In early 2016, at the Austin Convention Center, I placed my hand on a thin, sterile piece of paper and let a kindly tall man place a chip between his thumb and forefinger. “And you have thick skin, however,” he remarked, piercing my skin with a needle. I indifferently joked about women on the Internet and the conversation ended there.
The operation site healed quickly. I must say that the chip under the skin looks like a pill. Often, when I tell people that I have implanted a chip under my skin, they get lost and ask with a slight horror: “What have you implanted in yourself? What for? After that, they are eager to touch it. When I squeeze my hand, you can see the bulge and its outline.
Chips designed to be implanted into humans are bought by many in the online store Dangerous Things, which sells various implantable transponders - devices for transmitting information over a radio signal. The founder of the store is a tall man named Amal Graafstra, who implanted the chip in me.
The online store has sold several thousand of these implants worldwide to people modifying the body. They use these tiny devices for everything from opening doors in the home, office or car to using pictures (icons) for the phone, since the chip is capable of storing and transmitting data.
An RFID chip implanted in an author's hand is usually not visible when the hand is relaxed (photo left). When the hand is clenched into a fist, it becomes visible (photo on the right). The little dot above the chip - this is the site of the chip implantation.
Often together with the question: "Why did you do this?" I am asked if I am being followed. I usually answer, "No." The chip is not as strong as it seems. Think of your office key card. If you had problems finding it in your bag or wallet, you will understand me. The chip is not that strong. What can I say about a long distance.
Of course, my chip cannot communicate with the satellite, just as your chip cannot find a dog when it runs too far. My chip cannot transmit information to anyone about my whereabouts, even if I really wanted to. And this is not the only limitation of this chip.
Many systems today are not designed to work with third-party chips. For example, the iPhone will not be able to respond to the signal from my implant. The exception is Apple Pay. That is, I cannot use the chip to unlock the iPhone. However, I can influence my interlocutor's smartphone if it runs on Android by arranging a funny trick that can be used at a party and show that "this glass thing in my hand is doing something", or "spying" (in fact I don't really spy on anyone).
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Some people tend to think that my hand is capable of opening any door I meet, but this is not the case. You cannot open the door of your neighbor's house with your office key. So it is with my hand: in order to use the chip for each door I am interested in, I need electronic keys for each of them.
An implantable RFID chip from the Dangerous Things online store. A quarter is shown for comparison.
Amal Graafstra, for example, programmed his left hand chip to open the door of his car and home. But I don't have a car, and I live in a rented house, so I see no reason to install such electronic locks on my doors. There are other uses as well.
My implant is not as scary or as powerful as you might think. Its ability to store information is limited: it can store just over 1MB of information. For comparison, this might be a document with only 1000 characters. In other words, my chip is only capable of storing 1 Twitter message. 1 MB won't do the weather, but it's useful too …
In 2002, long before I heard about these implants, Canadian artist Nancy Nisbet decided to implant a chip to track Internet usage. The idea was to install another chip in the mouse and track how often it uses the Internet and various applications.
Until recently, people used chips to unlock computers. One artist coded a very simple
Another person turned his chip into a geolocator. People have also tried to use chips for destructive purposes. A hacker claims that he can send malware to someone's phone by just holding it in his hand with a chip.
X-ray of Amal Graafstra's hand showing the chips.
With these implants, you can do both funny and silly things. In theory, the possibilities can be broader and more useful. For example, I can connect to a bank account and thus pay for purchases at the grocery store or connect to a transit card and pay for the metro ride.
The problem is that these new systems are not designed to work with my already obsolete implant. Very few people have a chip in their hand, so it makes no sense to customize the surrounding infrastructure for them. These chips cannot be controlled or regulated in any way, so hypothetically, a person can install malicious code in the chip and destroy some kind of external system.
Today, scanners in the metro and grocery stores allow third-party chips to be connected to their systems, so I would like to update the version of my implant and use their services.
I'm not complaining, because initially I knew that chips are not omnipotent. Of course, I do not like strangers who want to remove information from the implant about me or locate my location, so I understand that there must be reasonable limits of possibilities.
Still, I want to try modifying the chip to open the lock on the bike without a regular key. I also like using gifs to ring on my phone and occasionally prank new acquaintances at a party. But so far this is just a funny bulge on the arm.
Rose Eveleth. Translation by I. D. Danilova
By the way, you can buy such a chip on our website: RFID implant.