Could RFID and satellites help fight
kidnappers?
The use of microchips to track people (such as those embedded in
hospital wristbands) and products (those uncomfortable tags on
clothing that have to be cut off prior to wearing) has come under
fire from civil rights groups who claim that big corporations are
using this technology as a tool for spying. But what about when these tags
are embedded in people themselves, rather than the things they
wear?
That's what Mexican security firm Xega SA, which sells technology
for tracking people, wants to do, particularly in cases when people
are held for ransom. For about $3,700, the company will implant a
chip the size of a grain of rice (it costs another $1,800 per year
for monitoring), reports the Telegraph. Although it is unclear where
the chip is likely to be implanted in a person's body its customers
carry with them a panic button that can be pressed if a person
feels he or she is in danger. A transmitter then sends signals via
satellite to pinpoint the location of the person in distress,
reports Reuters. (Xega did not respond to
requests from ScientificAmerican.com for an
interview).
It's perhaps the next obvious step in radio-frequency
identification (RFID) technology, which companies already use to
gather information about consumer behavior that can be used as a
marketing tool, to track merchandise in order to protect themselves
from shoplifting, and to locate patients who've wandered away from
hospital beds. Xega's technology is troubling in a number of ways,
in particular that there's a market for it in countries including
Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela.
But there are also several questions about whether the technology
will actually work in an emergency. Implanted chips have been used
in self-experimentation (such as England's self-styled cyborg Kevin Warwick) and by security
contractors to automatically communicate their security credentials
over short distances to gain access to a secure facility . While Warwick
was actually plugged into a computer, the alternative has been to
send and receive information via RFID, even though this technology
has a limited range (in most cases about 25 feet) and the signal
can be weakened by any metal that comes between the RFID reader and
the tag, says Roy Want, a principal engineer at Intel
Research/CTG in Santa Clara, Calif.
A chip that relies on GPS poses a whole new set of challenges. For
one, the chip would need an antenna and radio as well as a battery
powerful enough for its signal to reach a satellite network. "I'm
skeptical," Want says, "that you could build something that could
reach a satellite and yet be small enough to put under your
skin."
Other problems are more logistical than technical. When the
person's captor finds out about the embedded GPS beacon, it would
likely be removed in a very painful way and be rendered useless if
the captive is moved to a new location. Additionally, sometimes
knowing where a captive is being held is only part of the problem,
particularly if the captive is being held by guerilla forces
situated deep in the Amazon, which is the case in several South
American countries (the rescue of Colombia's Ingrid Betancourt and three American
security contractors provided some insight into the plight of
these captives).
Still, with kidnapping becoming a lucrative industry in several
countries (often as a means of funding anti-government rebels),
technology such as what Xega is proposing would be welcome as
another tool for law enforcement to work with.