Microchipping people - AIBU to find this all a bit worrying?

[Defenbaker]

Last year around 4,000 Swedish people were fitted with implants in their hands, and it seems that many companies around the world are considering implants for their employees. These chips could be used for ID, to unlock doors, or make payments, and may hold sensitive medical information. In theory anyone fitted with one of these chips could be tracked by their employer, or possibly by the government/police. I find it all rather terrifying, and can't imagine myself accepting an ID implant.

I can't believe this is actually happening, it all seems like something out of dystopian fiction. Is this going to become the new norm? I can think of a few advantages to this new implanted technology (tracing missing vulnerable people, medical info readily available to paramedics), but many disadvantages (lack of privacy/gradual coercion of the population/possibility for cyber hacking causing mental illness/AI taking the upper hand). In my mind the whole prospect is terrifying and a step too far. AIBU?

How many doctors would treat women at all, in case what they do for them turns out to be illegal five years down the line?

Very true.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/000756077X/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

This Lionel Shriver book paints a scary future where all Americans have chips implanted into their necks where they can't be removed. You can't do any financial transactions, work or claim welfare without your chip being scanned. The government has complete control over your movements. You can't go missing without being tracked.

Not technically possible right now but will be in the future. There is a lot of scope for this technology to be abused.

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*Child goes missing - find then using the chip

Would it have GPS?*

The technology currently doesn’t exist for trackable microchips. They need to emit a signal to be tracked, which needs a battery, and so far nobody has designed a battery small enough to be implantable.

If it existed, we’d be able to track our pets via their microchip. As some very angry person on facebook recently found out and left a very bad review for their vet along the lines of what’s the point if you can’t track it?

Fortune for the one that does though

Currently microchips need to be read with a scanner in close proximity.

This is happening already, in China. They don't even need microchips, they are using face recognition technology. They control the population to the extent of face recognition being used to dispense toilet paper at a public toilet - 6 sheets per face and no more. If people jay-walk, they are publicly shamed by their name, face and details flashing up on a giant public screen. The technology will be used in the next few years to monitor people's every move, where they go, what they buy, if they are fined, or late paying a bill or fine etc, and 'good' citizens will be rewarded while 'bad' citizens will have privileges removed. It's Big Brother and it's happening, in China, where they have 're-education' (read: concentration) camps for non-conformists.

Yes Pierre I watched a documentary on it. Basically Chinese people have a "credit score" on their life. You buy alcohol? Your points reduce. Smoke? Reduced.
Buy loads of healthy stuff - good for the score.
One journalist tried to write about it and he has basically been blacklisted. He tried to buy a train ticket and was refused. He cannot leave the city.

I'm agog at how many people would welcome or be ambivilent about humans being chipped! Elon Musk was right when he said humans and AI are intrinsically linked now and there's nothing we can do to stop even if we wanted to.

Terrifying, whisky. You can understand why people are protesting in Hong Kong.

Thanks Romany

I never enable location services but I suppose we will hit a point where disabling isn’t possible

I feel sorry for kids who can’t tell a lie to their folks any more!

I wouldn't like this for myself. But I can see advantages to our non-verbal autistic son being microchipped, even if it doesn't make him trackable. If he were to be found wandering by the police, they could scan to identify him. If he needed medical treatment, the hospital could scan him to find out his medical history.

Thigh I still don't have a smartphone, and dh will not be replacing his work one when he retires this year.

Barnaby I didn't notice ID cards stopping the Brussels bombers in 2016...

I don't see the need for a chip really. I mean you could have it on a watch or a ring or something.

I'm not sure how bad it is. I mean, insurers could access your bank account and know how healthy you are based on purchases, but they don't because it's against the law. Why would that change?
Basically, anything a chip implant could do, probably is achievable from technology already at hand. The risks are the same though?

@Heratnumber7 Mabel it's not just smart phones than can be tracked. Any mobile phone leaves a record when it connects to a base station.

I know any mobile phone can be tracked by the feds/cops/FBI whatever. The point I was making is that with my little £10 PAYG phone I got from Argos, (with no internet or camera or ANYthing on it,) no-one I know can see where I am (work, friends, family, acquaintances, etc.) They can send me a text or ring obviously, but they cannot see where I am or track me.

Not with a phone like THIS.

^