September 25, 2007 BY ORR SHTUHL STATELINE.ORG

WASHINGTON -- The VeriChip implantable radio-frequency identification tag, made up of a microchip and an antenna encased in glass, is about the size of a grain of rice.

It would be an interesting feature of an employee's first day: Sign a contract, fill out a W2 and roll up your sleeve for your microchip injection.

Sounds like sci-fi, but it has happened, and now a handful of states are making sure their citizens never will be forced to have a microchip implanted under their skin.

If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs a bill passed this month, California would join Wisconsin and North Dakota in banning human implanting of the tags without consent. Lawmakers are calling the legislation preemptive; the industry that produces the technology calls the states' action fear mongering.

In Michigan, a bill introduced in the state House early this year would prohibit implanting a microchip in another person without consent; no action has been taken on the bill.

Radio-frequency identification, or RFID tags are in passports, in Wal-Mart factory shipments and in subway passes in cities from New York to Taiwan.

RFID tags are scanned at close range -- usually from a few feet to a few inches. The tags are tracked by scanners installed at checkpoints, such as office doors or warehouse loading docks.

In humans, the tags have been used to store medical information, to track movement and to gain access to locked rooms. To date, 2,000 RFID chips have been sold for human implantation, according to VeriChip Corp., the only manufacturer with a Food and Drug Administration-approved implantable chip.

Legislation deemed preemptive

The company is focusing its technology on medical patient identification, and about 400 patients, including those with Alzheimer's disease, have RFIDs. Other VeriChip human implants have been used by a Spanish nightclub to allow VIPs with implanted chips to bypass entrance lines and by the Mexico attorney general's staff to safeguard identity information at a time when the kidnapping of government officials there is not uncommon.

Ohio security firm CityWatcher.com raised eyebrows in 2006 when it requested that some of its employees be implanted with tags for access to certain rooms. CityWatcher.com has since shut down.

But forced chipping has been rare, leading some industry spokespeople to decry regulation as scare tactics.

Legislators say the few laws being enacted are preemptive. Wisconsin state Rep. Marlin Schneider said he had never heard of CityWatcher.com when he drafted the first implant ban.

"I had heard about this device from CNN or some place, and I went into the office and said, 'Get a bill drafted that prohibits this,' " he said.

Technology's shortfall

State Sen. Joe Simitian, who authored the California bill, said he looked into RFID legislation after grade schools in Sutter County, Calif., required students to wear IDs containing the chips to help monitor attendance. The move prompted privacy complaints from parents, and the schools eventually stopped using the technology.

Simitian introduced four other RFID bills, dealing with criminal punishment for identity theft, security standards and use of the tags in driver's licenses and school IDs.

A May 2006 article in Wired magazine featured Jonathan Westhues, a 24-year-old engineer who showed how he could (and did) covertly scan a company's RFID employee badge and break into the office -- all with a cheap, homemade reader. He since has posted instructions on how to make the reader on his Web site.

Determined to show the security flaws to skeptics in the Legislature, Simitian asked a tech-savvy grad student from his office to build one.

The student then wandered the state Capitol one day with the reader in his briefcase. In the process, he stole the security numbers of nine representatives. The reader could send out any of those numbers, getting him past any locked door a state senator could access. And he would appear as the senator in the electronic records.

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