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| Author |
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bru
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Digital Angel?
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Oct 18 03:37 UTC 2000 |
A computer company is planning to market a chip designed to be placed under
the skin that will monitor the persons medical status and location via global
positioning satellites. Is big brother here?
This could be used by HMO's to track your medical well being.
This could be used by doctors to monitor your habits.
It could be used by police to monitor possible kidnap victims.
It could be used by the courts to track child molesters.
Time to learn Newspeak?
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| 37 responses total. |
senna
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response 1 of 37:
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Oct 18 03:51 UTC 2000 |
I highly suspect an implement like this would be voluntary, and probably used
for someone who has a high risk of medical problems and little else.
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mdw
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response 2 of 37:
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Oct 18 05:52 UTC 2000 |
It's only one short step to doing the same thing for prison inmates.
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bdh3
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response 3 of 37:
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Oct 18 06:16 UTC 2000 |
And what would be wrong with that?
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rcurl
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response 4 of 37:
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Oct 18 06:34 UTC 2000 |
This will bring back chain mail (probably of titanium, for weight reduction):
a personal Faraday cage.
Incidentally, a global positioning satellite doesn't *monitor* anything.
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scg
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response 5 of 37:
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Oct 18 08:07 UTC 2000 |
Technology like this is going to be invented. The trick is to write the laws
so as to keep it from being forced on people.
I can see this as having some useful purposes. I don't know too much about
medicine, but I'm guessing there are probably times when this could make
diagnoses easier. The tracking functions would probably be useful with
Alzheimers patients, who sometimes wander away with no idea how to get back
home. I certainly wouldn't want to get such a device without having a good
use for it, though.
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mdw
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response 6 of 37:
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Oct 18 08:54 UTC 2000 |
After prison inmates, we have sex offenders, DUI, and people on
probation. After that, why not all kids - it would certainly make it
harder for separated parents to steal each other's kids, plus it would
make it a lot harder for certain kinds of sexual predators. After that,
well, why not put chips in all those left wing liberal types, the tree
huggers, and the anti-gun fanatics, and all those people who want to
vote for "dangerous" people like Nader? While we're about it, we can
put chips in all those satanists and devil worshippers as well. Gosh,
and why stop there? Why not put a chip in *everyone*? It would be a
lot easier to deal with voting, credit cards, & mobile phones, now,
wouldn't it?
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bdh3
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response 7 of 37:
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Oct 18 10:09 UTC 2000 |
Yes, it would.
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bdh3
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response 8 of 37:
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Oct 18 10:10 UTC 2000 |
(Of course there would always be hackers...)
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scott
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response 9 of 37:
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Oct 18 11:33 UTC 2000 |
Sounds like the old "satellite tracking" thing got stuck on there by some
conspiracy nut. While it's true that a company is currently developing these
things, they won't have enough power to talk to a satellite unless an external
box is added.
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jazz
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response 10 of 37:
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Oct 18 13:42 UTC 2000 |
Technology like this is *going* to be invented, but I can't imagine
a subcutaneous chip that was powerful enough to broadcast to a bird. Think
about it.
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scott
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response 11 of 37:
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Oct 18 14:22 UTC 2000 |
I think what they were talking about (this hit slashdot at least a month ago)
was a device which was powered by the muscle movement somehow so it didn't
need a battery, and which could be used for tracking (via local transponders
with a necessarily short range) and some amount of medical monitoring.
One of my cats already has a grain-of-rice sized chip under his skin. Takes
a big sensor less than a couple inches away to talk to the thing.
I'm not worried about satellite tracking until some major changes in our
technology come along. Currently it's just not possible (although the
conspiracy nuts will happily talk about all the govt's secret developments
which are capable of all sorts of wonderous things).
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jep
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response 12 of 37:
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Oct 18 15:11 UTC 2000 |
Imagine some ordinary real-people benefits for such a device. If it's
ever going to become universal, first there will be some beneficial uses
for people who choose to have one installed.
1) Medical alert and medical monitoring was the one mentioned in #0.
It's a mixed blessing for a lot of people, but if you have medical
problems, it could save your life. Life has to be pretty bad before
it's not worth having.
2) Science fiction stories have talked about non-verbal/non-typed
communication with computers for years, via some sort of implant that
ties into your nervous system. That implies always-available
communication with other people, in a world with the Internet. It also
implies instant access to all information available anywhere in the
world, from research data to news to music. This is a benefit that
would be hard to overlook.
Sure, there's a downside to that (as anyone with a pager, cell phone,
laptop, palm computer, and 24-7 job description can attest), but there's
also enough benefit that many people carry a boatload of gadgets
everywhere they go.
3) You can never get lost, if the thing can do GPS type services.
4) What if the medical monitoring can be used to enhance your body?
Appetite control, nerve-soothing by limiting andrenaline production (or
increasing athletic performance by increasing it). Shucks, control
pheromone production, which might be great for the singles scene.
Control ovulation and sperm production and maybe fertilization.
Eliminate baldness, hair growth, attention deficit disorder. Could you
turn this kind of stuff down if it was available for a small monthly
network access fee?
Once people are used to it and most people get to like it, and the few
who don't are doing it because they're criminals, *then* it becomes
universal and mandatory. And mis-used.
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eeyore
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response 13 of 37:
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Oct 18 16:12 UTC 2000 |
I have no problems with using it for medical purposes...especially if it can
moniter glucose for diabetics (which they are working on, I believe), moniter
heart rate, things like that. It would also be useful for people that have
had drug problems, and need to do a regular drug test....this could store if
anything came into the system. I'm also deffiantely for it for somebody who
is out on parole....but if a prisoner is done with the parole, then the chip
needs to come out.
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rcurl
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response 14 of 37:
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Oct 18 16:23 UTC 2000 |
Re #12.3: GPS doesn't help you much unless you also have a *map*, and
to use the map you have to know the GPS *datum*, and.... (knowing now
that I am at 17 T 0275772 4680655 doesn't tell me much).
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ashke
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response 15 of 37:
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Oct 18 16:29 UTC 2000 |
I think it is a great idea for identification and medical information. For
those with terminal illnesses and others. I agree with others about the
possible improper uses of such a device, but aren't we putting the cart before
the horse and thinking of the worst before it happens? I know we need to
protect ourselves, but at what cost is our paranoid culture going to cause?
I know that the RPG Shadowrun had credsticks that issued all money.
Demolition Man did the same thing. You just waved the info in your chip, and
it controlled your life. No more bounced checks. But I don't trust a
computer to do all that for me. Hold information yes, but to handle ALL
transactions? Come on! Look at the scare from Y2K, and that was a MINOR bug,
that caused people to forget that life DID happen before 1955. The world
wasn't going to end because some computers stopped working, or got the bills
or payroll messed up.
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danr
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response 16 of 37:
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Oct 18 17:19 UTC 2000 |
If this chip can be easily and economically inserted, then it's probably also
equally as easy to extract. You don't like it, go to the "back alley
extractionist" and get it removed. Game over.
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mwg
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response 17 of 37:
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Oct 18 17:26 UTC 2000 |
And if they make extraction difficult, a nice local EMP and it may as well
have been removed.
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gull
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response 18 of 37:
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Oct 18 18:59 UTC 2000 |
The satellite tracking nonsense reminds me of the people who assert that
there are satellites that can photograph your license plate from orbit. I
believe someone once calculated that this would require a lens something
like thirty meters across. ;)
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rcurl
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response 19 of 37:
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Oct 18 19:08 UTC 2000 |
Satellite photographs resolve down to 1 meter. I'm not sure how resolution
scales with aperture, but if it is linear, and if one wants 0.2 cm
resolution, that scales the lens up by x 50, and I'm pretty sure most
lenses in space are less than 50 cm, we get a need for a 25 meter lens.
OK. I'd agree.
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jep
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response 20 of 37:
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Oct 18 20:37 UTC 2000 |
re #17: I ran a magnet over my drivers license as soon as I got it.
It's sufficient for me that it has my picture, name and birth date. I
don't want any electronic services from the state government. I guess
that puts me among the paranoids.
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aruba
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response 21 of 37:
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Oct 18 21:13 UTC 2000 |
Re #19:
A good approximate formula for the resolvability of a lens is Rayleigh's
criterion, which says
/---------------------\
| lambda |
| theta = 1.22 ------ |
| d |
\---------------------/
where
lambda = the wavelength of the light used
d = the diameter of the lens
theta = the minimum angle at which two light sources can be told apart.
If a satellite is height h above the earth, and two things are distance x
apart, their angle as viewed from the satellite is approximately x/h. So
the minimum separation necessary for two objects to be resolved in the
satellite picture is
x = 1.22 * h * lambda / d.
The diameter of the lenses of spy satellites is not common knowledge (at
least not to me), but we do know the width of the space shuttle's cargo bay,
and the designers of the shuttle certainly had in mind to use it to put up
spy satellites. I didn't look it up, but based on a picture of an astronaut
in the cargo bay, I think it's about 5 meters wide. So that's a first-order
estimate on the size of lenses.
If we estimate h at 500 km (which is about the height the shuttle flies to)
and use 550 nm (green) for lambda, we get
x = (1.22)(5 x 10^5 m)(5.5 x 10^-7 m) / (5 m)
= 6.7 cm
which is not quite good enough to read license plates, but it's close.
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janc
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response 22 of 37:
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Oct 19 00:18 UTC 2000 |
Hmmm...not knowing optics, what bugged me about the "satellite reading
license plate" thing was that I don't usually park my car with the
license plate pointing upwards.
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lowclass
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response 23 of 37:
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Oct 19 00:36 UTC 2000 |
Knowing a little bit about optics, (not the math) and the fact that
any known abberation or distortion of the optical system described can be
resolved mathematically, i don't find the idea of that type of optical
resolution extremely far-fetched. the same techniques were used to "correct"
the images from the Hubble Space Telescope before the correcting monocle
was installed in orbit. THe one thing that NSA, and by extension the CIA,
has is mathematicians who could do the math and massage the downstream data
flow from said satellites via computers and programs.
Our observation Satellites, to my knowledge, haven't used physical
recording media such as film since the mid-70's. The data is recorded and
transmitted electronically. before that, the satelittes would eject film
cartridges that would reenter, and be captured by plane before impacting the
earth or oceans.
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scott
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response 24 of 37:
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Oct 19 01:03 UTC 2000 |
Some Tom Clancy book or another had a neat idea: Take spy photos with cheap
camera, then carefully analyse the lens from the cheap camera and apply
corrections to the photo image. Result? Super high resolution photos.
The problem with this idea? Aberrations in the lens do not necessarily map
various spots into other spots in a resolvable fashion. When two points in
the real image end up pointing to the same spot on the film, there's not
really a way to recover. That plus the low resolution of small film sizes...
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