Company hopes to launch microchip-reader business
Patrick McMullan, the chief operating officer, said he and another executive learned about Biohax, the Swedish startup that produces the implants, about six months ago during a business trip to Europe.
The microchips are about as big as a grain of rice, and enable the wearer to perform various tasks such as entering a building or making a payment.
The company already uses similar proximity readers in its vending machines. Shoppers can tap a credit card and walk away with a soda.
With microchips, McMullan said, the company could take their products to the next level of convenience — and beyond the vending industry.
“If we’re going to work on this, we need to know how it works,” he said. “I can’t research technology that we’re not willing to use ourselves.”
As of today, implants are practically useless in the United States. But Three Square Market is betting that will soon change. People in Sweden can already use the chips as train tickets, the company said.
Bengston, the engineer, said he doesn’t feel like a guinea pig. His information is encrypted, he said, which means it’s more secure in his hand than on, say, a cell phone.
He plans to build an application that will enable him to start his Toyota Tundra with a touch. If the program works, he said, the company could sell it.
“I want to have that in about a week,” he said with a grin.
Microchips aren’t new. Pets and livestock are tagged. Deliveries, too. Chips that pierce human skin, however, have a history of fizzling out on American soil.
Technology analysts fear the chips could ease the way for hackers. Some churchgoers say the devices violate their religious beliefs.
Stapled on a tree outside the company’s lot was a flyer that said: *WARNING* Microchipping employees.
Sixteen years ago, Applied Digital Solutions, a company in Delray Beach, Florida, introduced a microchip that could be implanted in human arms to store medical records.
Doctors said at the time that they hoped to trace a patient’s history with a hand scanner — a useful ability, the company asserted, if someone is unconscious or confused.
But although VeriChip won approval from the Food and Drug Administration in 2004, the device never caught on with consumers. Some people expressed privacy concerns: Could they be tracked?
By 2008, the company stopped making the device, citing low sales.
However, VeriChip motivated states to consider the legal quandaries a future with microchips could present.
After the device hit the market, Wisconsin outlawed mandatory implants.
Marlin Schneider, the former state representative who introduced the measure, said in 2005 that he wanted to get ahead of employers requiring workers to get chipped, or prisons forcing inmates to do the same.
“Eventually, people will find reasons why everyone should have these chips implanted,” Schneider told reporters at the time.
California, Missouri, North Dakota and Oklahoma also banned tagging without consent, with lawmakers asserting the chips could lead to serious privacy breaches, such as covert monitoring.
Michael Zimmer, a professor of information studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, said it’s hard to predict how hackers could evolve to exploit seemingly impenetrable devices.
“Often what appears to be simple technologies,” he said, “shift into becoming infrastructures of surveillance used for purposes far beyond what was originally intended.”