PositiveID Corporation, a developer of medical technologies for diabetes management, clinical diagnostics and bio-threat detection, announced today that it has received an order for its VeriChip(TM) microchip to be used for disaster preparedness and emergency management in Israel by an integration partner.
The VeriChip radio frequency identification (RFID) microchip was cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2004 for patient identification. The VeriChip can also be used to assist in the management of emergency situations and disaster recovery in conjunction with a customized camera capable of receiving both RFID scanned data and GPS data wirelessly, and a Web-enabled database for gathering and storing information and images captured during emergency response operations.
The Company’s integration partner intends to provide the microchips to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the State of Israel’s military force.
Marc Poulshock, PositiveID’s Vice President of Business Development, said, “We believe there are many important applications for the VeriChip and our associated intellectual property including next-generation identification and bio-sensing capabilities. Our partner is looking to help healthcare organizations, militaries including the IDF, and governments with their disaster preparedness and emergency response needs.”
Cashless society, a familiar expression. Everyone has heard it at least once in their lives. Whether you are conscious of the expression or not, it has been thrown around countless times over the last few decades. The words themselves evoke imagery of popular science fiction films, set in the not-too-distant future. If one was to loosen the grip of reality for just a moment, movies like Minority Report and Demolition Man have already painted a clear picture as to what society is to expect for the future of commerce. But what do the words actually mean? What will a cashless society actually necessitate to breach the realm of science fiction and explode into our reality?
Of Gods and Titans
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is symbolic of forethought, and that was his gift to mankind. Prometheus stole the fire of the gods and gave it to man, as man was not born with any natural defenses for survival except our unique ability to think. This one gift however is a double edged sword.
“That which can warm us, can also incinerate us”, warns Edwin Black, investigative journalist and New York Times best-selling author.
Dressed from head to toe in a sharp black suit, you can immediately tell Edwin Black means business. His silver tie cuts sharply between his jet black jacket, almost matches his hair exactly. Most famous for his investigative expose of the atrocities committed by one of the world’s most powerful corporations, IBM, I let his persona and achievements speak for themselves. He has been nominated ten times for a Pulitzer prize and has won many other prestigious awards for his investigative work.
What is money? Edwin Black exemplified the historical root of what we know today as money. “You got something, I want it. Am I going to kill you for it? Or am I going to trade you for it? That made economic systems. That meant a unit of monetary exchange. That was cash” he explains bluntly. And several thousand years ago, it was as simple as that.
Although I was speaking with a man that is able to face off, eye to eye with a corporation as powerful as IBM, his tough, down to business exterior disappears the moment he flashes a smile. It is a warm, full faced smile that could lighten even the darkest of rooms. When his eyes weren’t cutting through to your very core, they were welcoming and gentle.
Money served as a common object that would allow people to barter with each other, with something tangible that had an agreed upon value. If a goat herder was selling goats at a market, and another person had a bunch of grapes he wished to trade for a goat, the goat herder may not have been interested in bartering for grapes. This situation would have prevented the grape harvester from obtaining a goat for dinner. Money alleviated this problem by offering an intermediary between the two respected goods, allowing a fair barter to occur.
“That was the basis for the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia, several thousand years ago, with the code of Hammurabi,“ Edwin explains. Mesopotamia is what we now know today as modern Iraq and the code of Hammurabi is one of the oldest deciphered writings in the world, written in a script known as Cuneiform. It is similar to a modern constitution and listed the laws of trade and commerce, with over one half of the engravings dealing exclusively with matters of contractual law.
Edwin Black knows the history of commerce well, as one of his books deals with Iraq and its seven thousand year history, including the earliest of monetary systems, “Banking on Baghdad”. Gold and silver coins were cash money all the way through the ages until the early nineteenth century. Every society the world over understood the value of gold and silver and this can be seen in the modern day stock market. As the currencies of nations falter, the value of gold and silver rise.
These precious metals have historically been of value and will always be valued. However, carrying around stacks of coinage was impractical and society eventually moved to a paper currency that was linked to a common value of gold. Notes of paper that acted as receipts of gold replaced physical gold or silver coins and were redeemable at local banks for their value in gold. The very first Federal Reserve Bank notes would carry the message “This Note is Redeemable in Gold on Demand”, allowing people to still participate in commerce with gold and became known as ‘the gold standard’. The American constitution specifically states that gold and silver are “lawful money” and with the gold standard, this commercial activity could still be defined as ‘constitutional’.
The world eventually parted ways with the gold standard, leaving us with a fiat currency, meaning that it only has value because of government regulation or law. For example, the value of the currency is determined by how many units of this currency is in circulation at the time, regulated by the central bank of the nation. This is cash money as we know it today.
Magnetic stripes on a plastic card have been used since the early 1960′s. Invented by an IBM engineer named Forrest Parry, these cards were the next step towards a cashless society. They allowed for commerce to take place without the physical exchange of money. This was the cutting edge of technology in the early sixties and it still persists to the modern day.
After the magnetic stripes, there is now the relatively new ‘Tap & Go’ payment system. This technology is based on NFC (near field communication) and allows the purchaser to simply tap their credit/debit card on a POS (point of sale) device, allowing a transaction to occur. While an older magnetic stripe card requires the magnetic stripe to pass along the physical reader, the near field communication device only requires the chip to be within a specific range of it, as the transaction occurs in three dimensional space. NFC, which is actually RFID (radio frequency identification), is considered cutting edge technology. All modern day credit cards and passports bear an RFID microchip for NFC transactions with relevant readers.
But these aren’t considered technologies that make up a cashless transaction, are they? They still require something tangible for a transaction to take place. This raises the question that if electronic currency, in the form of a credit card or bank card, couldn’t ween the population off of a physical currency, what could?
State of the Art
If magnetic stripes were once the pinnacle of commerce, and RFID technology still relies on a similar sized piece of plastic, you could consider them the same. Technology today has radically evolved into a completely unknown beast. Check out the ‘Brain Computer Interface’ and come to the realization that the world is ‘moving forward’ quicker than you can imagine. It is a device that fuses the nervous system of a patient with electronics, by implanting a computer chip into the motor cortex of a patient’s brain, and allows signals sent from the brain to interface with a computer. A person can literally move a mouse cursor on the computer screen with thought alone. This is revolutionary for those suffering a condition known as ‘locked in’ syndrome, a debilitating condition which prevents a person from moving or communicating due to near total paralysis. However, the focus is on technology that simply allows for commerce to take place, in a cashless way.
Cashless society. A world without cash. It makes sense, we are nearly there if you consider that Internet transactions are basically ‘cashless’. Yet we are still bound to carrying something physical aren’t we? Credit cards need wallets, Internet transactions need credit cards. In the late seventies, credit cards didn’t create the cashless society. If credit cards that utilize NFC instead of magnetic stripes don’t constitute a cashless society, and mobile phones are based on the exact same technology, then the only thing left would be something totally intangible.
Playing with Fire
Would Nazi Germany have been a cashless society? “Nazi Germany would have been a cashless society, because they were already using technical means to deprive people of their cash. It’s one thing to confiscate cash, its another thing to prohibit the transmission of cash or the transactions of cash or currency of value based upon electronic means.” Edwin continues.
“Now, you have heard of the credit society where people are enabled to get credit cards and buy shoes and things at the store based on a credit card, but if your credit goes bad you can’t use your credit card. But even if your credit goes bad, you can still take a five dollar bill, go into the grocery store and buy yourself some bread and some milk.
“Under the cashless society, with one click, you can be DE-listed from having a transaction. So while you can call it the cashless society, or corporate America or the global corporations can call it a cashless society.. so it’s convenient.. so we’re not burdened with dollar bills and things. There’s a dark side to that. This is Promethean. This is a great convenience and also a great avenue to individual destruction. A great avenue toward the confiscation, not of money, but of personal liberty.
“Imagine what would happen if the government in Syria, North Korea, China, Libya, certain parts of the United States and maybe northern Ireland, whatever society you wish to look at, decides that it can push a button a stop somebody from having a transaction. They can already push a button and stop your master card in a moment’s notice, but can they actually push a button and stop you from buying bread? That’s what the cashless society will do. “
“So once you can establish that modality, everything else flows from that. First we invent the gun, then we invent what will do with the gun. Do we defend? Do we hunt for food? Do we murder? Do we mass murder? Do we have target practice? Do we put food on the table?” he says.
Edwin continues, “These are the Promethean issues that face us with the cashless society, which is merely the next step in a society which is controlled and mass controlled and centralized”.
This isn’t a ‘conspiracy theory‘, it’s a hypothetical situation that can occur tomorrow, as the technology is already being used throughout the world. VISA has already promised a cashless experience for everyone at the 2012 Olympics. ‘Conspiracy theory‘ are trigger words, very powerful ones. Even the most intelligent of people fall victim to the power this expression wields both in its use as a weapon to prevent an epic dialectic, or experience its devastating destructive powers as it is aimed in your direction.
Hands Free Radio Frequency Identification Device’s
Onto the stage and into the lime light steps the Verichip, the world’s first and only FDA approved implantable microchip for humans. Get implanted with this RFID chip, and forever you can be ‘read’ with a hand held device. Mobile phones are RFID enabled through NFC. Upon the ‘scanning’, the RFID chip broadcasts a unique identifier key that allows the ‘reader’ to match your unique chip with the relevant database record.
There is a night club in Barcelona, Spain, named the Baja Club. Since 2004 it has been offering patrons the opportunity to have themselves implanted with a Verichip. If anyone were to take the club up on in their offer, they are to be afforded access to the VIP section in the nightclub, and not only did they not require photo identification to enter the club, they also had their drink tabs charged to the chip. This, by it’s very definition, is a cashless society. Aforementioned logic dictates that for a cashless society to exist it would need to be totally intangible commerce. Although right now it is limited to a night club party lifestyle, how long would it take for this to spread like an epidemic throughout the world, seeping into every crevice of modern commerce?
You may have seen an advertisement on behalf of IBM being played on television (above). This ad, exhibiting IBM’s vision of the future market, displays a man walking through a modern day shopping complex slyly packing groceries under his jacket. This continues through the store as he eventually gets to the exit of the store. Throughout the duration of the man’s time in the store there is a security guard closely watching, and as he is exiting, he passes through what we can now refer to as an RFID portal. Once the man passes through this portal, a scanning action takes place, as you would expect an item to be passed over a bar code scanner. A receipt is then spat out detailing every item that the man has stuffed under his jacket, and accordingly whatever he has on him, has been charged to his account. Transaction complete. This is the future market.
What is specified technologically that could differentiate between the man having a NFC enabled smart phone or an implantable RFID microchip? Absolutely nothing! This is the future of e-Business according to IBM.
While supermarket chains like Woolworths offer a customer with the option of self-checkout, it could only be a matter of time until they offer the intangible commercial portal that would enable a consumer to walk through with a packed shopping trolley filled with RFID tagged products, for a truly ‘cash free’ experience.
Cashless Society. There are only two options before us, for a truly cashless society to exist. One involves our mobile phones incorporating every piece of data usually stored on plastic cards in our wallets – Medicare, licenses, credit and bank cards, etc. Or an implantable RFID microchip.
Identification is only Step One
What difference is there, technologically, to what is available today and what was available to the Nazi regime? “The speed is a major difference, what took Hitler repeat efforts with IBM cards, program after program, to register the Jews, to exclude them from society, to confiscate their assets, the fourth area was ghettoization, the fifth is deportation, the sixth is extermination” explains Edwin.
“That long process can now be done in a moments notice with a click of a button.”
“And further than that, in the case of the Nazi, people like my father were able to survive the Nazi onslaught because he had blond hair. Other people were not able to survive because they were required to wear a yellow star, or had an ID card. And anyone who didn’t have a yellow star or an ID card, who needed to have one, could be shot. Now what was the purpose of the yellow star? The yellow star was to warn people, theres a Jew there, or this man could not sit on that bench, or this man could not walk into that store, these are Jews.”
“Now imagine if nobody needs a yellow star, and nobody needs blond or brown hair. And everybody can be identified for their value, for their advocacy, for their enemy character, for their adversary nature. Based up some arbitrarily decided feature. Are they Jews? Are they young protesters in Iran? Are they Wiggers? Are they Tutsi’s? Are they Hutu’s? Are they the tribe of Gaddafa? Are they from the tribe of eastern Libya? Western Libya?”.
“Now with the cashless society can you not only turn of the switch of credit, not only can you turn off the Internet of communication, you can actually prohibit people from using the very means that civilization pioneered several thousand years ago that people used to rise above war,” Edwin continues, “That was cash”.
“Just when we were decentralizing our lives, we are centralizing the control of our life”, warns Edwin.
As technology advances and we as consumers expect life to get easier and more convenient, how are we to know that we aren’t going to get burnt? Edwin Black has documented corporate collusion with governments and offers a blunt warning to all who are willing to listen. Is the cashless society the next step towards another holocaust? A technological holocaust, at the discretion of those who control the digital money? If a corporation as large and as influential as IBM can remain as predominant and influential as it is, even with their genocidal history exposed, how can anyone deny a conspiracy exists?
This is not the “cashless society” that Hollywood or corporate America would have you believe. Is it?
Brody Sutton: I still remember. Saturday morning cartoons, must-see-tv, news, fair and balanced. I also remember the first two Gulf wars, the second great depression, school shootings, and the music. It’s the music I miss the most. There was freedom then. Freedom to do terrible things, but freedom all the same.
Beautiful Woman: You will find that such primitive emotions and ideas as jealously, rage, sexual possessiveness, and monogamy have been eliminated. Your new implant has made you part of a collective whole known as the Community. In the Community you are truly free to move among partners, male or female, as you choose. Your pleasure will be your guide.
GERMAN IT powerhouse Siemens is quietly lobbying federal and state governments to showcase how technology can mitigate the projected $20 billion urban congestion bill.
Siemens Australia has released its Picture the Future: Australia 2030 study, a framework of how technology can be used to tackle four “global megatrends” affecting the country: climate change, demographic change, urbanisation and globalisation.
“One suggested technology is a national, highly secure, high-bandwidth wireless network that can help mechanical, electrical and automation engineering be conducted collaboratively in a digital world. Siemens head of productivity research Matthew Rait said the company had met with opposition innovation spokeswoman Sophie Mirabella and with aides from Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s office.The company would hold further meetings with the government to explain its research findings.
“We support a high-speed digital network that will provide Australia with a capacity to implement the technology solution that is best practice in the world.
“At this point in time we haven’t seen a full release of the specifications (of the NBN) and if we look at the perspective of President Obama saying he’s going to take 98 per cent wireless communication to the nation . . . is fibre right or is wireless right?”
“The Federal Government this afternoon appointed former IBM Australia chief Glen Boreham to lead its planned review of Australia’s communications and media regulatory environment.”
The regulations under examination affect the news you consume, the TV you watch, the radio you listen to and the content you enjoy online.
A person can now watch exactly the same TV program on a TV set, laptop, or mobile phone. However, the underlying networks that are used to transmit the program are very different—broadcast spectrum or cable networks, the internet or mobile networks.
“Australia’s key communications legislative framework was introduced in the 1990s: the Broadcasting Services Act and the Radiocommunications Act were enacted in 1992; the Telecommunications Act was enacted in 1997. Each piece of legislation has been tailored to achieve different public policy objectives.”
“it is widely accepted that television is a powerful medium with the potential to influence public opinion, and that television has a role to play in promoting Australia’s cultural identity” - Broadcasting Services Bill 1992, Explanatory Memorandum, p. 67.
“the Radiocommunications Act is designed to promote the efficient allocation and use of spectrum to maximise public benefit.“
A New Standard for Wireless medical Body Area Networks IEEE 802.15.6
The standard is targeted for relatively low data rate (100kpbs to 1 Mbps) transmission to devices attached around the body or implanted. Low power medical and consumer applications will benefit from this development. Application bands include the implant (402‐405 MHz band), 900 MHz and 2.45 GHz ISM bands.
“Patrick Redmond graduated with a Doctorate in History from the University of London, England in 1972. He taught at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad, then at Adhadu Bello University in Kano, Nigeria before joining IBM. He worked in IBM for 31 years before retiring. During his career at IBM he held a variety of jobs. These included; from 1992 until 2007 working at the IBM Toronto lab in technical, then in sales support. He has written two books and numerous articles.”
“RFID’s are a great economic help to a company because they reduce theft and loss. They also streamline inventory, reduce turnaround time and handling. They’ve allowed companies to adjust production in response to inventory levels and to respond on demand. That’s why companies are interested, because of these big economic benefits and efficiency.”
When discussing TV & its replacement broadcasting frequency, Dgital TV
“and instead of the antenna on your roof you’ll use a black box.The reason they’re doing this is that the UBF and VHF analog frequency are being used for the chips, so they don’t want to overload the chips with television signals, because the chips signals will now be receiving those frequencies.”
“The Australian CSIRO will begin live field trials of its experimental wireless technology in September to assess whether spectrum formerly used for analogue television can be used to deliver National Broadband Network (NBN) services.”
“The technology, announced in April last year and dubbed Broadband to the Bush, is designed to make use of analogue television infrastructure already in place within Australia.”
“The whole idea is that there is no communications gear in that space as it has been used for TV and we can reuse the broadcast infrastructure.”
“Range really is the 64 million dollar question,” he said. “We have a licence for a particular transmit power, and the transmit power sets the range, but we will be looking to demonstrate 10s of kilometres with this technology.”
“Ultimately what could be deployed will depend on what transmit powers are allowed. If we are allowed to transmit at the same powers as analogue TV, which is actually quite high, then give us an analogue channel and we will give you 12 Mbits up and down.”
The survey, conducted by German IT industry lobby group BITKOM
The CeBIT, the world’s biggest high-tech fair, throws its doors open to the public today, with Spain, the current EU president, this year’s guest of honour.
In all, 23 per cent of around 1000 respondents in the survey said they would be prepared to have a chip inserted under their skin “for certain benefits”.
Around one in six (16 per cent) said they would wear an implant to allow emergency services to rescue them more quickly in the event of a fire or accident.
Five per cent of people said they would be prepared to have an implant to make their shopping go more smoothly.
But 72 per cent said they would not “under any circumstances” allow electronics in their body.
The other arm of PositiveID’s ID Security business is dedicated to protecting consumers’ identities and preventing identity theft. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, identity theft is the number one crime in America, and it can affect anyone at any time. Identity theft can occur from computer fraud through “phishing,” which accounts for 12% of cases; stolen or lost wallets or other personal items, which accounts for 29% of thefts; individuals stealing records from businesses, which accounts for 50%; and mail theft, representing the remaining 9% of all identity thefts. The company’s suite of products and services allows consumers to manage and monitor their personal financial data to proactively protect themselves from theft and errors
While the New South Wales Department of Health Web page is ostensibly a reference point for officials who want to reduce medical errors caused by patient mixups, it looks pretty scary if you’re someone who thinks that society is heading toward a Minority Report-style dictatorship in which everyone carries a compulsory microchip implant.
Australian eHealth Literature review – Patient Identifiers http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/quality/identification/literature.asp
An e-health consumer advocacy group has joined a growing choir of those dissatisfied with the lack of communication from lead agencies surrounding implementation of the Federal Government’s $467 million personally controlled electronic health records (PCEHR) project initiative.
The coalition argued the lack of documentation, including NEHTA’s failure to release the draft concept of operations around the PCEHR to the public. Health minister Nicola Roxon in January pledged to release the document for public consultation – a milestone NEHTA is anxiously anticipating – but the e-health agency is currently exempt from freedom of information laws and cannot be called upon to release such documents prior.
The group also decried the National Authentication Service for Health, a secure messaging platform and key aspect of the PCEHR recently contracted to IBM Australia, as another example of the lack of transparency and poor timelines surrounding the project.
The group also decried the National Authentication Service for Health, a secure messaging platform and key aspect of the PCEHR recently contracted to IBM Australia, as another example of the lack of transparency and poor timelines surrounding the project.
“The need for trust and the way this is acknowledged in formal government documents contradicts the fact all publicly available feedback has been ignored,” the group wrote. “We are nervous when it comes to trusting in a process that seeks consumer group feedback yet runs another in parallel.”
The government-funded process that was run parallel to the three workshops excluded a number of advocates in attendance at the public meetings, contributing to the scepticism of the coalition.
“We do not like wondering whether NEHTA’s appeals to advocates re mutual trust will simply carpetbag consumer groups so we don’t challenge the process in public. The IHI [Independent Healthcare Identifier] is useless to consumers presently and claims that the PCEHR will not be centralised are simply market-speak for not responding to advocates initial concerns re the IHI.”
“We are nervous when it comes to trusting in a process that seeks consumer group feedback yet runs another in parallel,” CCeHC wrote. “… bureaucrats have driven the process, preferring to commission reports, such as the risk assessment report, that have cost taxpayers thousands of dollars rather than listen to the advocates or citizens.”
Privacy was also a major concern of the CCeHC. The group said it was alarming “in an age of rapidly growing rates of identity fraud” that all of the personal details of every Australian was stored by Medicare in a centralised database. ”The market-speak DoHA and NEHTA use to describe the database simply refers to it as ‘distributed’,” they said. “A distributed database is a centralised database!”
“In any case, the APF draws to attention the impossibility of evaluating the utility of the HI system for patient privacy and health when only a fraction of the proposal is on the table, and even the relevant agencies appear to know little about how it would work in a ‘real life’ context,” the APF wrote.
Privacy fear over agencies’ mega-merger: Medicare, Centrelink data plan
MEDICARE and Centrelink are involved in an Orwellian mega-mergerthat will strengthen data linkages to citizens’personal information, say consumer advocates
“I am amazed the government has not told Australians that integration of Medicare and Centrelink services under a single shopfront will result in many new linkages of data,” Dr Fernando said.
“We are concerned more linkages between Medicare, which hosts the centralised repository of individual healthcare identifiers, and Centrelink is the thin edge of the wedge.”
“It doesn’t require the screen-writing talents of James Cameron to envisage a pensioner who is dependent on the case officer’s goodwill for food and shelter being asked: ‘May I link your pension record with your other records?’ It would a brave soul who answered no.”
It appears my article has spread over the internet land, too bad this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Check it, he started with this article in response to my own. One month after this article, he writes another in a completely different tune. I had to have a chuckle about it.
Here is the first one:
Conspiracy Theory: How 16 Digits Linked Australian Medicare to Chip Implants
If you were wondering, my original article can be found here: Kevin Rudd’s e-Health bill paves the way for PositiveID human implantable RFID microchips http://binarydissent.com/?p=327
DELRAY BEACH, Fla., Nov. 17, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — PositiveID Corporation (“PositiveID” or the “Company”) (Nasdaq:PSID) announced today that it has launched “The Wireless Body™” at the ID WORLD International Congress in Milan, Italy. The “Wireless Body” is an integrated, in vivo and external, smart healthcare communication system for diabetes management today and other disease management applications in the future. The “Wireless Body” is designed to enhance the management of diabetes by allowing disease management systems to communicate with each other and deliver solutions to patients seamlessly, enhancing the ability to deliver personalized medical solutions wirelessly.
Using its experience and expertise gained from developing the world’s first and only health-related implantable RFID (radio frequency identification) microchip cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Company has initiated the integration and development of other healthcare communication devices to communicate from within the body to outside of the body on an integrated platform: The “Wireless Body” by PositiveID. The “Wireless Body” also has the ability to identify medical devices, currently catheter ports, to allow them to communicate with PositiveID’s products to ensure proper medication dosages and safety for the patient from the port.
“We are excited to launch The Wireless Body as it expands the solutions we offer patients with diabetes to an entirely new level,” said Scott R. Silverman, Chairman and CEO of PositiveID. “Diabetes management requires an integrated solution, one that allows continuous monitoring and communication with devices that deliver solutions. We believe the ability to deliver an integrated solution wirelessly will enhance the quality of life for patients with diabetes and improve their compliance. The recent $24 million investment by Novartis into Proteus Biomedical’s ingestible wireless microchip highlights the opportunities in this sector and clearly validates the vision we began in this field over seven years ago.”
The Company’s technology has previously been used in Smart Healthcare by providing a vital electronic medical record and other wellness information to patients, caregivers and physicians. Most recently, PositiveID has evolved its implantable technology to focus on sensor applications through its GlucoChip™, a glucose-sensing microchip currently under development, and potentially other sensor applications based on its Patent No. 7,125,382 for an Embedded Bio-Sensor System. The GlucoChip is designed to communicate wirelessly to a handheld scanner outside of the body to deliver in vivo glucose readings without the need to draw blood.
Moving forward, the Company plans to integrate its wireless product portfolio with its patent-pending iglucose™ system, a wireless communication system for the transmission of glucose readings, to create automatic logs of glucose readings which can be delivered wirelessly to a third party (i.e. a caregiver or physician) from a handheld reader or traditional glucometer.
PositiveID Corporation (“PositiveID”) (Nasdaq:PSID), a leader in next generation patient monitoring and diagnostics, announced today that it has added Olympian Gary Hall, Jr. as an advisor to maximize the Company’s diabetic initiatives. Hall, who has type-1 diabetes and is celebrity advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), has testified in front of Congress on current healthcare issues, campaigned for diabetes awareness, headed patient compliance efforts, patient outreach programming, education initiatives, and fundraising efforts for important diabetes research.
Internationally recognized for medaling in three Olympics, despite having diabetes, Gary Hall, Jr. is an active diabetes industry consultant with vast experience working in the healthcare industry. He is an international lecturer with a highly developed media presence and a key opinion leader on diabetes and its impact on society. A distinguished humanitarian award recipient for his outreach work achievement through national and international campaigns Gary has established vast networks in healthcare, the International Olympic movement, media, politics and industry.
Hall stated, “I am eager and excited to help PositiveID maximize the potential reach of their innovative diabetes management products. As a person living with diabetes and as an elite athlete, I know the importance of blood glucose management and awareness. The Company is taking the management of this devastating chronic illness to a new level, and together, I believe we can make important in-roads in diabetes care.”
Scott R. Silverman, Chairman and CEO of PositiveID, said, “We believe the addition of Gary Hall, Jr., one of the world’s most highly decorated and recognized Olympic athletes and a key opinion leader on diabetes issues, as an advisor for PositiveID will help us as we continue our development and prepare to bring diabetes management products to market, both from a business and a patient perspective. We will utilize Gary’s extensive knowledge about this disease and the strong contacts he has in order to establish additional beneficial relationships in the diabetes market.”
Fed up with carrying his keys around, Joe Wooller, 28, decided it was time for an implant.
This year, the father of two from Perth had a microchip, which uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, implanted in his right hand. His passive RFID chip does not require batteries, can last for many years and communicates with receivers attached to doors, for instance, via a magnetic field.
Asked if any of his family members had yet come around to the idea of getting themselves an implant, he said: “What? Implanted? God no. No, definitely not. My daughter still wants to do it, she thinks it’s pretty cool but yeah, no, not until she’s older.”
TANFORD, Calif.–President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.
It’s “the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government” to centralize efforts toward creating an “identity ecosystem” for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.
“We are not talking about a national ID card,” Locke said at the Stanford event. “We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities.”
Details about the “trusted identity” project are remarkably scarce. Last year’s announcement referenced a possible forthcoming smart card* or digital certificate that would prove that online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions.
From July 1st every single Australian will be branded with a unique, 1.16 digit identification number courtesy of Medicare Australia in accordance with Kevin Rudd’s new e-health revolution. The stated purpose of this act 2.“is to provide a way of ensuring that an entity that provides, or an individual who receives, healthcare is correctly matched to health information that is created when healthcare is provided.” Understandably it is a simple transition from localized medical records to an online system, that would allow your medical records to be accessed by medical facilities all across Australia.
For many this would seem to be the perfect solution to holiday accidents and prevent any unnecessary delays when facing treatment from an uncommon doctor who would require any past medical records. If a doctor in a different state previously treated you, they would need to determine if any further treatments/medications could cause adverse reactions to a prescription you or your family might currently be on. Having access to your usual doctors detailed medical reports, anywhere in the country, might just be a life saver. But is there more to it than meets the eye? There is indeed a surreptitious plan to set up the ground work for this system to progress seamlessly to implantable RFID microchips. All that would be required is a simple distribution of the PositiveID microchip and the necessary RFID scanners into the medical infrastructure – the software side would already be functioning at full steam.
3.“The Australian healthcare sector is a complex of public and private interests, hospital and
community facilities, GP’s, laboratories, health funds, professional associations, special interest groups and individual consumers”. The introduction of this system would aim to revolutionize the way medical records are accessed and updated, ensuring every time it is accessed by a medical professional, the information is up to date and accurate. 4.Privacy advocates have lambasted the proposed bill quoting medical record privacy breaches, in 2007-2008 there were 234 serious accounts of this occurring yet 160 of these resulted in an emailed warning or counseling. If the Unique patient identification number was to go ahead, Australian Privacy Foundation chair Roger Clarke said “The situation will be many hundreds of times worse, as the HI database will ultimately be accessed by more than 600,000 medical providers and organizations”.
Knowing of the obvious security flaws that are inherent with a system of this scale, why does the Rudd government choose to bulldoze it into legislation? Could this in fact be the Hegelian dialectic at work? It could very well be a future road map that would lead to the more ‘secure’ method of accessing medical records via RFID implants as scores of complaints flood the media regarding security breaches and invasions of ‘privacy’. Scott R. Silverman, chairman and CEO of PositiveID claims 5.“In addition to helping consumers protect themselves from identity theft as it pertains to credit fraud, we are also focused on combating the growing problem of medical identity theft, which affects 7 percent of identity theft victims”. How noble of Scott.
Lets move to the hardware side of things, as we already have established that Medicare is providing the 16 digit number. Why 16-digits? Introducing the PositiveID implantable RFID microchip. The microchip itself 6.contains only a 16-digit number that when scanned with a hand held reader, connects to a secure online database. The database houses the patient’s identification information and personal health record data. The Council of Australian Governments even state themselves that 7.“The identifiers are an important building block for the future introduction of a patient-controlled Individual Electronic Health Record“. Scott R. Silverman states, on behalf of PositiveID, 8.“we put consumers in charge of their own health information through a robust, patient-controlled interface.” Interesting indeed.
9.It has been established already that IBM has seed funded PositiveID since inception, would it come as any surprise to you that 10.Medicare relies on IBM for its technology infrastructure and has just paid $189 million for a one-year extension on a services contract? Of course not. This is the most disturbing element, the very people designing and maintaining the system currently in use in Australia, are also the ones behind the PositiveID RFID microchip for humans.
Currently Microsoft and Google both have an e-health record management service. Microsoft’s product is ‘MS HealthVault’, Google’s is simply ‘Google Health’. 11.Both of these services are fully interoperable with PositiveID’s RFID microchip. 12.Microsoft has already made a submission to the national health and hospitals reform commission (NHHRC) and proposed an electronic health record system for the improvement of Australia’s healthcare. 13.Google isn’t far behind in the race either, with CEO Eric Schmidt stating that he “hopes to deliver Google Health to Australia by the end of the year”.
Staying true to the science of gradualism, we are having an information cage slowly erected around us and we won’t know until it is too late to do anything about it. Maybe the implantable RFID microchips are coming sooner rather than later, we do know that they will be introduced for the purpose of cost efficiency and ‘reliability’ of patient identification, perhaps a failed e-health system could provide the perfect chaos to accommodate an implantable RFID solution. What we wont be told is that it will simply be a ‘plug in’ upgrade to our existing infrastructure, meaning a rapid deployment nation wide. To some money minded bureaucratic sell outs, this is an extremely easy system to sell to an uneducated public.
Australians have already researched the ‘benefits’ of implantable microchips in a published article titled 14.“Lend me your arms: the use and implications of humancentric RFID”. The article suggests that social and ethical concerns “plague the technology” yet goes on to imply that “Initial adoption of the invasive technology has met with some success but any real assessment of the industry is prejudiced by the commercial monopoly of the VeriChip Corporation [now known as PositiveID]”. “Security and convenience are generic wants” and “Care-related humancentric RFID devices provide unparalleled portability for medical records.” To all the disbelievers that think the human microchipping agenda is light years away, think again, this article was published in 2006.
I’m going to be keeping my eye on the Rudd governments new health plan, in particular the 15.$436 million dollars that has been proposed to deal with the rising number of diabetics – just how much of this money is going to be used for a feasibility analysis of PositiveID’s iGlucose system? 16.“The iGlucose system is a standalone, self-contained unit that will automatically query a diabetic’s data-capable glucometer for blood glucose data and send that data via encrypted SMS text messaging to an online database.“ The machine is well oiled and vigilance is needed, we are dealing with a company that has no qualms when it comes to 17.micro chipping Alzheimer patients with 18.cancer causing RFID microchips. There is going to be a huge, vulnerable market in the form of diabetic patients and with the 19.US government and now the 20.Australian government both trying to tackle the expanding financial burden that this disease places on both respective economies. You don’t have to look too far for an ‘easy’ and ‘cost effective’ solution, especially with PositiveID ready to jump at any opportunity it can to ‘help’.
NOTE: Legislation has been presented to Senators within Australia to prevent the mandatory implantation of humans, and it is sitting on their desks currently awaiting further action. Please contact your representatives and encourage them to introduce this into the senate and have it passed into law. For more information on the legislation itself there is a website found at http://www.wethepeoplewillnotbechipped.com/action/ that explains the process you will need to follow including a letter template and fact sheet.
