The technology company Three Square Market based in River Falls, Wisconsin, is the first employer to adopt employee chipping in the US from the beginning of August 2017.
Chipping is taking place in cooperation with the Swedish company Biohax International which is a pioneer in this field. In 2015, it implemented the chipping of more than four hundred employees in the Epicenter office building in Stockholm. The building leases office space to various tenants, including, for example, the Swedish branches of Google and Microsoft.
Just a wave of the hand
Those Three Square Market employees who agreed to be chipped were implanted with chips about the size of a grain of rice between their thumbs and index fingers.
These are radio frequency identification (RFID) chips that transmit information using electromagnetic waves. This enables employees to open doors or pay in the canteen literally by simply waving their hands.
In the first days, more than 50 out of 80 employees signed up for the chips. Some of them told the New York Times that they expect chips to become quite common in the next ten years. The chance to get involved today is a great opportunity.
However, there are also issues related to employee health and privacy.
Can the chips hurt us?
Experts asked by the New York Times point out that the chips may not be sufficiently encrypted and could be abused by hackers. We also don't know what purpose the chips will serve in the future.
Once the chip is implanted, it's hard for employees to see how their chip functions are being expanded. Today we use the chips to open doors. Tomorrow, they might collect and send out a variety of personal information about us without our knowledge.
The CEO of Three Square Market Todd Westby, assures us, however, that the chip features are limited. It's just a passive device - a radio frequency reader, not a GPS device that can to track people. Mobile phones track and send out much more data about us.
He also said that the chips won't harm our health. They have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and they are removable. He himself had a chip implanted, as well as his whole family - his wife and two sons.
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