Parents who fear losing children to kidnappers might buy the devices. People with Alzheimer's or heart disease might use the transmitters so that medical help could arrive quickly. The chip would hold medical and financial information. There's no need to worry about Orwell's Big Brother, Sullivan said, because no one will be forced to have an implant. But Sullivan also said the criminal justice system might use the implants to keep track of prisoners released early.
Civil libertarians cringe at such uses of technology.
Applied Digital is developing the device and hopes to have a version available late next year. Sullivan wouldn't say how much Applied Digital paid for the patent, only that he bought it from a Boston-area group of inventors. The implant would consist of a chip surrounded by Teflon or titanium. Sullivan described the implant as the size of a thumbnail, or about the circumference of a dime, though slightly thinner. The implant could let someone at a computer verify the identity of another thousands of miles away.