Microchip Implants

A persons identity is essentially a collection of attributes, that when put together allow an individual to be identified. It’s often not necessary to obtain all of the attributes, however they are often exchanged purely to identify a person. 

There have been some recent references to microchip implants, such as a recent article in the Guardian where microchips are being offered to employees of large firms as an easier way to identify themselves. The idea of having a chip implanted may immediately raise privacy concerns, however the ability to easily identify yourself removes the need to exchange various attributes to identify yourself. 

One of the things that makes it difficult for an identity provider to collate attributes together is that there is often the lack of a central identifier to relate everything to. In the UK especially, there is no single identifier that identity attributes can be related to. The UK government had planned to create one, in the form of a national identity card. The scheme was scrapped in 2011, which was unfortunate, not because a card was needed to prove identity, but the scheme also created a central identifier, something that would have improved UK identity assurance from that point onward.

A microchip implant utilises an RFID tag, which essentially provides a unique number. The unique number, which because it’s implanted, cannot be exchanged, updated or lost provides a central identifier to associate those other attributes. The possibilities from that point onward are great, login to your computer, verify your age at a bar or even make payments. Assuming that it’s not possible to swap or copy the RFID tags, this could be a method that improves everyone’s lives.