Microchips in humans: Consumer-friendly app, or new frontier in surveillance?

ABSTRACT There’s a new fad among technology aficionados: voluntarily injecting radio frequency identification chips under their skin. Self-described “bio-hackers” reason that by having such microchips inserted, they can pay for purchases by just hovering their bare hand over a scanner at a checkout counter instead of swiping the magnetic strip of a credit card, inserting a card into a chip reader, or displaying a smartphone app (or doing something as old-fashioned as paying cash). At first glance, such consumer technology looks like a harmless whim, or the next logical step among those who favor piercings, or the supposed ultimate in convenience. But inserting identification microchips in humans would also seem to bear the seeds of a particularly intrusive form of surveillance, at a time when authorities in some parts of the world have been forcibly collecting DNA and other biological data – including blood samples, fingerprints, voice recordings, iris scans, and other unique identifiers – from all their citizens. This article explains some of the nuts and bolts of this hybrid human-machine product.