Under My Skin - Who Regulates the Database?
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This is like asking who runs the Internet. By the time anything like this gets into cyberspace, there are all kinds of vested interests: pharmaceutical companies, governments, security agencies, hospitals, foreign organizations, and more. Do we let government regulate it? If they do, is Big Brother watching? What about the health care bodies? What vested interests do they have? At the end of the day, who will organize an activity that was disorganized from the beginning?
Another question we might ask is, in what other ways will the regulatory organizations use the bio implants? Apart from transferring data, RFID-based technology is an excellent way to keep track of individuals. If used properly, how will they protect the information in the database from interested third parties who have no right to see it? Who will fund all this? Who will get sued when something happens? And how will the regulatory organizations decide who has a right to see the information? Right now, I see more questions than answers as information technology combines with health care.
The Interested Third Parties
Hackers and criminals could steal identities (for resale and for profit); the cases of credit card fraud and identity theft we have now would be transferred to medical records too. Malicious hackers who believe such databases should not exist at all (conspiracy theorists) could change information; a changed medical record could disqualify an individual from health insurance or put a person's life at risk. And if you think all this is bad news, there is another interesting fact to consider.
Clones
This VeriChip is not an encrypted device. It can be replicated! This makes all the above questions about hackers irrelevant since a "cloned" VeriChip has access to the database of health care records. This basic security flaw makes the potential problems of this bio implant limitless. Yet individuals are already lining up to get these implants, and some have two!
According to one individual interviewed on Voice Of America, he got two bio implants in his body because they are "cool" and he because he wants others to get them too. Dr Ian Kerr, of the Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law and Technology, University of Alberta, Faculty of Law, was quoted in the June edition of Medicine and Health saying that some volunteers considered a bio implant just another "extreme form of body piercing." He added that "there are people who are voluntarily signing up for these things and they don't really have a sense of what kind of information they're allowing to leak out."
An individual's medical history can be a source of discrimination in certain parts of the world. Certain diseases are not only physical infirmities, they are also social stigmas. In extreme cases, they can lead to stigmatization.
Next: A Much Geekier Bio Implant >>
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