Future Surveillance Will Get Under Your Skin

America, there are frantic efforts to make Americans more secure. One solution that is gaining currency in the US is the use of an RFID implant which is shot into the body by means of a large hypodermic needle. The chip can be read when a scanner is passed over the area where it lurks in the fatty tissue below the surface of the skin. It is promoted by the sinister sounding VeriChip Corporation of America, which is pioneering the implants (originally developed to tag animals).... We attended a surgery run by a Dr J Musher in an anonymous Washington suburb and I was duly injected with a chip bearing a unique number.... I have a hint of Blade Runner about me: half-man, half-transmitter. You can see the attraction of such gimmicks. The same instinct is busy consigning us all to centralised databases and promotes the use of number-recognition cameras to track our movements.