Amal decided to get a real blog put together.
Did a 5 minute interview with CBC's radio program The Current about RFID. Thought it was going to be an interesting interview about privacy, but they totally cut out everything except for the very basic details about the implant itself. The full RFID segment, which includes Canada's privacy commissioner and a guy selling RFID, is kind of interesting... even if the RFID guy skirts some of the privacy issues by neglecting to talk about some of the blaringly obvious possibilities for abuse. It can be downloaded here (MP3). Just the boring tidbits where I'm the only one talking (yeah, they even edited out the interviewer's voice) can be downloaded here (MP3).
I'm still too busy... or lazy... or both... too blazy to get around to sucking the video off some of the DVDs I finally got from various media sources. I'll do it one day, but I'm sure nobody out there is just dying to see this stuff... it's old news.
I've been trying to track down video dubs and clips from various news segments I've been on. It's either really hard to get the media to respond to you once they've used you up, or it's really expensive to purchase the clips from a news monitor. Kinda lame if you ask me, but I've ordered some clips such a service. I should have some additional clips uploaded soon.
I've also been getting more religious emails concerning the mark of the beast and my eternal damnation. First off, I think these folks should listen to my thoughts on worshiping false idols and symbology (Chris Burns podcast). Secondly, to back up these thoughts, I sat down with the Bible and did some reading. Thanks to Christopher Coulter for bringing up the specifics in scripture.
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In Revelation 14:9, it says you have to worship the beast before you "receive the mark". Only one verse hooks in the "buying and selling" aspect. So basically, having or getting the "mark" is not really the issue... it's using it as some outward sign of your allegiance and worship of "the beast".
"A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: "If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath." - Rev. 14:9-10 (NIV)
"...had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image." - Rev. 16:2
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That sounds to me like the real issue is your allegiance and worship of the beast, and not the mark itself. I didn't think God would be so lame as to condemn those he supposedly loves based simply on someone getting a chip or tattoo or credit card or social security number. It's the worshiping part that God really has issue with.
Sat down with Christian Burns to have a little chat about the privacy concerns revolving around RFID. From there, the conversation wandered all around and we ended up talking about a few interesting things. (MP3)
Had a CNN crew out to interview me today. All the same questions, but it's interesting to see the different formats that various shows want to shoot interviews in. We actually got outside and did a little walk-in-the-park-while-interviewing thing. It should air next week, and I should get a copy of it the week after. Of course I'll post it when I get it.
I just got back from Seattle Mind Camp 2.0, an amazing un-conference style gathering where chaos rules supreme and all-night werewolf sessions rage. I hosted a session about RFID, implants, security, and privacy. There were so many creative brainy types I couldn't stop there. I scheduled another get-together with a few of them down in Seattle next week.
I'm so stoked to be part of the first ever Maker Faire down in San Mateo, CA! Too bad I can only stay for the first day. It's amazing!
Here's a picture of very tired me setting up.
Going to present RFID stuff on Saturday, April 22nd at Maker Faire. Should be a blast!
Finally launched my mobile messaging company called txtGroups today! I'm so excited this project is finally off the ground. We've also launched a new partner site: www.tgPoweredBy.com. Things are lookin up!
Got x-rays of my hands done. Pretty cool. (JPG)
Went on the Bob Rivers show on KZOK with Dr. Virginia Stevens of Hypatia Clinic to implant Bob live on-air. It was quite the fun show to do. An MP3 clip is available.
ABC News did a story on Jenny and I. (PDF)
Well, at 1:00am the good people from Good Morning America knocked on Jenny's apartment door. They then went about the business of converting her tiny apartment into a live satellite feed studio. Cameras, lights, and a 1000 foot umbilical cord running down 11 flights of stairs out to a giant satellite truck on the street. It took 3 hours to setup, and we went live to the east coast at around 4:30am or so. I've basically been awake since 1am and I'm totally beat.
Here's a bad quality TV capture of the interview (MP4). I should be getting better quality dubs from the studio next week, but this works for now.
Did and OMNI TV interview today... kinda interesting. Aside from the usual stuff, we talked a bit about ethics and technology. I found it interesting to talk about more abstract issues than "did it hurt?". I should be getting a video dub from them in a couple weeks.
On my way down to DorkBot, I did two radio interviews. I have audio of the KZOK show: 2006-03-01_-_KZOK_FM_Radio.mp3 and should be getting a copy of the other show fairly soon.
The DorkBot event itself was really cool. There was lots of media hype over the live implant procedure as well. Too bad they all ran out the door as soon as it was over and missed my presentation. Oh well, media is a fickle thing.
Well, I'm speaking today at Dorkbot tonight... that should be fun. I also got into the Seattle Times (PDF) today. People keep referring to RFID as a tracking technology. I'll have to make note of that for my presentation tonight... it's not a tracking technology, it's an identification technology.
Ok, officially the book is out (even though it's been out for a week or two, depending on country and ordering method). I've opened the user forums on www.rfidtoys.net where readers can download the code mentioned in the book.
Did a long radio interview today with Alex Jones. That was... interesting.
I then ran down to the CBC news studio to do a quick interview with George Stroumboulopoulos of The Hour.
Did an interview with MSNBC Tucker Carlson and Canada's Global TV news network. I have to wait to get the media from them before I can post video.
Did an interview with Canada AM show this morning. I captured it off my TV, which has horrible sound for some reason. Anyways, I have an MOV file of it for download, and a PDF file of the written article.
Did a great interview with CFMJ Toronto 640 AM radio (MP3)
The Toronto Star ran a Valentines Day article (PDF) today about Jenny and I.
I was just able to get some video of the NYC DorkBot event coverage UPN News did from my friend and fellow RFID implantee Mikey Sklar.
MP4 video (may have to use QuickTime to view)
Today I did a radio interview for J-WAVE, a Japanese radio station. Even though they had it scheduled for days, events unfolded in such a way that I was pretty tired during the interview... I think its fairly obvious when listening to their ASX stream of the interview... some really blunt answers there, especially in the beginning.
I've been getting a lot of the same questions about security and infection issues. Here are two posts of mine on the tagged forum that cover some of my thoughts on security (1,2) and infection.
Yesterday I got a call from a FOX News tv program called "Your World" and an MTV show called "True Life"... preliminary fact-finding at this point, but who knows, I may be on the telly once again.
UPDATE
As if to underscore my thoughts on security, I just discovered that last night my car window was busted out and my stuff stolen. This is the second time I've ever had my car broken into, and both times now it's been while I was in the Vancouver BC (Canada) area.
The Vancouver police case # is 2006-24189, which makes me wonder if there have really been 24189 cases handled by the police since Jan 1st, 2006. I'm really starting to become wary of going up there... at least in MY car anyways.
An article (PDF) in the New York Times came out today with several implant community people's input in it. Congrats everyone!
I've hit the spanish big-time now: http://www.pikiki.com/index.php/2006/02/01/exclusiva-entrevistamos-a-amal-graafstra-pionero-de-los-implantes-rfid/ (PDF) Too bad I can't read the responses. I guess I could use babelfish or something to translate it... or just learn spanish.
English version
Today I did a TV interview with Discovery Channel Canada's Daily Planet program. A very nice camera man by the name of Kevin came out and took video of me doing the basics; getting into my car, getting into Jenny's apartment, and logging into my computer. Then Kevin whisked us to the CTV studio building so I could do a "live to tape" interview with Jay Ingram.
Discovery Channel Canada's Daily Planet program interview (ASF)
Since this latest media flurry I've actually received my very first personal nut-mail... and a few more following it. Instead of engaging in civilized conversation, overzealous nutjobs are simply sending me blunt, bold-font emails containing simply: "666! YOU ARE THE SATAN'S SERVANT!"... the words go on and on, but the intent is always the same - to vent their unfounded fears of the unknown and unstudied and unresearched at me. I suggest they read this page before sending me any more threatening, mean, and just plain un-christian emails: http://www.av1611.org/666/biochip.html
Oh yeah, I had a phone interview for CBC Radio's As It Happens program a couple weeks ago. They put it on the air Jan 13th. Here's their RealMedia archive of it: http://www.cbc.ca/insite/AS_IT_HAPPENS_TORONTO/2006/1/13.html
Here's the MP3 audio of the interview
Today I spoke to a Human Factors and Ergonomics class at Kwantlen University (Surrey BC, Canada). It was supposed to be 30 minutes with 15 extra minutes for questions, but it stretched into an hour and a half. It was quite fun, and there were plenty of questions afterward. A group of them came with me to my car so I could show them how I gain entry with a wave of my hand. I'm speaking Monday to a Kinesiology class at SFU's Harbour Centre campus.
Well, last Friday I was on national Canadian TV news talking about RFID. I had to run up to Vancouver BC to do a studio interview. The dang border people stopped me (again) and immigration harrased me (again). I guess that's going to be a regular thing (bastards). I didn't get a full body cavity search for a Nexus pass just to get stopped and harrassed every time I cross the border.
I recorded this straight off the TV and it picked up a high pitched noise. It's not that bad in the uncompressed MPEG version (90 megs), but compressing it down to a small QuickTime MOV file (3 megs) really made the noise prevalent (and really damn annoying). If anyone can download the MPEG movie and filter out the noise for me, I'd be really grateful!
So yeah, I realized after watching myself that I need to figure out something to do with my mouth other than cinch it up like that... it makes me look pompous or arrogant, when really I was just a tad nervous. The interview room was sort of barren and strange.. just me, a camera guy, and a camera to stare into.. the rest of the room was littered with parts of old sets and cables and some chairs. Oh, and Jenny and her friend Jamie were sitting there watching too... which didn't help much with the nervousness.
It's official. I'm scheduled to present at the Seattle Dorkbot meeting in March. I'm pretty stoked.
Well, back from NYC for about a week now... it was totally sweet. I wrote a little ditty for Make on it (with pix). I got interviewed by Reuters there, as well as some other media dudes. I got on the front page of the Vancouver Sun (PDF, MP3). Too bad I was quoted as being Canadian in the Reuters wire... Jenny is Canadian and lives in Vancouver, but I'm a US CITIZEN and live in BELLINGHAM, WA (any Canada border and/or immigration dudes please take note). I guess that red-flagged me... when Jenny and I tried to cross into Canada after landing in Seattle, the immigration people stopped us and started giving me the once-over. I have to haul all kinds of up to them and pray they don't bar me from the country indefinitely. We'll see what happens.
Some people have asked me to set up an RSS feed for this site. While that's an aus idea, I never thought this page would grow beyond a simple faq, so it's all static (not database driven). An RSS feed would take a little too much time at this point to put together, what with book launch coming up and txtGroups launch following quickly on it's heels. Maybe in a couple months I'll convert this pile of bytes into a DB driven, RSS spittin, real-live blog... but for now it's just a static page I update by hand.
I'm stoked. I was sitting here coding some API stuff for txtGroups (https://api.txtgroups.com) and glanced up at my hack-a-day widget. There was a post about Mikey Sklar and the upcoming dorkbot meeting in NYC on Jan 4th. He's scheduled to give a talk on his implant process and what he's doing with it. I immediately booked a flight for Jenny and I to attend. I can't wait!
Jonny Goldstein interviews Mikey Sklar
I've got the MOV file of Jenny's implant procedure posted. It's encoded with the H264 codec, so you'll need QuickTime 7.0 to view them. Luckily QT7 is officially out for Windows users now too. Try using google to find a "hidden" link on the apple site to a version without the iTunes piggyback... it's out there somewhere.
The injection process was actually a little more difficult for Jenny than it was for me. Getting the needle in far enough and in the correct position required a tad more force than it did with my hand. I guess she's got dense connective tissue that made it difficult for the needle to penetrate.
Also, for those of you concerned that the doctor uses his finger over the injection site to hold the chip in place during removal of the needle, he washed his hands and used an alcohol towelette just before performing the injection. As of today, Jenny is doing great and using her hand just fine. There is a slight amount of bruising, but it's only minor and healing very quickly.
Yesterday Jenny (my girlfriend) got an EM4102 chip implanted into her left hand. Now she can get into our apartment without keys as well! Her flickr photoset is here: Jenny's RFID implant procedure. I will be posting a movie of the actual injection process once I have it converted to a QuickTime MOV file.
It's been a while since updating this page, but the project book is in production and should be out Feb 2006. It details how to build various RFID enabled projects yourself using cheap and easy to find hardware.
Wiley Publishing
Amazon.com
I've been spending most of my time working on txtGroups, a new business venture of mine that started up last April... right around the time I was approached by Wiley publishing to write the book. It's been struggle between writing the book and managing the development of txtGroups. Oddly enough, txtGroups should be launching Feb 2006 across all of Canada, just after the official release of the book. If we see success in Canada, we'll bring it down home to the US and maybe shoot across the pond to the UK.
From time to time I get asked about airport security and how they react to my implants. I've never had either of them set off a metal detector. One time I even had to submit to a handheld wand search. They asked me if I had any implants before they started, and I told them I had one in each hand. They ran the wand over me and specifically over my hands and the thing never made a peep. It did, however, beep on one of my tiny shirt buttons, so that just goes to show the amount of metal in the implant is rather insignificant.
Apparently, the quicktime video of my right hand implant is compressed using the H.264 codec, which requires QuickTime 7.0. The down side is, Windows users can't get QuickTime 7.0 at this point in time. However, Apple has a public preview, which is like beta software, available for Windows users: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/preview/
For those of you who don't mind waiting, you can download the uncompressed version here.
Lots has happened over the last month or so... but yesterday I got a second RFID implant. This time in my right hand, and this time a Philips HITAG S 2048 chip with crypto-security functions. Pictures up on flickr. There's also a quicktime movie of the implant procedure, this time done with an implant needle (by a different doctor). Quick and virtually painless.
Did a phone interview with Sync magazine today.
I forgot about this, but MPR radio program Future Tense put up the interview. They also have a Real Audio recording of the phone interview. If they eventually take it down or change the link, you can check out the MP3 version I have here.
New forum started by Chris Rigby called "tagged" for people who have RFID implants, want implants, or are just looking for more information. http://tagged.kaos.gen.nz/
I've been approached by a publisher asking me to put together a step-by-step RFID project book with pictures, software source code, hardware source lists, etc. I'm talking with them and gathering ideas. If you would like to know if/when this book is available, or you have some kick ass RFID project ideas or have seen/heard of/implemented any fun and funky RFID projects and would like to share your links (so I can list them in the possible book), please email me at (yeah, I'm giving it out now instead of issuing a challenge [at the bottom of this page]): amal@morpheusinc.com
The reason I didn't list where I got my stuff from on my page is that I wanted people to try to meet my email challenge in order to contact me. Now that I have posted my email address outright, it really makes no difference... I got my gear at www.phidgetsusa.com. I am looking for other RFID hardware... particularly high frequency tags, read/write tags, and encrypted tags and readers for other projects.
I'm part owner in Wirecutter, a company that deals with SMS text messaging. I'm now working on integrating SMS based monitoring and management of my access systems. This would let me give a keyfob RFID tag to a friend and authorize entry into my house via my cell phone. It would work like this: Friend shows up at my house and tries to pass RFID tag to get in. System alerts me via SMS text message on my phone. I can respond with "allow" code that lets the tag work for 10, 20 or maybe 60 minutes, allowing my friend access to my house. Real-time, mobile access management.
Two posts on RFID Update today.
Car thieves steal finger of a car owner to start the car. This car used a fingerprint to disable the immobilizer. Even with a key, the car would not start until the fingerprint was given. I'm not afraid of my hand getting lopped off. You can't give up a fingerprint to thieves, but if someone was coming at me to cut my hand off for my RFID tag, you can bet I'd bite or cut that thing out of under my skin before they cut my hand off.
Again... I DON'T HAVE A VERICHIP. The photo in the BME article that is linked to Verichip is not me, it's some stock photo. I didn't use Verichip because it's a proprietary system and I didn't want to bind myself to using their stuff. I also didn't want to sign up for their global verichip subscriber registry.
Interview with bmezine.com posted.
I DON'T HAVE A VERICHIP. The photo in the BME article that is linked to Verichip is not me, it's some stock photo. I didn't use Verichip because it's a proprietary system and I didn't want to bind myself to using their stuff. I also didn't want to sign up for their global verichip subscriber registry.
There are new photos on the flickr photostream.
A new video of the door latch project prototype in action.
Well, the RFID chip is finally in. Now it's time to get on with buying a house that I can deck out with RFID sensors. But, probably before I get a chance to do that, I'm going to put a sensor in my car door. One small step for hand, one giant leap for keyless entry. Another thing I'm going to work on is figuring out how to write a custom GINA for Windows and putting a sensor into my keyboard so when I place my hands on it, the system will automatically log me in.
FAQ (frequently asked questions)
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Q: can't they track you?!
A: no. the read range is only 2 inches max. even with a high powered reader, the chip itself does not have the capability to transmit farther than a couple inches tops. this makes it very difficult to scan my RFID chip without me noticing, and it's definitely not possible to scan it just by me walking by a sensor or something. It has to be pretty deliberate.
Q: what about GPS?!
A: no. there is currently no implantable GPS technology. none. there are very oversized watches you can wear that do support GPS tracking, but they look like a dick tracy watch on steroids.
Q: is all your information on there?!
A: no. as stated above, there is only an 10 hexadecimal character unique code.. like 48e9s18fd3 for example. the chip is read-only (you can't change the data on it) and what it does or what that string of characters means depends on what system is scanning it. the system I'm creating will use that string to ID me and let me in my house, my car, or log me into my computer. if you have your cats or dogs tagged with a chip, they too only carry a unique code, and the animal's information is stored in a central database. hospitals are looking to use this technology in the arms of people to link a person's ID with their medical records in the computer system. The medical data won't, at this time, be stored on the chip itself as many fear.
Q: are you crazy?!
A: sure, why not.
Q: what about the mark of the beast!?
A: well, last time I checked, this chip wasn't required, I won't be killed for not having one, I don't need it to buy/sell things, and with billions of unique ID codes (numbers and letters), I don't see how each unique code could be calculated in some way to 666. bottom line, if this ever becomes an oppressive technology, required by some government, I can simply take it out.
- Revelation 13:16 - And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads.
- Revelation 13:17 - And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
- Revelation 13:18 - Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. (666)
Q: how big is the implant?
A: it's 12mm long by 2mm in diameter.
Q: why the hand, and your left hand to boot?
A: well, I reach for my car door handle with my left hand, and I can get used to opening my front door with my left as well. plus, being right handed, my left hand is far less likely to get crushed, mutilated, or otherwise damaged... and I'm sure granules of crushed glass, silicon, and other metals could cause health complications, aside from having a crushed hand.
Q: did you do it yourself?
A: hell no. a client of mine is a doctor and we traded services.
Q: is this a hoax?
A: come on, I have better things to do than make things up. Here's a quick video I took with my crappy pentax digital camera, showing basic operation. A friend converted it to a much smaller standard QuickTime file for me. Here's a large, high res picture of the implant site as of 03-24-2005 4:00pm PST.
Q: I have questions, how can I contact you?
A: you have to pass a test first. don't worry, it's easy. take the domain name of this website, remove the top level domain, replace the period with an @ sign, then type the name of the greek god of dreams, followed by the letters "inc", and then place a period and the letters "com". if you can figure that out, you pass the test.