Waving Goodbye to Privacy

Soon, we will be waving hello to the ability to pay and control electronic devices with just your hand and waving goodbye to privacy through the use of RFID implantation technology.

Implanting microchips into someone's hand was first introduced and showcased by Kevin Warwick in Project Cyborg 1.0:

Kevin Warwick showed that by implanting the chip in his forearm, he could control doors, lights, heaters, and other computers without lifting a finger, while allowing a computer to monitor his location.

Kevin Warwick’s Project Cyborg 2.0 in March 2002 went as far as implanting a chip in his nerves and was able to control an electronic wheelchair and an artificial arm. He was also able to create artificial sensations in his body with the chip.

With recent adoption from personal use to companies already allowing employees to implant chips to get around the office, sign into computers, and purchase snacks, the time may be soon when the general public can have the chips implanted for personal use and may evolve the technology for medical use past Kevin Warwick’s Project Cyborg 2.0.

These recent advancements in RFID implantation technology may be a subrevolution that is apart of what James Moor refers to as a neruotechnology revolution, in his paper, Why we need better ethics for emerging technologies. The 2002 Project Cyborg 2.0 may have been the introduction stage and the developments of this subrevlution may be what pushes the neurotechnology revolution into the permeation stage. And with this stage also comes policy vacuums leading to significant growth of more ethical/privacy concerns.


With existing NFC readers in place from companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, which already track information from phones and computers, through loop holes of in-place policies, it is even more concerning that existing policies for current GPS tracking may not factor into chip tracking as we simply cannot turn off or put down RFID chip implants.


Even though James Moor mentions in 2005 that neurotechnology remains far from the power stage of a technological revolution these fast pace developments and adoptions only 15 years later puts this revolution even closer to the power stage and impending ethical problems (privacy, behavior tracking, GPS location) along with it.

Even though we can follow Moors three improvements to approach the ethical ramifications, it still begs the question how early is too early to think about ethical ramifications of emerging technologies even if they don’t reach a revolutionary stage?