decidedly real flavor last week, in the wake of an admission by the Mexican Attorney General that he and 160 government officials have been “chipped.”
Applied Digital Solutions Inc., maker of the so-called VeriChips that were used, acknowledged that its distributor sold the chips to the Mexican government late last year. The Palm Beach, Fla., company then added fuel to the firestorm by saying that it is also working with banks, credit card companies, hospitals, medical clinics and security agencies to spread the concept further.
The news generated heated response among privacy advocates, financial analysts and security experts. “Promoting implanted RFID devices as a security measure is downright loco,” said privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (Caspian). Albrecht argued in a prepared statement that the announcement was a political maneuver by the Mexican authorities that would not help promote personal security in any way.
Still, security experts said last week that the move could be a precursor to a much larger trend toward “chipping” of humans over the next 20 years.
“In a decade or two, there will be a commonly available system with the ability to know who people are, where they are and what they’ve done,” said John L. Peterson, a futurist and security expert with the Arlington Institute (Washington), and a former member of the National Security Council staff. “It’s inevitable that something like this will happen. With terrorism, the external pressures are too great for it not to happen.”
Beyond security
Indeed, it was the threat of security breaches that prompted Mexican officials to use the technology in the first place. Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha told reporters earlier this month that 160 employees of his office were using the implanted chips as a means to enter and exit secure government facilities in Mexico City.
Antonio Aceves, general director of Solusat Corp. (Mexico City), the distributor that sold the chips to the Mexican government, acknowledged that chips had been implanted, but said he had signed a nondisclosure agreement barring any further discussion of the details. “We can say only that the attorney general and 160 employees have VeriChips in their bodies,” Aceves told EE Times. Other, unverified news reports said that members of the Mexican military and police, as well as employees in the office of President Vincente Fox, might also be “chipped” in the next few months. Executives at Applied Digital Solutions said Mexico’s use of the chip could be the tip of a very large technological iceberg. The VeriChip Division, which has struggled over the past two years and had annual revenue of just $550,000 in 2003, is working at getting the chip accepted by regulatory agencies, doctors and hospitals, as well as banks, credit card companies, security agencies and even gun manufacturers.
A capsule-like RFID device first used in animals, the VeriChip is small enough, at 11 x 2 mm, to be injected through a syringe and implanted in a variety of locations within the human body. It includes a memory that holds 128 characters of identification information, an electromagnetic coil for transmitting data and a tuning capacitor, all encapsulated in a silicone-and-glass enclosure. The passive RF unit, which operates at 125 kHz, is activated by moving a company-designed scanner a few inches from the chip. Doing so excites the coil and “wakes up” the chip, enabling it to transmit data.
Applied Digital, which sells 3 million to 4 million chips into the animal market annually, sold only about 7,000 VeriChips for human applications last year. Still, the company continues to advance its technology, apparently in expectation of a larger market eventually opening up.
Applied Digital is working on doubling the device’s memory size to 256 characters and is developing read/write capabilities for it, said Peter Zhou, vice president and chief technology scientist. The read/write capabilities would open up another broad swath of potential applications, he said, particularly in the health care market, where the chip could be used to carry continuously updated medical information.
“We believe that medical applications will be the primary source for getting the chip into society,” said Scott Silverman, chairman and CEO of Applied Digital Solutions. “After that, people will be able to use the chip to do other applications as well.”
The cylindrical device could soon be endowed with biometric sensors that would allow it to read temperature or glucose levels inside the body. The tiny glucose monitor would employ enzymes that react by producing a voltage proportional to glucose levels. Zhou said the company already makes the temperature sensor available to the animal market. He said the glucose monitor is being tested, but warned that neither has been approved for human use.
The company also said it is working on new antenna structures that would stretch the unit’s sensing distance from a few inches to a few feet.
CEO Silverman believes the strongest driving force behind the technology may be the simple need for a device that can “speak” for patients. Used in conjunction with implantable pacemakers and defibrillators, as well as artificial hips and knees, the device could provide medical personnel with information the patient would be unlikely to know. It could contain, for example, data on the manufacturer of an implant, its serial number, recall information, who installed it, where it was installed and the date of its last battery charge.
“Information-gathering techniques in emergency rooms are archaic today,” Silverman said. “This is a device that can do the talking for an incapacitated patient.”
Scan my arm
Applied Digital has also talked at length with banks and credit card companies about using the technology as a secondary form of authentication to help prevent credit card fraud, executives said last week. Under the company’s plan, retailers would scan a chip in the customer’s arm to authenticate identity.
“The banks and credit card companies we’ve talked to are extremely concerned about identity theft,” Silverman said. “This would be one way for them to know that you are who you say you are.” The company said it has also talked with a South Carolina-based small-arms manufacturer about the possibility of using the technology in handguns for law enforcement agents. In such applications, a modified scanner in the gun handle would work in conjunction with an identification chip embedded in the palm of a police officer’s hand. If the scanner identified the officer, the gun could be fired. If no positive ID were made, the gun wouldn’t work.
Applied Digital executives say that security applications, like those in the Mexican government, could also kick-start the technology’s rise. Initial targets include federal buildings, power plants, military bases and prisons.
To address personal-security issues, company researchers have also recently completed an implantable prototype unit that combines global-positioning satellite technology with a cell phone, identification chip and a battery. The unit employs GPS as a locator, then uses the cell phone to transmit a signal. The device, which measures 1.25 x 0.5 inch, could be surgically inserted beneath a user’s collarbone.
Applied Digital executives believe the GPS-based technology would be especially appropriate in locales like Central and South America, where kidnappings are reportedly reaching epidemic proportions. Authorities in those areas, in an apparent attempt to stem the problem, are increasingly considering RFID solutions.
“In Mexico, we have more than 150,000 missing kids,” said Aceves of Solusat. “When you’re looking at so much kidnapping, privacy concerns become less important.”
Privacy advocates, however, predict that the use of RFID will backfire, with grotesque consequences. “When someone steals a car, the first thing they do is disarm the locator device,” said Albrecht of Caspian. “So who’s to say that a kidnapper won’t want to disarm a locator device? The idea of a kidnapper probing underneath the collarbone is frightening.”
Indeed, news reports suggest that such a scenario may already be occurring. Mexican authorities are said to have recently broken up a ring of kidnappers, known as “Los Chips,” who searched their victims to see if they were carrying chips that could help them to be located.
Industry analysts said last week that they don’t expect the sale of implantable chips for humans to take off any time soon. Animal-tracking systems, which have grown into a business that is estimated at more than $70 million per year, are set for more growth in the wake of mad-cow disease scares. But consumers, not surprisingly, have resisted the idea of having chips implanted in their own bodies.
“If people don’t want RFID tags in their underwear or in their designer clothes, why would they ever want them under their skin?” said Mike Liard, an RFID analyst for Venture Development Corp. (Natick, Mass.).
Still, security experts believe that over the next decade, chips for humans, or some variation thereof, will emerge as a market. The looming threat of terrorism and the advent of such diseases as SARS will spark a demand for tracking and identification technologies. “The technology will insidiously insert itself into the system, first in smaller ways, then in larger ways, until people get used to it,” said Peterson of the Arlington Institute. “Then it will become a common and easy way to establish identity.”
Terror-related issues will likely push the technology to the forefront more quickly than would otherwise happen, Peterson added. “If a nuclear weapon goes off in some major city, there will be extraordinary pressure to figure out ways to keep it from happening again.”
Indeed, “RFID chips in humans are still a long way off and no one really knows what will happen in that market,” said Erik Michielsen, director of RFID and ubiquitous networks for Allied Business Intelligence Inc. (Oyster Bay, N.Y.). “But you can never say never.”
Why isn’t the Chamber of Commerce and the ACLU protesting this?
This will interfere with the flow of cheap labor and future Democrat voters who need to cross Mexico to get to the day labor sites in the USA.
Good place to bump this thread.
Duncan Hunter is the best candidate on immigration.
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According to Intrade, the winner of the December 12th GOP debate was... Duncan Hunter.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1938773/posts
Why the smart money is on Duncan Hunter
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1926032/posts
In this poll Hunter is up 3% and even with Paul and Thompson.
http://www.wxyz.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=3481ef60-8195-46a9-af04-b87b907bcfdd
Have you ever heard of Real ID?
What chip? We can’t even get them in to give them an ID card. A drivers license or a voters registration card, but certainly not an ID card.
“Statistics from the institute show that more than 182,000 undocumented migrants were detained in Mexico in 2006. Most were Central Americans from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador en route to the U.S.”
182,000 in one year, all other than Mexican, headed to the USA. There has to be at least 30 million aliens in this country.
The pretty much do that already.
No Card! A chip......placed soooo far up their rectum, they won’t be able to remove it.
Mexico’s treatment of immigrants and illegal aliens is notorious for its brutality and inhumanity.
Propose to treat Mexican illegals in the U.S. the same way Mexico treats illegals in their country and the Mexican government and the international community would be up in arms.
It is a double standard in which poorer countries are held to lower standards, to the point where outright corruption, government sanctioned murder, and blatant violations of basic due process are acceptable, but so much as a hint of aggressive enforcement of our own laws that don’t violate so much as a single human right or civil liberty causes the world to condemn our nation as racist and insular. Sucks to be U.S.
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