No Muss, No Fuss

I’ve known for quite some time that they existed . . .

VeriChip – RFID for People


And, of course, I knew they would eventually make them smaller . . .

Luddites still objecting to having an 11mm chip implanted in an arm will no doubt be relieved to hear that VeriChip has developed an even-smaller implantable RFID tag, measuring a diminutive 8mm by 1mm.
VeriChip shaves 3mm off human RFID chips


But even I was shocked to actually see this:

German media outlets reported last week that a Saudi inventor's application to patent a "killer chip," as the Swiss tabloids put it, had been denied.

The basic model would consist of a tiny GPS transceiver placed in a capsule and inserted under a person's skin, so that authorities could track him easily.

Model B would have an extra function — a dose of cyanide to remotely kill the wearer without muss or fuss if authorities deemed he'd become a public threat.

The inventor said the chip could be used to track terrorists, criminals, fugitives, illegal immigrants, political dissidents, domestic servants and foreigners overstaying their visas.
Saudi 'Killer Chip' Implant Would Track, Eliminate Undesirables


At the risk of being redundant, I’ll refer you to yet another excerpt from What So Proudly We Hailed. The line between fiction and reality sure looks mighty blurry from my perspective:

The answer, as it had turned out, was incredibly simple.

All that was needed was a slight modification to the RF chips that everybody already had at that point anyway, and as it happened, there had been manufacturing facilities already setup to start producing them. Imagine that.

They called them Deterrent Identification Tags, or “D-Chips” for short, and they were going to revolutionize the criminal justice system. They weren’t much different from the regular chips – they still emitted a unique ID number – but they also came equipped with a self-destruct mechanism that would cause the ampoule to shatter if it received a special signal. That was a serious problem for anyone who had the D-chip implanted in their body, because inside the chip was a tiny – but highly toxic – amount of neuropoison that would shut down your vital organs in a matter of seconds,

Although everybody called them D-chips, nobody but the government and the media ever had the gall to use the word “deterrent” with them. The “D” stood of something else, and everybody knew it.

If you’ve already read What So Proudly We Hailed and thought that it was a little paranoid and “over the top”, maybe now you’re not quite so sure. If you haven’t already read What So Proudly We Hailed, maybe you should.