Ohio Company Tags Workers With Electronic Implants

Posted on February 20, 2006

A U.S. company called City Watcher has tagged two of its employees with electronic implants that can be used for identification and security. The Financial Times reports that the company is a private surveillance company based in Ohio. It is just testing the implants but the concept has sparked a controversy and fears of a world where all companies will chip their employees.

The incident raises obvious privacy concerns but the CEO of CityWatcher says the chips are used for identification. Sean Darks, CEO of CityWatcher, says the chip does not send a GPS signal. He says the devices are implanted in an employee's right arm and are read by a device in a similar way to cardreaders read a credit card.

Just because there is no GPS chip in this implant does not mean future implants won't have them. FT.com also says VeriChip, the manufacturer of the chips, says there about 70 people with chips implanted in the U.S. so far. It may be difficult to convince employees why they need to implant an identification chip instead of just carrying their identification.

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