Dawn of the bionic age: Body hackers let chips get under their skin
Dawn of the bionic age: Body hackers let chips get under
their skin
BY TIM JOHNSON tjohnson@mcclatchydc.com
AUGUST 03, 2017 6:16 PM
LAS VEGAS If
you’re prone to forgetting your card key for the office or your computer
password, here’s a solution: Get a microchip implanted in your hand.
That’s what Brian McEvoy has done multiple times. He’s
got five implants, mostly for functional reasons but one just for fun.
“There’s a glow-in-the-dark implant on the back of my
right hand,” said McEvoy, a 36-year-old electrical engineer from St. Paul,
Minnesota.
For years, owners have implanted microchips in their pets
to recover them if they go astray. Farmers use them in cattle. Now, humans are
experimenting with subdermal microchips, which are the size of a large grain of
rice, to make modern life easier.
Ever so slowly, a trend that began in the hacker
community is moving toward the mainstream. A Wisconsin firm that specializes in
designing company break rooms, Three Square Market, announced last month that
it was offering implanted chips to all its employees.
The chips will allow employees to “make purchases in the
company’s break room market, open doors, log in to computers, use copy
machines, among other things,” it said in a statement.
IT CAN EMULATE EVERY CARD IN YOUR WALLET, SO YOU CAN
CHUCK YOUR WALLET AWAY.
Australian biohacker Meow-Ludo Meow Meow
Many hackers gathered here for a recent global hacker
conference, DefCon 2017, view implants as a way to interact seamlessly with a
technological world and to enhance human senses. They await the day when
microchips give humans the ability for echolocation, and to see infrared and
ultraviolet light, enhance the capacity to smell, sense direction, even feel
vibrations that reveal movement in the stock market.
It is a sharp departure from the use of implants, like pacemakers
and insulin pumps, to restore function lost through impairment or ill health.
Tim Cannon, a software engineer who co-founded a company
that sells implantable chips, Grindhouse Wetware, said some critics believe
tinkering with the body’s capabilities is improper, even unethical.
“It tends to be viewed as something like hubris,” Cannon
said.
But he doesn’t care. The coming years will be “about
breaking through that barrier and saying it’s okay to want to be more than what
biology offered you,” he said.
WE NEED TO STOP PRETENDING THAT WE ARE PERFECT AND THE
PINNACLE OF EVOLUTION.
Tim Cannon, cofounder of Grindhouse Wetware
Dozens of hackers lined up on a recent night at the
DefCon conference to have microchips installed in the fleshy web between thumb
and index finger of their hands.
The biohackers call themselves “grinders,” a term taken
from a comic book by Warren Ellis. The technology they implant is not approved
by the Food and Drug Administration. Most opted for a small radio frequency
identification (RFID) or a Near Field Communication (NFC) chip suitable for
subdermal use.
“This is my train ticket,” said an Australian hacker who
goes by the name Meow-Ludo Meow-Meow, pointing to a spot on his hand where a
chip containing a rechargeable rail token was implanted. He said he just swipes
his hand, rather than a ticket, over a rail sensor.
Implantable chips will soon carry out the functions of
credit cards and keys, he said.
“It can emulate every card in your wallet, so you can
chuck your wallet away,” he said.
Some consumers fear that an implanted microchip will
allow greater government surveillance, and only advances that “are spectacular
can overcome that queasiness,” he said.
“If Johnny Depp puts one of these in his hand, they’ll be
everywhere,” he added.
The public is certainly not there yet. A 2016 survey by
the Pew Research Center found that seven in 10 Americans were “somewhat” or
“very” worried about implanting a computer chip in the brain to improve
concentration and the processing of information. The more religious the
respondent, the less likely they were to favor such an implant, it found.
Cannon said the melding of technology and physiology can
improve human experience.
“We need to stop pretending that we are perfect and the
pinnacle of evolution,” he said.
Implanting a chip can cause discomfort.
“There will be some blood, some pain,” said Doug
Copeland, who works with one of the handful of companies that offer implants,
Dangerous Things, based in Seattle, as he implanted a chip in a client’s hand.
“A lot of people frown on this kind of thing but it’s
really not anything much different than getting a body piercing or a tattoo,”
said a California man, giving his name only as Keith.
Others asked if the implanted chips could allow
government surveillance (they contain no GPS, so no), or cause problems if a
patient undergoes an MRI test in a hospital (maybe not advisable).
Copeland said he’d been through airport checkpoints
numerous times and never been flagged: “Unless you show it to them, they don’t
know it’s there. And if you show it to them, they say, ‘What the hell?’”
Some high-profile proponents of implants include Elon
Musk, the founder of Tesla cars and SpaceX, who said last year that humans must
reach greater symbiosis with computers in order to stay relevant in a world of
artificial intelligence.
But the trend toward implants carries risks, warned
Walter Glannon, a Yale-trained bioethicist who teaches at the University of
Calgary, Canada. Studies have not yet determined “whether implants are safe,”
he said. Even if safe, a social minefield may lay ahead.
“They would raise ethical questions about fairness and
unequal access to devices that could give some people a competitive advantage
over others. Unlike the drugs used for cognitive enhancement, implants would
not be so accessible over the internet and would not be cheap. Many people
would not be able to afford them,” Glannon said.
“This could be an unfair advantage.”
MANY PEOPLE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO AFFORD THEM.
Dr. Walter Glannon, bioethicist
The threat that microchips could be hacked, possibly
monkeying with people’s cognition or perception, is also a latent threat, he
added.
For now, though, experimenters like McEvoy see no harm in
what they do. The shielded tiny tube with a phosphorescent layer that he had
implanted on the back of his hand is just for fun. It works like the dial of a
watch that glows in the dark.
“There is no battery or switch so it is continuously
bright. It's possible to see in a dark room and I have shown it to people while
at bonfire parties,” McEvoy said.
Manufacturers say implantable chips with greater memory
and more “out of the box” functionality – such as starting a car, or measuring
body functions such as blood sugar and oxygen levels – may be in the offing
soon.
Eventually, said Meow-Meow, an implant could save lives.
“It can call an ambulance for you before you have a heart
attack,” he said.
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