My wife and I are expecting our first baby in a few months and last night we were chatting about how both our dogs are chipped. But the chip only has medical info on it [I think] so we got to wondering how cool it would be if there was a tracking device in it for those occasions when he gets out and bolts to the next county…we further wondered what if our kids could be chipped with important medical information if needed…then as we talked it through we saw arguments for and against. My Big Brother Bull-Shit detector went off pretty quickly as who would want to risk being tracked by the Gov’t? But what if the chips only had medical info on them? I like the idea as a thought exercise only, what do you think?
So that everytime you walk into any pharmacy it can light the floor to the [insert your health problem] aisle? (Wasn’t something like that in Minority Report?) Or any passing car can scan you and find out any of your health info? No thanks!
Besides, you could probably do it now with the kids cell phone. I figure if they’re old enough to bolt, they probably have a cell phone!
Or, along with the pet analogy, pretend they’re a house cat and not let them outside?
Congrats to you and misses on the forthcoming bundle!
My impression with the pet chips is that they just provide a serial number. You put a reader next to them, the reader provides a pulse of radio waves, and then the chip beams out the serial number in response. Some chips actually collect enough of the energy in the incoming radio pulse to power their response; they have no separate battery or power supply. I think pet chips are of this type.
This kind of reader-powered response is one of the most basic radio-frequency identification (RFID) setups; after all, the chip (or “tag”) has to be simple, and therefore cheap, enough to be turned out by the millions.
The kind of RFID tags that are used for anti-theft detectors are even simpler; they provide no serial number. The detector–those frames at store doors–must simply detect whether the chip is there.
Now, these things are common. What is NOT common is any sort of active complex implants. A hypothetical implanted GPS receiver with a transmitter would be much larger, much more complicated, and need some kind of battery or power supply to run the thing. It would be at least as complicated and expensive as a pacemaker, with the additional requirements of antennas that would communicate with the outside world. For comparison. here is an actual GPS tracker found on the bottom of a car (!).
ETA: Or as complicated and expensive as a cellphone. 
The difference is that a cellphone is not designed for implantation into the human body. You can get at it to recharge the battery.
We recently got a puppy and the vet offered to chip her. My mom wanted to consider it but my dad and I had vehement, negative knee-jerk reactions.
We concluded that our reactions were overblown considering that a dog has a very different expectation of autonomy and privacy than a human. We still didn’t get her chipped because we found the idea way too fucking creepy.
Lojack on living things should be confined to biological studies. I’ve never even understood it on criminals, if they’re so bad we have to track their every move, I think that’s prison-level bad.
I would have to wonder what kind of medical information you could put on a chip for a new-born. You don’t know if he (or she?) has medical issues, food allergies or anything else at this point.
As for a tracking chip . If I found out my parents had put one in me I would be heading out the door to the doctors office to have it removed the instant they told me. Mom and Dad would be on my shit list after that.
There’s a difference between a tracking chip (lojack) or GPS that allows active, remote tracking, vs a chip in a pet (the OP reference) which is passive and requires an external reader. I assumed the concept of a medical ship would be passive but read/write with an external reader/writer.
I wouldn’t want either in me or my human family members though.
It would probably be cheaper to get a UPC assigned and tattoo it on. You could assign whatever data you wanted to pop up on a scan with any price gun.
(joke, please don’t be hatin’)
My wife had one put in me when I had my appendix out. I only notice it at night, when she turns on the invisible fence.
She would be better off getting you neutered. I’ve heard it cuts down on the urge to wander.
I don’t understand this at all. It’s not like the dog has any concept of privacy or rights. And if your dog runs off or you otherwise lose her, a chip might mean the difference between getting her back and euthanasia at the pound.
All of my cats are chipped. So far none of them have gotten outside and I hope it never happens, but it makes me feel better to know that if they do, at least they have a sporting chance of being returned to me.
Kids, that’s a different story. I don’t think it’s a good idea to chip kids for whatever reason.
As others have said, all a chip has is a serial number, which is submitted to a database, which returns contact info for the pet owner.
I hear statistics just last week, from a shelter. They said that something in the 10% of unchipped lost pets are returned to their owners. Over 90% of chipped pets are returned.
Chipping pets is all about being able to get them back, when they bolt out the door and take off running. It’s the same idea as a tag on a collar, except it can’t be lost or caught on a bush.
We spay and neuter dogs – is chipping them any worse? (I don’t think neutering is bad for the record but we’ve already decided they’re property–why draw the line at chips?)
I think getting a voluntary chip would be awesome. it can be a totally passive one like the pets get–just returns a serial number. But depending on who reads the serial number the information it returns is different. For instance, my chip is embedded in my left 3rd rib and reads A445W432987S.
When paramedics wand me, the number is checked against the medical database and lets them know my blood type, what medications I’m on, and any medical conditions I might have. Could be useful if they find me unconscious and are having trouble figuring out why. And if for no other reason, they will know who I am if I don’t have my ID on me and I’m in an accident, and whom to contact.
When I’m at Safeway and have forgotten my wallet (which happens a LOT), the checker can wand me and A445W432987S registers with their database as Inigo Montoya who has authorized debits to his checking account at Shifting Sands Federal Trust and Reserve–this is way more secure than my debit card, which any humanzee can weild at Safeway or the beer store.
When I land at Heathrow airport, A445W432987S registers a link to my virtual passport held by the US State Department (My paper copy is tucked securely in my safe deposit box back home) and the Customs Man either waives me through or arrests me because the wise folks at US Homeland Security have alerted them to my penchant for buggering English orphans.
Applications are endless–it doesn’t have to be any worse than carrying a wallet with readily-compromised personal information.
It would be great. Consider that while standing behind you line with my portable scanner someone could read your code and make my own. Now they’re you! Free groceries for life! Oops, you’re on a watch list due to someone elses actions while broadcasting your chip. Not you? Prove it. We have the data it was your chip!
Tin foil hats for sale in the lobby.
I can’t believe there wouldn’t be a way to guard against that - for example, instead of just sending a code, you send the chip a value which it encrypts using a private key, then returns the encrypted result.
The paranoia level in this thread is a bit funny.
Silicone chips? More like SINicone! It’s the Mark of the Beast! The End is Nigh!
But what if you’re baby is kidnapped? According to the webslueths website, babies are being kidnapped in frightening proportions
Just image the look Leopold and Loeb or Bruno Hauptmann or the Symbionese Liberation Army would’ve had when the cops showed up after they kidnapped the person. What about Kyron Horman or the Boy in The Box?
Chip or not to chip…Hmmmm
Congratulations!
…but “Aldous Huxley Phlosphr” would still be a terrible name.
I know I’ve been playing too much Shadowrun when the first thing I think upon seeing SINicone is not sin like in the Bible, but SIN as in System Identification Number. Which makes perfect sense. 