Privacy is a critical issue in the information age, and while technologies like berry chips can provide convenience, they also pose a significant risk of data leakage and invasion of privacy. Adopting these technologies needs to be carefully considered, and without solid security measures, they can cause great harm.
In the information age, personal information is extremely important. The most basic and important role of personal information is that it allows you to specifically establish your identity among a large number of people. In other words, it creates a clear distinction between individuals. What does this mean for you? It means that you can create your own sphere of influence, one that is explicitly isolated from others. A bank account where only you can make deposits and withdrawals, a post on the internet that only you can edit, a cloud file that stores your files. In the modern world, where everything is computerized, you need a key to access all these conveniences: your personal information.
There are many types of keys we use to access virtual spaces. From a credit card used as a simple form of payment, to a card-like access card to get in and out of a company building, to an intangible account that a website requires to identify you, information is used in many ways. But what if you had a key that you could insert into your body and use at all times? A grain-of-rice-sized electrical circuit chip known as a VeriChip (short for verification chip) can store its owner’s information. It can be implanted under the skin and used semi-permanently, interacting with the environment at any time to send and receive information. This is because the berry chip is a type of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag. RFID tags use radio waves to share information with a reader that wants to read personal information, so the reader can recognize the tag from a certain distance. Once the reader recognizes the berry chip, it decodes the code stored in the berry chip to verify the owner’s identity and access the owner’s virtual personal space stored in a database.
In the past, not everyone carried a personal identification device with them at all times, and if they did, their use was limited. With the Berry Chip, personal information will be more universal than ever before. All of the owner’s actions will be recorded in a database, which will allow the owner to receive the most appropriate services. In addition, the RFID chip’s ability to actively interact with its surroundings will enable automatic payment, access control, and location verification. This means that what was once called the ubiquitous city could become a reality. However, this always-on, open exchange of personal information could eventually lead to easy privacy breaches. If anyone owns a device that can interact with a berry chip, they can steal personal information without the owner’s knowledge.
During the height of the berry chip hype, many opponents of berry chips used conspiracy theories about privacy invasion and the risk of personal data leakage to argue against their commercialization. As a result, production of Berry Chip was halted in 2010. Some argue that the risks are “exaggerated,” drawing comparisons to credit cards and claiming that the risk of information leakage is no different from that of traditional media such as credit cards. According to this argument, it is quite contradictory that we are worried about berry chips, but we use credit cards and transportation cards casually. Furthermore, the RFID tags on transportation cards actually need to be within a certain distance of the reader in order to send and receive information. Given this usage, it could be argued that we shouldn’t be overly concerned about the risk of data leakage from the berry chip itself.
However, I believe that berry chips pose a significant risk. First of all, they’re not comparable to traditional methods in terms of how they’re used. If a credit card is stolen, the most that can happen is that it’s stolen, at most, the amount of money on the account linked to the credit card. But a berry chip can provide all sorts of information about the owner. Everything about the owner’s daily life is stored in the database, including basic demographics, where they live, what they spend, and where they usually go. In this case, once your personal information is compromised, the damage is beyond imagination. It means that all the information about you is available to anyone, so it’s possible for someone to completely take over your life. Depending on their intentions, they can register everything you own as theirs or even accuse you of crimes you didn’t commit. It is even possible to exclude the owner from society altogether.
The benefits to criminals of stealing the information stored in a berry chip are enormous, and there are many ways to exploit it. This makes social systems based on berry chips more vulnerable to crime. For example, suppose a credit card and a berry chip have similar database security strengths. By hacking into the credit card company’s computer network, a criminal could obtain the credit card user’s personal information, bank account details, and spending history. Most of this information would not be of much benefit to the criminal, so the number of criminals willing to take the risk to penetrate the network would be relatively small. VeriChip’s database, on the other hand, contains all the information about you. And the profit from obtaining them is worth the risk to criminals. Therefore, attempts to gain access to BerryChip’s computer network will be much more frequent than in the case of credit cards. This makes the security risk of a berry chip much greater than that of a credit card.
Finally, the fact that the berry chip is embedded in the skin and cannot be lost may make it less effective against criminals. For example, what if you lose your credit card or realize that your information has been compromised and someone else has access to your balance? If you own the card, you can react quickly by immediately canceling it and getting a new one. You can also delete the information stored on your credit card or destroy your old card. On the other hand, since berry chips are implanted in the body for semi-permanent use, destroying the old berry chip and getting a new one is a cumbersome process that cannot be compared to a credit card. In addition, deleting the information stored in the database is also difficult due to the high risk of harm to the user.
As such, the level of privacy protection of berry chips is very weak compared to traditional media in terms of the scale of damage, safety, and post-processing. Living in the information age, we have a clear sense of the importance of privacy through direct and indirect experience. And we know that no matter how great the convenience, it should never be introduced without solid security. Of course, the technological advances we’ve seen so far have also raised concerns about risks. And it’s possible that these problems have been overcome by our ethics as technology users. In this respect, we may be able to alleviate some of our concerns about the lengthy conspiracy theories surrounding berry chips. However, without clear solutions to the very real risks discussed above, the berry chip under our skin will become a blade that will do us terrible harm.
