Why do people implant chips in themselves, how it expands the capabilities of the human body and why is it dangerous?

Good morning professor

In 1998, the British cybernetic scientist Kevin Warwick decided PROFESSOR CYBORG to an unusual and even innovative experiment at that time. The cyborg professor, as the press later dubbed him, implanted a small glass capsule with an electromagnetic coil and a silicon chip inside his hand. To demonstrate the technology in action, he entered the building where he was then working, leaning his hand against the reader. “Good morning, Professor Warwick. You have five new letters,”said the chip-activated computer voice.

This research experiment was to demonstrate the usability of RFID tags in everyday life. For example, they allow you to keep your house keys and work pass not just at hand, but literally in your hand. Nevertheless, after 20 years after the first experiment, many are skeptical of such "upgrades". Not every doctor will decide to implant a chip - and not even because the procedure is dangerous (in terms of its complexity, it can probably be compared to a piercing), but simply because almost no one is engaged in such operations, at least in Russia.

RFID tags are almost constantly used in everyday life. They're hidden in your travel passes, contactless bank cards, store stickers, biometric passports, and perhaps even at the withers of your beloved pet. This technology is so simple and familiar that we do not even think about its existence - until, of course, we are offered to implant a chip in our hand. Those who empower their bodies by implanting cybernetic devices are called grinders. In fact, these are the same biohackers, only of a narrower direction.

What made Kevin Warwick take such an unusual step for those times and implant a chip in his hand? First of all, probably, curiosity, but not only that. Paradoxically, this is the fear of progress.

Computers are developing extremely quickly: until recently, the game "Minesweeper" seemed to be something exciting, risky and exciting, but today we are no longer surprised by the malicious remarks of voice assistants and artificial intelligence systems that outplay professional chess and go players. In 2006, Warwick, in another interview, noticed Chip under the skin: Tuning a person, that only by evolving into cyborgs, people will be able to retain power over the planet. In his opinion, there is nothing left before the uprising of machines - some 20-40 years, and then, if humanity does not figure out how to expand its capabilities, they will put us in the zoo "along with other animals."

Interestingly, Stephen Hawking adhered to the same (albeit much less fatalistic) views. In an interview, he said: "To maintain the superiority of biological systems over electronic systems, we need to improve our nature by complicating DNA or connecting with machines."

So, it turns out that you urgently need to look for a surgeon who will implant the coveted chip in you? If you are waiting for a definite answer to this question, then it will not be.

I will be a cyborg

Over the past 20 years, the implantable RFID chip industry has leaped forward. Perhaps one of the brightest stars in the market can be called the company Dangerous Things, which sells ready-made kits for self-injection under the skin of a glass capsule. Today they are ordered by customers from different countries, including Russia. By 2017, Dangerous Things had sold about 10,000 kits, and it can be assumed that this figure has increased today.

The set includes: medical gloves; a cotton swab soaked in iodine; sterile wipes; a kit for implanting a RFID tag for animals, consisting of an applicator with a special RFID tag already embedded (which is not suitable for humans, since it has a special coating to which body tissues are attached over time, so that it becomes impossible to remove it), and, in fact, the chip itself. This simple kit allows you to carry out the operation at home.

A Habr user named termsl ordered RFID implantation - the results after 7 months were such a set back in 2013. As he wrote in his post, the implantation took place without problems and the glass capsule did not cause him any inconvenience. My biohacking experience told about a similar experience. Part 1: RFID and user AndrewRo in 2016, and he implanted not one, but four implants (including a small magnet) into his hand, which help him unlock the phone and the door from the house.

Not only individual enthusiasts are experimenting with implants, but also companies - however, such cases are so far isolated. These include, for example, a vending machine company in Wisconsin, USA. Three Square Market tells A Wisconsin company will let employees use microchip implants to buy snacks and open doors that the $ 300 chip will allow an employee to open doors, log in to a computer, and even buy food from the firm's cafeteria. In 2017, 50 employees agreed to implant the microchip. BioHax International, a chip supplier for Three Square Market, claims the Imaginary risks and real dangers of microchips implanted under the skin that dozens of firms, including international companies, are interested in introducing such a service.

The Swedish experience is another example that deserves attention. The country is home to about 3, 5 thousand people who have implanted a chip under their skin. Thanks to the efforts of Biohax International, which has been selling and installing chips at technical fairs since 2015, in June 2017, inspectors on Swedish railways began scanning the hands of passengers using a special reader. At the same time, the country's government did not express an official position on the sale of chips: it neither approves nor prohibits it.

Experts explain the phenomenon of Sweden to Professor has the world’s first silicon chip implant by the country's unique technological climate. Over the past two decades, the Swedish government has invested heavily in technology infrastructure, and the country's economy now relies heavily on digital exports, digital services and innovation.

This has also greatly influenced Swedish culture. For example, she played a large role in shaping the ideas of transhumanism: in 1998, the Swede Nick Bostrom founded Humanity +, a public non-governmental organization that supports technologies that expand human capabilities. Today, many people in Sweden are convinced that they should improve and develop their biological bodies - and, as practice shows, they are actively doing it.

Your documents

RFID chips have a myriad of applications and are not limited to easy access to buildings and quick shopping. Important areas include, for example, medicine. Some doctors believe that an implanted RFID tag with a patient's medical history (what antibiotics he has taken in the past, what is he allergic to, and so on) would help provide quick and effective assistance to unconscious victims.

Such a chip was especially useful for Human Microchipping, The Benefits And Downsides for patients suffering from memory impairments, for example, patients with Alzheimer's disease. However, this raises the problem of obtaining informed consent for medical intervention, since it is necessary for the implantation procedure.

Another obvious application is personal identification. The need for paper documents disappears if the person is the carrier of the chip. Actually, today a similar idea is implemented in the form of tags for animals, which allow a person who finds a lost pet to bring it to a clinic or other organization, where it will be established in a matter of minutes who it belongs to. Plus, chipping your pets is a must if you want to move them across the border.

Identification using chips is also used in animal husbandry: last month, Vedomosti reported the Ministry of Agriculture is seeking mandatory labeling of cats and dogs, livestock and bees, that the Ministry of Agriculture has prepared a bill obliging to label and microchip domestic animals, as well as livestock in personal subsidiary and farms … What's more, RFID tags are used in many other countries - often seen as a tag attached to an animal's ear.

True, when it comes to a similar method of identifying a person, many begin to worry about their privacy. In part, these fears, of course, are justified, but the fear is not at all what most people think about.

Steal my ID

Almost the main thing that most people are afraid of when it comes to chips is "now they will follow me." However, RFID tags have a feature that prevents them from being used to register movements. The implant does not have its own battery - the chip receives an electrical charge with an incoming radio signal, which provides sufficient power to transmit a response. In everyday life, chips are used that allow you to read information at a distance of no more than 20 centimeters from the signal source (remember how you pay using PayPass at the checkout).

Another threat, slightly less unfounded, is identity theft. Today, the whole world is concerned about the growing number of fraudsters who can remotely steal a person's identification number and use it for their own purposes. “Anyone can come up to me on the subway and read anything. It's not cool,”says Stanislav Kupriyanov, an IT expert at Ericsson, who has inserted an NFC-tagged implant into his arm.

RFID chips are indeed vulnerable and amenable to hacking, although some companies are improving. A secure RFID chip has been created that will make it impossible to “steal” their identity. Today, they protect chips from the most common forms of hacking that allow attackers to obtain encryption keys, such as side-channel attacks and power glitch attacks. However, most of the implants remain vulnerable. Of course, stealing a person's identity is not so easy: you need to know exactly where the RFID tag is located, and figure out how to bring a device to it that allows you to carry out the necessary machinations.

Further, purely hypothetically, the chip can be turned into a carrier of a virus program. Such an experiment was conducted by a researcher from the University of Reading (Britain) Mark Gasson, who showed that an implant capable of carrying only one kilobyte of information is still vulnerable to malware.

In 2009, a cyberneticist implanted a glass mark in his hand and used it to enter the university building. A year later, in April 2010, he demonstrated Human Enhancement: Could you become infected with a computer virus? how a computer virus can be transmitted to the tag during the exchange of information with the security system. Following this, Gasson infected Scientist is first man to be ‘infected’ by computer virus with several devices interacting with the chip, including the cards of his colleagues. In his opinion, these results demonstrate that in the future, advanced medical devices such as pacemakers and inner ear implants may become vulnerable to cyberattacks.

There is a separate group of people who fear that soon all of us will be microchipped. Their nightmare looks something like this: a patient comes to the doctor to get a flu shot or a Mantoux test, and a small glass capsule is imperceptibly injected into his blood along with the vaccine. In the very distant future, this may become a reality, but not today.

Firstly, such a procedure is difficult to carry out unnoticed by the patient, at least while he is awake. The usual size of an implant is 2 × 12 millimeters, and for its introduction you will need not a thin needle, but a decent catheter, such an injection can hardly be called ordinary. Secondly, after insertion under the skin, the capsule remains visible, and a person who has undergone chipping will easily find it.

And the last argument against mass chipping: it's quite expensive. Given the fact that an RFID tag does not allow tracking a person or otherwise using it remotely (for example, to identify a criminal in a crowd), the government's benefit from such an event is questionable.