Myths about implantable microchips. In a world of conspiracies and demons

The popular legend of the plague conspiracy was that Bill Gates (1) had been planning for years to use implantable or injectable implants to fight the pandemic, which he assumed he had created for that purpose. All this in order to take control of humanity, conduct surveillance, and in some versions even kill people from a distance.

Conspiracy theorists sometimes found quite old reports from technology sites about projects. miniature medical chips or about "quantum dots", which were supposed to be "obvious evidence" of what they were up to conspiracy to implant tracking devices under the skin of people and, according to some reports, even controlling people. Also featured in other articles in this issue microchip opening gates in offices or allowing a company to run a coffee maker or photocopier, have lived up to the black legend of "tools for constant surveillance of employees by the employer."

It doesn't work like that

In fact, this whole mythology about “chipping” is based on a misconception about it. operation of microchip technologywhich is currently available. The origins of these legends can be traced back to movies or science fiction books. It has almost nothing to do with reality.

The technology used in implants offered to employees of the companies we write about are no different from the electronic keys and identifiers that many employees wear around their necks for a long time. It is also very similar to applied technology in payment cards (2) or in public transport (proximal validators). These are passive devices and do not have batteries, with some notable exceptions such as pacemakers. They also lack the functions of geolocation, GPS, which billions of people carry without special reservations, smartphones.

2. Chip payment card

In films, we often see that, for example, police officers constantly see the movement of a criminal or a suspect on their screen. With the current state of technology, it is possible when someone shares their WhatsApp. A GPS device doesn't work that way. It shows locations in real time, but at regular intervals every 10 or 30 seconds. And so on as long as the device has a power source. Implantable microchips do not have their own autonomous power source. In general, power supply is one of the main problems and limitations of this field of technology.

Apart from the power supply, the size of the antennas is a limitation, especially when it comes to operating range. By the very nature of things, very small "grains of rice" (3), which are most often depicted in dark sensory visions, have very small antennae. So would signal transmission it generally works, the chip has to be close to the reader, in many cases it has to physically touch it.

The access cards that we usually carry with us, as well as chip payment cards, are much more efficient because they are larger in size, so they can use a much larger antenna, which allows them to work at a greater distance from the reader. But even with these large antennas, the reading range is quite short.

3. Microchip for implantation under the skin

In order for the employer to track the location of the user in the office and his every activity, as conspiracy theorists imagine, he will need huge number of readersthis would actually have to cover every square centimeter of the office. We will also need our e.g. hand with implanted microchip approach the walls all the time, preferably still touching them, so that the microprocessor can constantly "ping". It would be much easier for them to find your existing working access card or key, but even that is unlikely given the current reading ranges.

If an office required an employee to scan when they entered and exited every room in the office, and their ID was associated with them personally, and someone analyzed this data, they could determine which rooms the employee entered. But it is unlikely that an employer will want to pay for a solution that will tell him how working people move around the office. Actually, why does he need such data. Well, except that he would like to do research to better design the layout of rooms and staffing in the office, but these are quite specific needs.

Currently available on the market Implantable microchips do not have sensorswhich would measure any parameters, health or something else, so that they can be used to conclude whether you are currently working or doing something else. There is a lot of nanotechnology medical research to develop smaller sensors for diagnosing and treating diseases, such as glucose monitoring in diabetes, but they, like many similar solutions and wearables, solve the aforementioned nutritional problems.

Everything can be hacked, but implantation changes something here?

Most common today passive chip methods, used in Internet of things, access cards, ID tags, payments, RFID and NFC. Both are found in microchips implanted under the skin.

RFID RFID uses radio waves to transmit data and power the electronic system that makes up the tag of the object, the reader to identify the object. This method allows you to read and sometimes write to the RFID system. Depending on the design, it allows you to read labels from a distance of up to several tens of centimeters or several meters from the reader antenna.

The operation of the system is as follows: the reader uses a transmitting antenna to generate an electromagnetic wave, the same or a second antenna receives electromagnetic waveswhich are then filtered and decoded to read the tag responses.

Passive tags they don't have their own power. Being in the electromagnetic field of the resonant frequency, they accumulate the received energy in the capacitor contained in the design of the tag. The most commonly used frequency is 125 kHz, which allows reading from a distance of no more than 0,5 m. More complex systems, such as recording and reading information, operate at a frequency of 13,56 MHz and provide a range of one meter to several meters. . Other operating frequencies - 868, 956 MHz, 2,4 GHz, 5,8 GHz - provide a range of up to 3 or even 6 meters.

RFID technology used to mark transported goods, air baggage and goods in stores. Used for chipping pets. Many of us carry it with us all day in our wallet in payment cards and access cards. Most modern mobile phones are equipped with RFID, as well as all kinds of contactless cards, public transport passes and electronic passports.

Short range communication, NFC (Near Field Communication) is a radio communication standard that allows wireless communication over a distance of up to 20 centimeters. This technology is a simple extension of the ISO/IEC 14443 contactless card standard. NFC devices can communicate with existing ISO/IEC 14443 devices (cards and readers) as well as other NFC devices. NFC is primarily intended for use in mobile phones.

The NFC frequency is 13,56 MHz ± 7 kHz and the bandwidth is 106, 212, 424 or 848 kbps. NFC operates at slower speeds than Bluetooth and has a much shorter range, but consumes less power and does not require pairing. With NFC, instead of manually setting up device identification, the connection between two devices is automatically established in less than a second.

Passive NFC mode initiation the device generates an electromagnetic field, and the target device responds by modulating this field. In this mode, the target device is powered by the electromagnetic field power of the initiating device, so that the target device acts as a transponder. In active mode, both the initiating and target devices communicate, generating each other's signals in turn. The device disables its electromagnetic field while waiting for data. In this mode, both devices usually need power. NFC is compatible with existing passive RFID infrastructure.

RFID and of course NFClike any technique based on the transmission and storage of data can be hacked. Mark Gasson, one of the researchers at the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading, has shown that such systems are not immune to malware.

In 2009, Gasson implanted an RFID tag in his left arm.and a year later modified it to be portable A computer virus. The experiment involved sending a web address to a computer connected to the reader, which caused malware to be downloaded. Hence RFID tag can be used as an attack tool. However, any device, as we well know, can become such a tool in the hands of hackers. The psychological difference with an implanted chip is that it is harder to get rid of when it is under the skin.

The question remains about the purpose of such a hack. While it is conceivable that someone, for example, would like to obtain an illegal copy of a company's access token by hacking the chip, and thus gain access to the premises and machines in the company, it is difficult to see the difference for the worse if this chip is implanted. But let's be honest. An attacker can do the same with an access card, passwords, or other form of identification, so the implanted chip is irrelevant. You can even say that this is a step up in terms of security, because you can’t lose and rather steal.

Mind reading? Free jokes

Let's move on to the area of ​​\uXNUMXb\uXNUMXbmythology associated with brain i implants on the basis of Interface BCIwhich we write about in another text in this issue of MT. Perhaps it is worth recalling that not a single one known to us today brain chipsFor example. electrodes located on the motor cortex to activate the movements of prosthetic limbs, they are unable to read the content of thoughts and do not have access to emotions. Moreover, contrary to what you may have read in sensational articles, neuroscientists do not yet understand how thoughts, emotions, and intentions are encoded in the structure of nerve impulses that flow through neural circuits.

Today’s BCI devices they work on the principle of data analysis, similar to the algorithm that predicts in the Amazon store which CD or book we would like to buy next. Computers that monitor the flow of electrical activity received through a brain implant or a removable electrode pad learn to recognize how the pattern of that activity changes when a person performs an intended limb movement. But even though microelectrodes can be attached to a single neuron, neuroscientists cannot decipher its activity as if it were a computer code.

They must use machine learning to recognize patterns in the electrical activity of neurons that correlate with behavioral responses. These types of BCIs work on the principle of correlation, which can be compared to pressing the clutch in a car based on audible engine noise. And just as race car drivers can shift gears with masterful precision, a correlational approach to connecting man and machine can be very effective. But it certainly doesn't work by "reading the contents of your mind".

4. Smartphone as a means of surveillance

BCI devices are not only fancy technology. The brain itself plays a huge role. Through a long process of trial and error, the brain is somehow rewarded by seeing the intended response, and over time it learns to generate an electrical signal that the computer recognizes.

All of this happens below the level of consciousness, and scientists don't quite understand how the brain achieves this. This is a far cry from the sensational fears that accompany the mind control spectrum. However, imagine that we figured out how information is encoded in the firing patterns of neurons. Then suppose that we want to introduce an alien thought with a brain implant, as in the Black Mirror series. There are still many hurdles to overcome, and it is biology, not technology, that is the real bottleneck. Even if we simplify neural coding by assigning neurons an “on” or “off” state in a network of just 300 neurons, we still have 2300 possible states—more than all the atoms in the known universe. There are approximately 85 billion neurons in the human brain.

In short, to say that we are very far from “reading minds” is to put it very delicately. We are much closer to having "no idea" what is going on in the vast and incredibly complex brain.

So, since we have explained to ourselves that microchips, while associated with certain problems, have rather limited capabilities, and brain implants do not have a chance to read our minds, let's ask ourselves why a device that sends much more information does not cause such emotions. about our movements and daily behavior to Google, Apple, Facebook and many other companies and organizations less known than a humble RFID implant. We are talking about our favorite smartphone (4), which not only monitors, but also controls to a large extent. You don't need the demonic plan of Bill Gates or something under the skin to walk around with this "chip", always with us.