Kidnap victims and other missing persons may get a lifeline from a new pocket-sized paging device that is now being sold -- and some day, possibly from an implanted "biochip."
Florida-based Applied Digital Solutions is marketing what is calls a "personal safety and location system" that will send a global positioning system (GPS) signal to rescuers through satellites.
The company's "Digital Angel" comes as a wearable device the size of a pack of cigarettes with a wristwatch that can send a signal through local wireless networks to US Defense Department satellites.
A lost or missing person can be located through the company's Web site, with access protected by password. The device can also measure and transmit certain biological and medical information, such as body temperature and heart beat.
The device is being sold on its Web site for US$299 plus a US$30 monthly monitoring fee and is being distributed in some Latin American nations. But the device only works if abductors don't know about it.
The company gained attention last year after it obtained a patent for an implantable chip that could send a GPS signal.
Fulfilling niche, Biblical prophesy
The news prompted an outcry from some quarters. Christian evangelists of a more apocalyptic tendency and their Internet sites claimed it fulfilled the Biblical prophesy of the "mark of the beast."
They claim the chip was prophesied in the Book of Revelation saying the Beast, or antichrist, would force everyone "to receive a mark on his right hand or forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the Beast or the number of his name."
Others dismissed that claim, because Christ's prophesied return for his church to remove his people ahead of a time of overwhelming global tribulation, would predate the rule of the Beast, whose mark would be the number 666.
Company officials, baffled by the claims, have had to resort to checking out the New Testament. ADS chief technology officer Keith Bolton said: "We have been forced to review the Book of Revelation and we don't see anything talking about a chip inside the body."
Some privacy activists also express concern that use of such a chip might expand and eventually be forced on some groups such as ex-convicts or required by insurers.
"A lot of emerging technologies are presented as opt-in, but they become so ubiquitous it becomes necessary," said Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Bolton maintained that the chip was not meant as a forced form of identity but a voluntary means of helping people in danger.
Nonetheless, he said the company decided to concentrate on wearable devices, not because of the protests but "because our market research told us [the wearable device] was a billion dollar industry" by itself.
Latin American market huge
Bolton said the firm is still considering an implantable device because of requests from Latin America, where kidnapping is rampant.
"We talk to people in South America who fear for their lives and it's hard not to hear what they're saying," he said.
Bolton said the company has signed distribution agreements for the Digital Angel with six Latin American countries, five of which asked not to be identified. Only Brazil has acknowledged use of the device, he said.
For now, the system works by indirect transmission to satellites through cellular phone networks, and thus requires a wireless network, Bolton said.
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