VeriChip Corp, the company behind the production of implantable RFID chips are in discussion with the Pentagon, Air Force, Navy and the Department of Veterans Affairs to sell its radio frequency identification (RFID) chips. The US government could be planning to implant the chips into US troops in order to track them down during service and check their whereabouts. VeriChip say that the devices are secure, but surely anything such as this infringes privacy as well as human rights.

After all, even when a soldier is out of action, for example on a family holiday, they will still have the RFID chip on them. It is also possible to hack into Verichip's RFID chips. Annalee Newitz, a contributing editor at Wired magazine wears a VeriChip under her arm, and last month at a computer hackers’ conference in New York, she and a friend made a copy of her VeriChip and her private medical data 'easily' using a homemade device.

We just hope QJ don't start implementing mandatory RFID tags for all of it's bloggers...

VeriChip is on the defensive after hackers demonstrated they can easily copy the info in one of VeriChip's implanted RFID (Radio Frequency ID) chips. Annalee Newitz and Jonathan Westhues presented their ID cloning expertise at the HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) Number 6 conference in New York City.

Using a a standard RFID reader, Westhues extracted Newitz's chip’s unique identification number. He was also able to do the same using a home-made antenna connected to a laptop. “This is the first time someone has cloned an human-implanted RFID chip," said Newitz who had a VeriChip RFID chip implanted in her right arm. “Their Web site claims that it cannot be counterfeited — that is something that Jonathan and I have shown to be untrue. It actually has no security devices what-so-ever.”

VeriChip declined to comment until it has seen first-hand evidence of the cloning. The company did say stealing VeriChip is "very difficult...it’ s much more secure than anything you’d carry around in your wallet." Of course, stealing the chip without a scalpel or sharp fingernails would be a feat. It's the information it holds that appears far from being secure.