Tiny Human-Borne Monitoring Device
Sparks Privacy Fears
December 20, 1999
WASHINGTON (CNN) - A Palm Beach, Florida-based
telecommunications company has developed a miniature digital
monitoring device that can be implanted in people, intended to assist
in locating missing children or for monitoring the heart rate of
at-risk patients.
But electronic freedom activists are concerned about
exploitation of the technology, which would use global positioning
system (GPS) technology to track implantees.
"It sounds dreadful. That's about as bad as it gets,"
Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center
in Washington, said Monday.
Applied Digital Solutions announced last week it had
acquired patent rights to develop the unique transceiver, which would
be powered by muscle movements of implantees. The company plans to
complete a working prototype by the end of 2000.
Planted inconspicuously just under the skin, the
implantable transceiver sends and receives data and can be
continuously tracked by GPS technology. The company expects
applications in the fields of law enforcement, security and medicine.
According to ADS, a company with an Internet and
e-commerce focus, the devise could track lost hikers, abducted
children and "military, diplomatic and other essential government
personnel."
It can also identify individuals for e-business security
and check certain biological functions and alert a monitoring facility
if it detects a medical emergency.
"We believe its potential for improving individual and
e-business security and enhancing the quality of life for millions of
people is virtually limitless," said ADS Chairman and CEO Richard
Sullivan in a statement.
Fearing that "virtually limitless" potential, critics
contend that monitoring systems wind up being used for other than the
original purposes.
"Over the years we moved from fingerprinting convicts to
routinely footprinting infants in hospitals," Rotenberg said.
He worries that this new surveillance technology could
eventually restrict freedoms of the general public.
"I think the use of implants for tracking is crossing
into a new territory," Rotenberg said. "It gets us closer to an
Orwellian '1984.'"
Patent documents refer to the device as a "personal
tracking and recovery system." But ADS said the device, named the
Digital Angel, could also have non-human applications. For example, it
could be secretly hidden on or in valuable personal belongings and
works of art.
ADS said the technology could "tap into a vast global
market" that is expected to eventually exceed $100 billion.
By Richard Stenger
CNN Interactive Writer