As far as the $300 a person, companies regularly spend that and more on hiring, training, and equipping their employees.
Every where I’ve worked that had swipe cars for security, it was inevitable that every day, someone would forget or lose theirs, and they would have to go through the process of getting a manger to make them a new one. Giving everyone permanent chips eliminates this lost productivity. Just the few seconds every day when an employee pulls out their wallet to retrieve their keycard adds up.
I am not sure I am a fan of the idea, but the $300 the company is one of the less suspicious aspects.
I meant that I have some choice on a day to day basis. I can have the convenience of the phone, and of it’s location functions, when I want it, but I can choose to not have it when I don’t want it. Not so with an implanted chip.
I’m forced to login to my computer several times a day. It gets so annoying. Having a chip that will do that for me? Sign me up. (I’d rather they just put it in my employee badge though)
My computer has a smart card slot in the keyboard; we don’t use them because it’s a colossal security risk if somebody loses his badge.
How common are scanners which can read these chips, and what range are we talking about? Could one be mounted on a doorway that people commonly pass through and pick up their information from it, or does it require fairly deliberate placement & contact, like putting your hand onto a reader of some kind?
Westworld ran into some labour difficulties when many of its employees were frustrated at having to wait in line to pass security prior to punching in on the clock, when most of them already had chips. The solution was to chip the ones who were not already chipped.
If your employer wants to get you chipped, it probably because most of your fellow employees are androids and that you are sheeple. I read somewhere that Rick Deckard has been trying to sort it out.
When I had a job where I had to swipe my card to enter the building and log onto the computer, I wore the card on a lanyard around my neck. It was always handy. I never had to dig it out of my wallet.
Your badge can be stolen or given to someone else - your own hand, not so much,
That said, RFID chips are usually pretty simple and I expect the implementation discussed in the linked article will just be a chip that responds with a supposedly-unique static ID with no encryption or advancing code or anything like that - so probably dead simple for some kid to clone using a smartphone app.