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Privacy more than skin deep Toledo Blade | February 25 2006 SILICON chips implanted in employees as a security measure at a Cincinnati surveillance firm raise some fundamental, and even chilling, questions about the future of privacy in American life and work. The two employees at CityWatcher.com reportedly had so-called radio frequency identification chips, about the size of a grain of rice, embedded under the skin of their forearms - voluntarily, we're told. The company maintains cameras to monitor high-crime areas in six cities. The chips are part of a system to restrict employee access to a vault that holds images and data. One of those with the security implant is the firm's CEO, who says he wouldn't ask one of his workers to do anything he wouldn't do. So, is this an innovative approach to an old business problem, or a harbinger of what's in store for American workers as their employers, and the government, become ever-more security conscious in the post-9/11 world? One indisputable answer in our increasingly technological society is that anything that can be done eventually will be done. And millions of RFID chips already are in use in the United States to track everything from pets to livestock to research animals to packages shipped by truck. Implanting them in humans is just one more step. In 2004 the federal Food and Drug Administration approved an implantable microchip to store medical information right on a patient's person, as a means to reduce errors and improve treatment. About the same time, the attorney general of Mexico began use of implanted chips to control access of officers to high-security offices. Ultimately, of course, government and the courts will be called upon to decide whether such technology constitutes an invasion of personal privacy and the right to free association. Use of the chips was entirely voluntary in the Cincinnati case, but what if workers at, say, a large warehousing operation, were required, as a condition of employment, to have similar implants so the boss could keep track of them? Most Americans would probably balk at such a requirement, but many also would be surprised to know that the Constitution does not include an express right of privacy. A series of court decisions over the years have construed rights of privacy from the Bill of Rights as, for example, in the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees security of "persons, houses, papers, and effects" against unreasonable search and seizure under the law. Some legal thinkers, however, including a couple now inhabiting seats on the U.S. Supreme Court, contend that no general right of privacy exists. In the final analysis, a person's privacy is probably as much a matter of expectation as anything, and substantial vigilance will be required by the American public to maintain a right that is, or should be, more than skin deep. ---------------------------------------------------
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