IEEE Spectrum March, 2007 - 17

wouldn't break in my hand. So on a sunny June day, we decided
to experiment. Out in the parking lot of my apartment building,
I placed the tag on a piece of wood and tapped it lightly with a hammer. Nothing happened, so I let the hammer fall from a couple of
inches above the piece of glass, and that didn't seem to do anything,
either. Then I gave it a good whack and promptly pulverized it. We
decided that while it was possible to shatter the tag, the blunt force
required to do so would also mutilate my hand. In that scenario,
a little broken glass would be the least of my worries.
I approached one of my clients, a cosmetic surgeon, to perform the implant. She asked a few basic questions about whether
the tag was safe for implantation, and I signed a waiver. The surgeon soaked the glass cylinder in a liquid disinfectant. Because
the read range of this tag is only 5 to 7 centimeters, I needed to
be able to hold it close to the reader. She made the incision and
inserted the tag just underneath the skin. In 5 minutes I had a
chip in my left hand, a bandage over the cut, and some grainy
cellphone photos to show for it. The soreness from the operation
was gone within a few hours.
I set to work eliminating keys from my key chain. I had set up
one of the RFID readers in my home office for testing, so I picked
up the reader and waved it over my hand. The ID number of the chip
popped up on my computer screen. I did a little dance, then sat back
down and started to work on my home access system. I wanted to
configure the reader to unlock the dead bolt on my front door.
I posted the photos of the implant procedure on Flickr.com
and sent out an e-mail to some friends and
family. Several blogs picked up the story,
including BoingBoing.net and Slashdot.
I started to receive a flood of questions
by e-mail, so I put together a frequentlyasked-questions page on my Web site at
http://www.amal.net/rfid.html.
The messages I received varied in tone
from earnest to downright nutty. Some
people were curious about how I planned
to use the tag; others spouted enraged
nonsense about government tracking
and mind control. Many wanted to know
whether the tags made my hands tingle. If
an object taps the skin between my thumb
and index fingers, I may feel a slight
pinching sensation-but that's about it.
There were e-mails with religious fervor,
too. Some Christian groups hold that the
Antichrist, sometimes referred to as the
beast, will require followers to be branded
with a numeric identifier prior to the end
of the world-the "mark of the beast." So
I got some anxious notes from concerned
Christians-including my own mother!
She worried that the implants might
one day become some sort of de facto
requirement to lead a normal life and
to conduct business, much as a driver's
license is today. I disagreed with her,
arguing that common numeric identifiers
like social security numbers and credit

cards had initially borne a similar stigma. I pointed out that
scarier technologies already exist to identify a person based on
facial structure, iris scans, and even scent. [See "RFID Inside,"
in this issue.]
Implanting people with a foreign device, by contrast, is inherently intrusive and socially difficult to enforce. And implants
can be extracted and destroyed-even ones with the so-called
antiremoval coating. Should my RFID implants ever be used
against me, I'll take them out myself. It'll be about as hard or
risky as removing a splinter.
Undeterred by these hypothetical concerns, I continued to rig
my life around my new chip. Though I never got rid of my work
keys, as was my original intention, I did eliminate most of my
personal keys. On weekends, I can go for a walk and not bring
keys at all. I close the door behind me, press the "lock" button,
and go. When I return, I hold my hand up to the reader and walk
in. I also outfitted my 2004 Volkswagen GTI with a reader to
unlock the car door and disable the car alarm. I installed another
one in my 2005 Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle so I could hop on,
wave my hand, and ride away.
Not long after, Jennifer and I decided to install a reader on
her door. I gave her a key card, and I added my ID number to the
door's authorized list. Being a gentleman, whenever we reached
her apartment door, I'd unlock it for her with my hand.
After a few weeks, she told me she wanted to be able to do
that, too. I had a few extra glass tags, so I called my family

22 IEEE Spectrum | March 2007 | NA

dAvId StuArt

IndUCtIVE COUPlIng:
the author, amal graafstra,
and his girlfriend, Jennifer tomblin,
have matching rfId implants.

www.spectrum.ieee.org

http://www.Flickr.com http://www.BoingBoing.net http://www.amal.net/rfid.html http://www.spectrum.ieee.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum March, 2007