Home: http://www.blackmarketgold.com/fear_bombs.html Scroll down and see the other acticles. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx FDA CLEARS VERICHIP(tm) FOR MEDICAL APPLICATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES October 13, 2004 DELRAY BEACH, FL and So. ST. PAUL, MN -- Applied Digital (NASDAQ: ADSX), a provider of Security Through Innovation(tm) and Digital Angel Corporation (AMEX:DOC) announced today that VeriChip(tm), the world’s first implantable radio frequency identification (RFID) microchip for human use, has been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for medical uses in the United States. The FDA clearance follows the completion of a de novo application review. The Company will hold a conference call today at 10:30 am eastern time in order to discuss the FDA’s decision, Company’s marketing strategy and medical applications for VeriChip. Interested participants should dial (800) 472-9309. The conference ID is 1531948. The call will also be webcast and will be available on the Home Page of Applied Digital’s web site at www.adsx.com. As previously disclosed, the FDA response is the result of the Company’s 510(k) application and subsequent de novo application for the medical and healthcare uses of VeriChip, originally submitted in October 2003. Digital Angel Corporation is the manufacturer of VeriChip and has licensed the technology to VeriChip Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Applied Digital, for human applications. The VeriChip Health Information Microtransponder System consists of an implantable RFID microtransponder, an inserter, a proprietary hand-held scanner, and secure database containing the patient approved healthcare information. About the size of a grain of rice, VeriChip is a subdermal radio frequency microchip. Once inserted under the skin in a brief outpatient procedure, the VeriChip cannot be seen by the human eye. Each VeriChip contains a unique 16-digit verification number that is captured by briefly passing a proprietary scanner over the insertion site. The captured 16 digit number links to the database via encrypted Internet access. The previously stored information is then conveyed via the internet to the registered requesting healthcare provider. About VeriChip(tm) VeriChip is a subdermal RFID device that can be used in a variety of security, financial, emergency identification and other applications. About the size of a grain of rice, each VeriChip product contains a unique verification number that is captured by briefly passing a proprietary scanner over the VeriChip. The recommended location of the microchip is in the triceps area between the elbow and the shoulder of the right arm. The brief outpatient "chipping" procedure lasts just a few minutes and involves only local anesthetic followed by quick, painless insertion of the VeriChip. Once inserted just under the skin, the VeriChip is inconspicuous to the naked eye. A small amount of radio frequency energy passes from the scanner energizing the dormant VeriChip, which then emits a radio frequency signal transmitting the verification number. In October 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared VeriChip for medical applications in the United States. VeriChip is not an FDA-regulated device with regard to its security, financial, personal identification/safety applications. VeriChip Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Applied Digital. About Applied Digital Applied Digital develops innovative security products for consumer, commercial, and government sectors worldwide. Our unique and often proprietary products provide security for people, animals, the food supply, government/military arena, and commercial assets. Included in this diversified product line are RFID applications, end-to-end food safety systems, GPS/Satellite communications, and telecomm and security infrastructure, positioning Applied Digital as the leader of Security Through Innovation(tm). Applied Digital is the owner of a majority position in Digital Angel Corporation (AMEX: DOC). For more information, visit the company's website at http://www.adsx.com. About Digital Angel Corporation Digital Angel Corporation develops and deploys sensor and communications technologies that enable rapid and accurate identification, location tracking, and condition monitoring of high-value assets. Applications for the Company's products include identification and monitoring of pets, fish, livestock, and humans through its patented implantable microchips; location tracking and message monitoring of vehicles and aircraft in remote locations through systems that integrate GPS and geosynchronous satellite communications; and monitoring of asset conditions such as temperature and movement, through advanced miniature sensors. For more information about Digital Angel, visit the company’s website at www.DigitalAngelCorp.com. Statements about the Company's future expectations, including future revenues and earnings, and all other statements in this press release other than historical facts are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and as that term is defined in the Private Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and are subject to change at any time, and the Company's actual results could differ materially from expected results. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequently occurring events or circumstances. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/10/20/notes102004.DTL Big Brother Under Your Skin The future is now. The microchip implant for humans is here. Free with every vente latte! By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Wednesday, October 20, 2004 I shall walk toward my car completely naked and keyless and laughing maniacally and I shall wave my arm over a tiny scanner and the doors will open and the engine will start and the stereo will begin to pump out "Highway to Hell" at a nice respectable skull-thumping volume. And, lo, it shall be Good. I shall stroll up to any ATM sans wallet and sans ATM card and I shall hold my arm over the screen and immediately withdraw four hundred dollars and then turn around to the big shiny vending machine and wave my arm again and get myself a nice bag of toxic neon-orange Doritos and a Diet Mountain Dew so I can poison my body in the American tradition without inserting a single piece of needless pocket change. It is all possible. It is all just on the cusp. All we must do is welcome the sinister intimations and the positively draconian implications and say a big warm slightly terrified hello to the new, FDA-approved implantable microchip, coming soon to a hospital and a Starbucks and a bleak government agency and a human dermal layer near you. Very, very near you. Have you seen it? Did you check out the pictures? Microchips the size of a grain of rice, programmed with all manner of data and inserted just under your skin and it's all completely legal and government approved and it's happening right now. I mean, who knew microchipping your pet and implanting livestock would lead to this? Oh right -- everyone, that's who. The wait is over. No more Philip K. Dick sci-fi fantasia, no more far-off Orwellian Big Brother. We are there. Or, rather, here. This new chip is already being implanted in medical patients for the alleged purpose of tracking their health needs and speeding treatment and it is right now being used in the flesh of employees working in high-security areas to ensure they don't swipe top-secret pens and classified pads of Post-it Notes. Which is to say, you have been warned. Human skin has already been penetrated. Alarms are already sounding because it's one of those things wherein you can't even fully comprehend all the weird and creepy and potentially dangerous possibilities, but it doesn't even matter because all you need to hear is those four magic words: Microchip. Implant. Human. Flesh. And all your intuitive senses go, whoa. Oh sure, the initial benefits will appear harmless and helpful. They will say the chip will mostly be used for health reasons and they will say it's to be strictly monitored and there is no way the tiny implants could possibly be corrupted because it's just a cute little itty-bitty microchip containing cute little itty-bitty bits of helpful medical data to help doctors diagnose you ha ha sucker. This is what they will say. This is how it starts. This is how it always starts. But that, of course, is never where it ends. Already we can imagine the likes of John Ashcroft, salivating noisily at the idea of inserting similar chips directly into the skin of every swarthy foreigner and every tofu-sucking liberal commie protester while they sleep so the government can track your movements and erase your Social Security number and stomp down your door the minute you buy a used copy of "How to Make Cool Thermonuclear Warheads in Your Bathtub." This much is a given. But it's what happens after that where things get sticky, treacherous, spiritually appalling. After all, personal information is a form of knowledge and knowledge is power and the new chip is all about who knows what about whom and the government would dearly love to know it all, especially about you. What's stopping them? What's preventing every citizen from getting a nice implant and considering it a wondrous boon? Not much, really. Think it can't go that far? Think the populace will resist, or they can't possibly do this without our knowing? Think again. The first step is getting the public to accept the new technology as benign and beneficial (i.e., it's for health!). The next is to make it appear all fun and commercial and ultraconvenient (i.e., score drinks at cool clubs without money, just like they already do in Spain!) The third step is, well, whatever the hell they want. So then, let us flip it over. Let us embrace the evil, given how we appear to have little choice. Let us make our wish list now and spell out our all-American capitalist desires for this new technology because we might as well get some cool features and fabulous benefits out of it as we all blithely sacrifice our personal identities at the altar of murky and unsettling progress. After all, evil always has an upside, right? Like, for example, subway rides. Bridge tolls. Movie tickets. Just wave your arm to the sensor, pal. Airline check-in? Rental car? Proof of ID? It will all be in your arm, baby. Shoe size, blood-alcohol limit, contact-lens prescription, voter registration, grocery-store discounts, phone numbers of all your former lovers, alimony-payment status, PINs and electronic-bike-lock combos and car-seat-adjustment preferences and oh my goodness let the imagination run wild. It is a world of incredible possibility. It is a world where you will become instantly traceable and locatable and with a tweak here and a wire there we can now follow you via GPS no matter where you are on the planet. Until now, you've always had to carry some sort of largish device with you. No more. The dynamic has changed. The ancient wisdom has fallen. No longer are we a delicious dance of mind and body, spirit and flesh. Meet the new triad: we are now spirit and flesh and technology. Get used to it. It will, I predict, become a fabulous new trend. The chips will become fashion accessories, invisible status symbols, like dental fillings stamped with the Gucci logo or cool tattoos on your kidney. Your credit limit will be implanted into your skin. Your access to private clubs and shops and spas will be granted depending on the status of your chip. Keyless-entry implants will be free with purchase of any new Jaguar. Another Botox injection? Certainly. Just wave your face over the scanner, please. New Range Rover? Absolutely. Just waves your penis over the screen. Entrance to this exclusive club? I'm sorry, your chip says you're plebeian scum making less than 22K a year and you seem to enjoy weird books and illicit sex and mild but annoying acts of sedition and anarchy. Please go away. We are mere inches away from making all this happen. We are mere millimeters from giving it all away, to just saying screw it and letting Wal-Mart and Starbucks and McDonald's and Amazon and the Justice Department and the corporate monoliths have their way with us once and for all and inject us with all manner of cute little microchips to make our shopping better and our wallets less cluttered and our lives at once easier and more convenient and far more ominous and more completely compromised and fabulously corrupted than we could ever have hoped. Look. The future is no longer coming fast. The future has raced right up to our faces and is screaming its shrill greeting and is penetrating our very flesh on a relatively painless surprisingly affordable outpatient basis. The technology has finally arrived, quiet and calm and unassuming as a grain of rice. And as we all hop in this speeding handbasket, just imagine how nice it will be not to have to carry any cash. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35766 (Applied Digital Solutions of Palm Beach, Fla. (Nasdaq: ADSX) --- "VeriChip.") Bio-chip implant arrives for cashless transactions Announcement at global security confab unveils syringe-injectable ID microchip -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: November 21, 2003 7:42 p.m. Eastern By Sherrie Gossett © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com At a global security conference held today in Paris, an American company announced a new syringe-injectable microchip implant for humans, designed to be used as a fraud-proof payment method for cash and credit-card transactions. The chip implant is being presented as an advance over credit cards and smart cards, which, absent biometrics and appropriate safeguard technologies, are subject to theft, resulting in identity fraud. Identity fraud costs the banking and financial industry some $48 billion a year, and consumers $5 billion, according to 2002 Federal Trade Commission estimates. Verichip portable reader In his speech today at the ID World 2003 conference in Paris, France, Scott R. Silverman, CEO of Applied Digital Solutions, called the chip a "loss-proof solution" and said that the chip's "unique under-the-skin format" could be used for a variety of identification applications in the security and financial worlds. The company will have to compete, though, with organizations using just a fingerprint scan for similar applications. The ID World Conference, held yesterday and today at the Charles de Gaulle Hilton, focused on current and future applications of radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies, biometrics, smart cards and data collection. The company's various "VeriChips" are RFID chips, which contain a unique identification number and can carry other personal data about the implantee. When radio-frequency energy passes from a scanner, it energizes the chip, which is passive (not independently powered), and which then emits a radio-frequency signal transmitting the chip's information to the reader, which in turn links with a database. ADS has previously touted its radio frequency identification (RFID) chips for secure building access, computer access, storage of medical records, anti-kidnapping initiatives and a variety of law-enforcement applications. The company has also developed proprietary hand-held readers and portal readers that can scan data when an implantee enters a building or room. Verichip pocket reader The "cashless society" application is not new - it has been discussed previously by Applied Digital. Today's speech, however, represented the first formal public announcement by the company of such a program. In announcing VeriPay to ID World delegates, Silverman stated the implant has "enormous marketplace potential" and invited banking and credit companies to partner with VeriChip Corporation (a subsidiary of ADS) in developing specific commercial applications beginning with pilot programs and market tests. Applied Digital's announcement in Paris suggested wireless technologies, RFID development, new software solutions, smart-card applications and subdermal implants might one day merge as the ultimate solution for a world fraught with identity theft, threatened by terrorism, buffeted by cash-strapped governments and law-enforcement agencies looking for easy data-collection, and corporations interested in the marketing bonanza that cutting-edge identification, payment, and location-based technologies can afford. Verichip Cashless payment systems are now part of a larger technology development subset: government identification experiments that seek to combine cashless payment applications with national ID information on media (such as a "smart" card), which contain a whole host of government, personal, employment and commercial data and applications on a single, contactless RFID chip. In some scenarios, government-corporate coalitions are advocating such a chip be used by employees also to access entry to their workplace and the company computer network, reducing the cost outlay of the corporations for individual ID cards. Malaysia's "MyKad" national ID "smart" card is the foremost example. Meanwhile, privacy advocates have expressed concern over RFID technology rollouts, citing database concerns and the specter of individuals' RFID chips being read without permission by people who have their own hand-held readers. Several privacy and civil liberties groups have recently called for a voluntary moratorium on RFID tagging "until a formal technology assessment process involving all stakeholders, including consumers, can take place." Signatories to the petition include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Privacy International and the Foundation for Information Policy Research, a British think tank. Commenting on today's announcement, Richard Smith, a computer industry consultant, referred to what some "netizens" are already calling "chipectomies": "VeriChips can still be stolen. It's just a bit gruesome when to think how the crooks will do these kinds of robberies." Citing MasterCard's PayPass, Smith pointed out that most of the major credit-card companies are looking at RFID chips to make credit cards quicker, easier, and safer to use. "The big problem is money," said Smith. "It will take billions of dollars to upgrade the credit-card networks from magstripe readers to RFID readers. During the transition, a credit card is going to need both a magstripe and an RFID chip so that it is universally accepted." Some industry professionals advocate having citizens pay for combined national ID/cashless pay chips, which would be embedded in a chosen medium. Identification technologies using RFID can take a wide variety of physical forms and show no sign yet of coalescing into a single worldwide standard. Prior to today's announcement, Art Kranzley, senior vice president at MasterCard, commented on the Pay Pass system in a USA Today interview: "We're certainly looking at designs like key fobs. It could be in a pen or a pair of earrings. Ultimately, it could be embedded in anything - someday, maybe even under the skin." Related stories: GPS implant makes debut http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32572 Miami journalist gets 'chipped' http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32286 SEC investigating Applied Digital http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31933 http://www.adsx.com/ Applied Digital gets reprieve from creditor http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31765 http://www.adsx.com/ Implantable-chip firm misses final deadline http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31401 Implantable-chip company in financial straits http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31353 Post-9/11 security fears usher in subdermal chips http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26316 http://www.adsx.com/ 'Digital Angel' not pursuing implants http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=23268 Digital Angel unveiled http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17705 Human ID implant to be unveiled soon http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17601 Big Brother gets under your skin http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17834 Concern over microchip implants http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=15185 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sherrie Gossett is a Florida-based researcher and writer, formerly with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and a contributing reporter to WorldNetDaily.