Alien Technology
March 28, 2005 updated March 31, 2005 Updated April 2, 2005 Updated April 3, 2005
This is the name of the company that will produce, for Gillette, “passive” chips capable of responding to a microwave signal emitted by a detector located up to five meters away. These objects will be “the size of a grain of sand.” The dimensions of such chips: 100 microns. One micron equals one thousandth of a millimeter. A chip with a diameter of 100 microns is thus a chip... one-tenth of a millimeter in size, which is... not visible to the naked eye. The information stored in the chip will be stored in 64 bits.
This isn’t a joke. Go to the company’s website:
http://www.alientechnology.com
At the beginning of January 2005, Gillette announced that chips capable of transmitting information would be installed in 500 million razors. But why mark such a cheap item as a razor? Officially, it’s a matter of inventory management. Yet this makes no sense. In supermarkets, cashiers scan packages using barcode readers. Thus, the store’s computer is informed every time someone buys a pack of razors. Naturally, it can’t account for razors that might be stolen. But when it comes to inventory control, theft—especially of items worth so little—isn’t really a major issue. For its orders, the store can rely on the number of razors sold, whose packaging has indeed been detected during checkout. Gillette’s stated reasoning is completely inconsistent.
We knew that the technology used—that of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Devices)—had existed for years; it was notably developed by the Auto-ID Center, a laboratory situated at the heart of MIT, the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This research was funded, among others, by Gillette, Philip Morris, and Procter & Gamble. Produced in quantities of 500 million, these chips would cost 25 cents apiece; yet starting from 10 billion units, their price would drop to 5 cents each.
In any case, just like all computer-related products, these objects have value only insofar as the costs of research and development and of the machinery used to assemble them—using technology similar to that employed in manufacturing microprocessors. Once RFID use becomes widespread worldwide, allowing countless products to be tracked along with their owners, determining their price would no longer make much sense.
Choosing an object like a razor isn’t random. It’s a personal object, just like a toothbrush. The political-industrial Leviathan thus conducts a psychological test: will citizens willingly accept going home with an object that’s part of their private, intimate life, which allows them to be tracked and located wherever there’s a detector system?
Consumers were told that if they requested it, the store could destroy the chip at checkout. But it’s expected that people will quickly lose this reflex. And that’s very likely what’ll happen.
This is the first stage. The plan is to implant objects with chips that send back to the detector nothing more than a barcode-like signal. Second-generation chip technology is already fully operational. These are chips equipped with RAM, “writable.” When humans are fitted with writable chips (which, by the way, won’t be accessible to just anyone: a password is required to access their contents), they’ll carry around information about their identity—nationality, background, criminal record, travel history, anything at all. You’ve witnessed the implosion of computer memory. You’ve seen ever-larger amounts of data being stored on media whose size tended to shrink! Without people knowing it, their razors will be fitted with rewritable chips that can be interrogated when entering banks or airports. A razor is an object you travel with. This choice is anything but innocent.
Then, one simply emphasizes the security aspect:
- If you’ve got nothing to hide, what’s the problem?
Before moving on to implanting chips inside the body, consider this: if we can place a tenth-of-a-millimeter chip inside a razor handle, we can do the same with a comb, a hairbrush, a pair of glasses, jewelry, a dental filling—and, of course, your ID documents. ID cards with memory would, upon interrogation, indicate thousands of places where you’ve been, along with dates and times; all of this would be recorded. Your “traceability” would become total.
- Where’s the problem, if you’ve got nothing to hide? wrote one reader to me.
The technological threshold has been crossed long ago. There’s no need to rack one’s brains to imagine how such systems could be used; they’re also discreet and minimally intrusive. Remember what the actress said in the video promoting the Verichip:
- It leaves no scar, no trace.
What I’ve been saying for weeks now is that this rice-grain-sized chip is extremely rudimentary. Compared to microprocessor technology, it’s truly “hand-soldered transistor” level. In the Verichip device, components are visible to the naked eye. Could you identify the components of a microprocessor in the same way? Of course not.
You’ve seen that these Alien Technology chips measure a tenth of a millimeter. It’s perfectly possible, then, to ingest them by putting them in salt or sugar packets. We could even arrange for such chips to embed themselves somewhere inside your body.
Read these lines again. It’s entirely feasible.
Our society is undergoing a total transformation due to these new technologies. One might think of “security”; imagine that it’d no longer be possible for anyone to rob a bank or commit an attack. But this goes far beyond that. The climate of terror suits those who wish to mark people like cattle, as the “mark of the beast.” All this is underway; ultimately, there’ll be little we can do about it. The whole planet is turning upside down. Leaders are losing all sense. We’re reaching the stage where, as Ziegler says in his book “The Empire of Shame,” our last defense against collective madness would be what he calls:
the insurrection of consciences
One can always dream...
When will people finally realize that Americans possess technology enabling them to implant a rewritable chip, one-tenth of a millimeter in diameter, inside a human brain—after first anesthetizing it with a microwave gun, perfectly functional; simply by drilling a hole in the skull, leaving a tiny scar on the scalp that heals within days and leaves no trace? The chip itself wouldn’t even be detectable via scanner, given its size. Anyone claiming to have undergone such treatment would be dismissed as... crazy. This technology will be exported worldwide. The implant can’t be removed and gives no indication of its presence. It’s a “sleeping death,” so to speak. Not only does this system serve to mark humans—far worse than tattoos (Auschwitz) or branding with hot irons (Milady)—but day after day, without the individual’s knowledge, all kinds of information can be stored in the rewritable chip memory: nationality, background, criminal record, travel history, anything at all. Later, this chip will be equipped with a nano-GPS to locate the person. It’ll also act as an antenna for microwave transmissions covering vast areas, focused via mirrors made of ionized gas produced by stations like HAARP (whose true purpose remains undisclosed). This is Franquin’s “Zorglonde,” now a reality. It’ll be possible to render people apathetic, without willpower, or hyper-aggressive. We could transmit subliminal audio messages influencing behavior; induce hallucinations making them doubt their own sanity. Placed elsewhere, these chips could cause unbearable pain or debilitating headaches, labeled as some “strange illness.” This is “crowd-control.” We could kill remotely by using the chip to inflict irreversible damage to the brain, which would be interpreted as a “cerebral hemorrhage.” By placing implants near motor centers, incoherent movements could be induced, mimicking neurological disorders. Certain regions or locations could be rendered off-limits by causing unbearable pain in “undesirable” individuals who attempt to enter.
Americans love a bit of irony. It’s well known that the best way to hide something is to put it right out in the open. Crimes that remain unpunished are those so horrific they’re unimaginable, or those where the murderer manages to pose as the victim. Criminals who slip through the net are those who manage to present themselves as saviors of humanity. Remember: scientists called their first atomic bomb, detonated at Alamogordo, “Trinity.” They have a certain taste for blasphemy. An American hydrogen bomb was given the code name “The Kaaba.” Back then, Muslims weren’t yet considered Public Enemy Number One.
Who once said that Americans might have received technological help from an extraterrestrial race?
Knowing them as we do, we can assume that if this were true, they’d take great pride in naming the company developing such gadgets:
Alien Technology
I write all this, but how many will take these lines seriously? When I wrote my first book, “Children of the Devil,” in 1985, commissioned by Éditions Orban, who recoiled in horror after reading the manuscript; later, ten years later, it was published by Éditions Albin Michel. I included a preamble recounting the story of Cassandra, the Trojan woman to whom Apollo granted the power to predict the future—yet she couldn’t convince anyone.
American consumer associations seem to have reacted quite vigorously and effectively to Gillette’s plan to equip its razors with RFID, threatening a boycott. Apparently, the company has put its project on hold. But don’t be fooled; this is merely a postponement. They simply tried to go too far at the outset.
Let’s take this opportunity to provide some technical clarifications requested by readers. How can systems emitting at such low power levels escape interference?
The answer is “thanks to mathematics.” Signals emitted by modern devices are digital, made up of “bits”—the basic units handled by our computers. These signals are grouped into packets of 8, 16, 32 bits (or digits), etc...
These groups of digits are called “words.” My first microcomputer, the Apple II, operated using “eight-bit words.”
Here’s an eight-bit word:
10110100
Converted to binary notation, this sequence can encode numbers ranging from 0 to 255; in other words, with this encoding “we can count from zero to two hundred fifty-five.” Using sixteen-bit words, we can count from 0 to 65535.
Digital systems count in “powers of 2.” Nowadays, people are so accustomed to handling computers “without opening the case” that they no longer realize what circulates inside. Early radios transmitted signals modulated by amplitude. A first advance was transporting music signals using another coding method: frequency modulation. This made them less vulnerable to interference. Transitioning to digital signals marked another leap forward.
Without digital coding, transmitting signals via electromagnetic waves would be impossible unless the signal-to-noise ratio were very high. Mobile phones operate at a standard power of 2 watts. With RFID, we’re dealing with powers a hundred times lower. How can we imagine such weak signals remaining undisturbed by anything?
Imagine a detector “interrogating” an RFID chip by sending it a coded, digital signal. It awaits a reply in the form of a series of “digits.” To simplify, suppose the chip emits signals composed of sixteen-bit words, sixteen digits, like this:
0110101101010010
Translating this into binary notation means the chip can respond with a number between:
0000000000000000
and
1111111111111111
That is, between 0 and 65535.
Here’s where mathematicians come in. This number carrying information is followed by a three-digit code. Two digits can encode a number ranging from
000, i.e., zero
to 111, i.e., seven, in binary.
“Signal processing” specialists have devised an “algorithm” using all sixteen digits of the word; it necessarily yields a result between zero and seven. This second number serves as the identifier of the word.
Background noise can disturb both the “word” and its identifier. Any disturbance affecting both will render the coherence test negative. Applying the algorithm to the word’s bits won’t yield the three-digit identifier. Mathematicians have designed their algorithm so that it’s practically impossible for both the word and its identifier to be disturbed enough to produce a positive validation result.
If validation fails, the receiver rejects the response and queries the chip again, receiving a new reply. This exchange of questions and answers can occur many times in a very short period. Probability calculations then come into play: if a response passes a certain number of tests performed by the digital receiver, it’s recorded not as absolutely reliable but as having such a high probability of reliability that errors become highly unlikely.
This signal extraction via validation is so effective that when observing a mixture of signal and noise on an oscilloscope, it’s impossible to detect the original signal; on screen, you see “only noise.” That’s why electronic systems based on coded digital signal exchanges can function even with very low signal-to-noise ratios.
I mentioned a response consisting of a single sixteen-bit word. Clearly, this technique has no limits; with “words” we can create “sentences,” etc...
In my comic strip À quoi rêvent les robots, there’s a whole section describing this task of detecting signals buried in noise. You’ll find it in the CD-ROM Lanturlu 1 (on robotics, published twenty years ago but still unique in its kind). We do this constantly; humans don’t realize it, but when using their senses, they operate with relatively low “amount of signal” versus “amount of background noise” ratios. Processing occurs downstream from sensory organs. Auditively, we hear better with two ears than one; we actually hear more than twice as well because the brain “correlates” signals arriving from both ears, eliminating much of the background noise (including neural noise) that differs between the two auditory channels, nerves, and ears.
[To hear your own neural noise, you must spend sufficient time in a soundproof room or, as we did as students, in Paris’s catacombs, thirty meters underground. We’d lie down on the ground; it took about twenty minutes to reach a state of subception (the equivalent, for hearing, of twilight vision). Moving a limb caused joints to crack audibly; digestion produced unspeakable gurgling; naturally, everyone heard their own heartbeat like knocking on a door. Beneath all this bodily noise lies the soft hiss of hearing, akin to an old amplifier’s breath. But to experience this, you need a truly soundproof room; the catacombs provide excellent ones. We used a very discreet entrance located in a cellar on Rue Claude Bernard. I no longer recall the number.]
Visually, we don’t perceive every word or letter; we get brief flashes of words or entire sentences and reconstruct “the most probable word,” “the most probable sentence” with great speed. Same for sounds. This allows us to speak and be understood even next to a machine emitting more decibels than our vocal cords. Of course, human abilities have limits. But with digital coding, modern devices can work with very low signal/noise levels.
This is a first answer to the questions raised.
The second concerns protection against RFID systems. This isn’t as straightforward as it seems. To shield oneself from electromagnetic waves, the typical system is the “Faraday cage.” But its effectiveness diminishes as frequencies rise. Mobile phones emit at 900 Megahertz, nearly a gigahertz. At lower frequencies, a car’s body would be an insurmountable barrier. Standard mobile phone power is 2 watts; range depends on obstacles between transmitter and receiver. Clearly, ease of use keeps increasing, especially thanks to proliferation of relay systems and their coverage over given areas.
RFID systems will also operate at high frequencies. For reference, satellite communications use frequencies near 12 gigahertz—more than ten times that of mobile phones. You’ll find more info on frequencies in a French website mentioned later.
Don’t imagine it’ll be easy to create a shield between RFID chips and a querying/writing system. You may recall the scene in Total Recall where Schwarzenegger wraps his head in a wet towel to “dampen the signal.” One might think that wrapping a chip in a thin metal sheet would suffice to isolate it in a hand. No; the higher the communication frequency, the harder it becomes to protect against it.
When kidnappers realize their victims carry a “chip,” they won’t hesitate.
I’ve also heard that plans exist to install chips in ID cards and passports. Such chips could easily and cheaply be located by folks wishing to obtain... passports, which tourists would carry with them. This technology won’t have... only advantages.
In passive mode, RFID chips receive energy from the interrogating system, storing it in a micro-capacitor and then using it to retransmit. In principle, antenna length relates to the wavelength of the carrier signal. In rice-grain-sized chips, various components appear, including something described as “antenna.” But coupling this antenna to an inductor can shorten it; this is how microchips function. Hence, a tenth-of-a-millimeter object can communicate with the outside world.
People everywhere are pondering ways to counter the excesses and dangers of “chipping.” The primary danger involves employment: if objects can be identified via chips, all supermarket cashiers will disappear. Today, they merely scan items using barcode readers; with RFID, cart scanning would be automatic.
- Customer enters a checkpoint – System scans cart (or pockets!) – Displays descriptions of items, unit prices, and total amount. – Question: “Do you confirm? If yes, insert credit card.” – Upon acceptance, exit door opens; otherwise, entry door opens with messages like “Sorry, your account isn’t funded,” etc....
Not only cashiers vanish, but also stock handlers and inventory controllers. At night, robots would reposition misplaced items, restock shelves, etc...
In fact, in this emerging modern world, the ultimate step would be replacing consumers with robots (they’re already half-way there). At that final stage, humans wouldn’t be needed to run the economy. But this is mere jest. Big industry knows there’s a huge market of humans eager to consume: e.g., the... Chinese.
Computing and robotics have completely transformed the job market. Now, the retail sector will undergo similar mutation, with predictable human consequences. Beyond “inventory control” and “security,” there are all sorts of excesses imaginable: individuals would be tracked via objects they buy, which might not be deactivated upon leaving the store or bank. Will humans tolerate Big Brother invading their daily lives? Good question.
As one of my readers noted a few weeks ago: “But if I’ve got nothing to hide?”
Clearly, “chipping” technology has been fully operational for ages. “Traceability of objects, consumer goods, animals, and... humans.” Traceability of... everything, basically. Given chip sizes, there’ll be no limits.
Will humans ever organize resistance against this invasion? We saw that in the U.S., consumers reacted swiftly to Gillette’s plan to implant chips in razors; the manufacturer promptly backed down. The “inventory management” argument convinced no one. Americans care deeply about individual freedoms (though they’ve already lost far more than they realize). Consumer associations can effectively oppose industries via partial boycotts. In retail, a 10% drop in revenue is catastrophic; Gillette took this threat seriously. Ultimately, faced with two razor brands, customers could opt for the one without a chip—and that would spell disaster for sales figures.
Some might say “retailers may equip their products with chips without informing consumers.” True, but consumer groups will soon acquire RFID detectors; if a product contains a chip and the manufacturer concealed it, immediate boycott and revenue loss ensue.
Suppose proponents of RFID win this battle. Resistance could arise. These chips can be destroyed using precisely tuned HF bursts; they’re fragile objects. Banknotes are already slated to receive tiny RFID chips; some may already have them. Imagine using these chips to track stolen bills. Quick note: place any 10, 20, or 50 euro bill in your microwave and turn it on; you’ll see results instantly with your own eyes (don’t worry, the bill stays usable). Just keep your eye on it while watching through the window.
Without destroying bills outright, carefully calibrated power and exposure time could sufficiently damage chips, rendering them useless. Perhaps a law will emerge classifying neutralization of a bill’s RFID tag as “forgery”? Maybe stores will be ordered not to accept bills lacking a valid response; or they may refuse them, assuming a correct response guarantees authenticity.
Should a “war of chips” erupt, opponents of this “greater traceability movement” could wreak havoc by remotely attacking chips using electromagnetic waves. Within electronic devices, these chips might be the most sensitive elements. Anti-chip commandos could target “chipped” objects at all stages of distribution. Unless delivery trucks are equipped as... Faraday cages, imagine a van driving alongside a truck shipping objects or boxes containing microchips; a fraction of a second of strong electromagnetic pulse emission from the van would destroy part of those chips. Inducing unreliability in distribution, these “eco-terrorists” could cripple the entire supply chain by damaging not the objects themselves but... their marking systems. What if, upon passing through a checkpoint with a cart full of goods, detectors receive replies only from some items?! Would we then need... to reintroduce cashiers to perform checks???
For illustration, there’s a “mixed” system in some Lyon stores belonging to ATTAC. Busy customers can borrow their own barcode reader at entry; they scan labels themselves. A cashier then visually checks whether the cart contents match what the personal reader indicates. The system is experimental; criterion is waiting time in line. Scanning oneself speeds things up considerably.
Bill Gates has had for years a project in his drawers: “chipping” computers with the “Fritz Chip,” which some may have heard of. It’s a spy device that, among other things, checks whether users have paid for software they use; if not, it can render the machine inoperable. To perform these checks, “Fritz” uses your Internet connection. Essentially, this implies your computer runs a “resident virus” whose sole purpose is constant surveillance.
Would people tolerate being subjected to such control?
Within certain computing circles, resistance is already forming. There’s the movement for free software. Expect, someday, the emergence (already underway) of movements for free hardware, e.g., producing components and microprocessors devoid of spy chips. Should this spread, manufacturers of machines with spy chips—even if their performance seemed superior—could face serious difficulties.
It’s clear that Big Brother casts its shadow over the entire planet. Some are aware of this; currently, they’re few. But in the U.S., people react faster than here (and are easier than Europeans to deceive in certain respects). This war of information, freedom, traceability, security, and individual marking—with all conceivable tricks and countermeasures—will be the silent battle of coming years.
To be continued.
April 2, 2005: Letter from a reader, M.M:
Hello Mr. Petit,
Maybe Gillette has put on hold its plan to implant RFID chips in razors, but in France, the Casino Group decided to integrate them into clothing...
“Checkpoint’s RFID solutions chosen by the Casino Group March 25, 2005. The agreement covers several million radiofrequency tags to be applied at the point of manufacture. These invisible EAS tags will be placed at source for the upcoming textile collection of the Casino Group’s retailer ‘Tout simplement!’ set to hit stores in September 2005.
To incorporate branding, barcodes, pricing, and anti-theft tags (EAS) upstream in the logistics chain, Checkpoint Systems developed CheckNet, a global network for real-time product labeling and protection. CheckNet covers Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe.
CheckNet allows retailers to order their labels online directly from Checkpoint Systems, which prints and ships them to manufacturers. Those attach them to products before shipment to warehouses. The RF tag is discreetly integrated; thus, the textile article receives all labels and variable data plus a radiofrequency element, which gets identified and deactivated at checkout (?...). If unpaid, the RF tag triggers a signal when passing between digital 3G antennas at store exit.
Source: http://www.itrmanager.com/article.php?oid=37891
April 3, 2005: Reported by a reader, a French website under construction giving an idea of RFID development in France.
Note that the overall theme is “traceability.” Implantable body chips are shown; it’s specified that they’ve already been used for livestock traceability.
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