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Source: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,50435,00.html

By Julia Scheeres 2:00 a.m. Feb. 15, 2002 PST A Brazilian legislator wants to become the first politician to be implanted with a controversial microchip that would contain his personal information.

"I want to demonstrate to the citizens of Brazil and the world that this technology is safe," Antonio de Cunha Lima, a federal minister from the state of São Paulo, said Thursday. "I believe in supporting the advance of science and technology. I want to be the first Brazilian to be chipped. I want to be the first politician to be chipped."

Cunha Lima said he plans be implanted with the VeriChip as soon as it is approved for use in Brazil. He added that he is interested in pursuing a joint venture between the chip's manufacturer, Applied Digital Solutions, and the company he presides over, Central Brasileira de Negocios.

The microchip, which is slightly larger than a grain of rice, stores six lines of text and 128 characters and emits a 125-kHz radio frequency signal that is detected by a special scanner up to four feet away. It is similar to the biochips that are used to identify pets and livestock.

Last week, a Florida family announced its desire to become the first family in the world to be implanted with the VeriChip once it is greenlighted by the Food and Drug Administration.

The chip maker, based in Palm Beach, Florida, is marketing the VeriChip as a medical and a security device.

People with chronic diseases, for example, could have chips encoded with their health histories and the name of their primary physician so hospital workers could simply scan their bodies in an emergency and access their medical records.

In South America, the chip is being commercialized as a way to identify kidnapping victims who are drugged, unconscious or dead. In that market, the chip is being bundled with the company's personal GPS device, Digital Angel, so police are able to track the abduction victim's location as well.

Cunha Lima, a veteran politician who has served in public office for more than 22 years, said he is interested in the VeriChip for its potential as a kidnapping deterrent.

"I believe this technology will contribute to the public safety and security of Brazilians," he said. "I believe this technology will act to deter the shocking rise of kidnapping in our cities and particularly the abhorrent kidnapping of the children of businessmen."

Abductions in Brazil have soared in recent years, according to the Brazilian media, and bands of young men roam the streets of major cities targeting drivers of luxury cars and business owners.

The city of São Paulo, the capital of the state of São Paulo and home to 17 million, is the kidnapping capital of Brazil. Last year, 251 people were kidnapped compared to 39 in 2000 and 13 in 1999, according to the secretary of public security.

Since its announcement last December, the VeriChip has stirred the public's imagination. While company officials have been bombarded with e-mails from teenagers who think the device is cool and want to get chipped, others worry that the device will someday be required identification.

Additionally, some Christians believe the technology could be the feared "mark of the beast" warned of in the Bible.

Applied Digital Solutions has lobbied to assuage the concerns of privacy advocates and Christians by appearing on the Christian talk show The 700 Club and by emphasizing the benefits of the device.

"People are crying for security and safety. This chip could help save lives," said Keith Bolton, the company's chief of technology. He added that privacy concerns are a moot point: "You turn the (GPS) device off; you elect to have it."

Cunha Lima coincided: "While I am concerned with a potential invasion of privacy, the use of this new technology is voluntary and not mandatory. If one chooses to 'be chipped,' then one has considered the consequences of that action."

Last week, Applied Digital Solutions applied for a trademark for the terms "get chipped" and "The Chipsons" -- the latter in reference to the Florida family.

Implantable device can be used for ID purposes only

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the go-ahead to a US company to sell a computer ID chip that can be embedded beneath people's skin.

Applied Digital Solutions (ADS) designed the VeriChip, which is about the size of a grain of rice, to hold information that could be read with special electronic scanners.

The radio frequency device, which contains a unique ID number, holds 126 characters.

FDA regulators said that, as long as the microchip is used for ID purposes only, it will not have to meet its strict guidelines. If medical records are included, the device would have to undergo the agency's safety testing procedures.

ADS had advertised the VeriChip in the past as a potential method of storing a person's medical history. But for now it will include only an ID number which can be cross-referenced with a database to detail any kind of information.

Scott Silverman, president at ADS, was delighted with the favourable FDA guidance. "This clears the way for the company to begin sales, marketing and distribution in the US," he said, adding that production would begin immediately.

US resident Jeff Jacobs, who has survived Hodgkin's disease and lymphoma, will be among the first recipients of the chip.

Jacobs's 14 year-old son Derek saw a TV news programme about the device and wanted the chip to be implanted in his father.

UK professor gets silicon chip implant

By John Leyden at CA World in New Orleans [12-04-2000]

A UK cybernetics professor is planning to allow a computer to control his body and recreate his emotions in the latest of a series of high-profile experiments.

A UK cybernetics professor is planning to allow a computer to control his body and recreate his emotions in the latest of a series of high-profile experiments.

Professor Kevin Warwick will have a silicon chip implant placed in his arm and connected to his nervous system in an attempt to find out whether the computer will be able to move his fingers by copying signals from his brain.

If the experiment is successful, Warwick said his wife has agreed to also have an implant. This could let them share thoughts. "If someone has to know what I'm thinking, she wants to be the one," he said.

Warwick is conducting the experiment, which he hopes will begin in July 2001, because he believes that mankind needs to become cybernetically enhanced and he was bold in his predictions of where the technology might go.

A world similar to that depicted in the Terminator movie is a realistic scientific possibility, he claimed, but added: "The robots will not all look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. But in the long term, I hope it will be possible to communicate by thought over the internet."

Warwick received his first implant, which has now been removed, in the autumn of 1998 in what is believed to have been the first such experiment. The implant was a relatively unsophisticated device that enabled a computer to keep track of where he was in a building and to switch on lights.

"I came to regard the implant as part of me and I felt closeness with the computer," he said.

The latest device, however, will be connected to the nerve fibres in Warwick's arm so that it can receive and transmit signals. It will about half the size of a business card and consist of a transmitter, receiver, battery and high-speed, low-power processor, which is about as powerful as a Z80. The signals will be processed using a laptop PC.

Warwick hopes to feed data from sonar or ultrasonic sensors to provide him with what he describes as "extra-sensory" capabilities. He said the technology could be used in future to build devices to help blind people perceive where they are in a building.

But he also plans to experiment with emotions to see if computers can recreate feelings and moods. The nerve impulses associated with emotions ranging from pain, anger, shock and excitement, will be "stored and played back".

Warwick even plans to recreate the feeling of being drunk. "I'll take quite a few glasses of wine and play it back to recreate the sensation I had in the first place," he said.

UK professor takes implant to become world's first cyborg

By null [26-08-1998]

by Jan Howells

A professor at Reading University claims to be the worlds first cyborg - part human, part machine.

The computer chip surgically implanted in professor Kevin Warwicks arm opens doors for him and even turns on his computer. It is part of a research experiment by Reading Universitys cybernetics department which Warwick heads up.

I don't know how long we will leave the implant in, but it's looking at what's possible now in terms of communicating between a computer and myself, Warwick explained.

As Warwick walks through his department data encoded on the chip detects his whereabouts via sensors and displays it on a screen so he can be found easily. The implant can be programmed to tell him how many unread emails he has or remind him of meetings.

Warwick believes that in five years time chips will be readily available to carry a variety of data from money transfers and medical records to passport details.

If they are implanted the they are impossible to steal, the potential is enormous, he said.

Made up of a glass capsule around an inch long and a tenth of an inch in diameter the chip was implanted under local anaesthetic by Warwicks own doctor.

Reading University confirmed in a statement that this was the first chip to be surgically inserted into a human.

"It is therefore not known what effects it will have, how well it will operate and how robust I will be," officials said in a statement. "Professor Warwick is therefore taking an enormous risk - for the transponder to leak or shatter within his body could be catastrophic."

Warwick, however, said the dangers were negligable.

"Cybernetics is all about humans and technology interacting," he said. "For a professor of cybernetics to become a true cyborg - part man, part machine - is therefore rather appropriate."