The gist of what he said is: a single glassie isnât terribly useful in todayâs NFC infrastructure (and heâs totally right - you need several larger implants to truly âlive the dreamâ somewhat convincingly⊠today) and his argument about putting your health at risk for the benefit is valid.
I think what he means to say is that itâs too early for the common man. I kind of agree. The health bit is debatable.
As someone who isnât implanted here are my comments on his 5 reasons.
I carry up to three sets of car keys (for the same car) as I have locked myself out of my car several times. Why three I hear you ask. Well, I used to have one in my wallet, one in my phone case and one I normally used. However I have locked my wallet and normal key in the car before. Thus the third one. If I had added RFID door unlocking (before that car was totalled) then an implant would have solved that problem. I canât lock my body parts in the car (yet).
Chips are round, readers are flat. The same goes for chips for animals and yet people donât suggest it is a bad idea to chip your pets. Yes it might be harder to get a good read, but it is not impossible. The footage of him doing just that suggests that this is not such a big deal. Of course the flex format chips remove this argument entirely. Part of his argument is a question of placement. Calling it unhygienic is kind of odd. I assume he touches other surfaces.
So, donât use it for boarding airplanes. This seems his most valid claim but presumably would be similar no matter what NFC solution was used. Paper boarding passes are faster, but NFC are cheaper, the airlines are going to do whatever makes them the most money. If they have to they will add a secure boarding area that you wait in after your boarding pass is checked and tell you to get to the airport even earlier.
The solution designers do need to do a better job, but chips can be used for multiple purposes if the solutions are designed to allow it. For example a single NFC chip can have the UID used for a lock, an NDEF record with contact details, and store a password for use with the improved keyboard wedge. Three uses, one chip.
This is true, but if you are diabetic you may have to perform blood sugar testing on a frequent basis (skin penetration) and injection of insulin. Personally I get frequent cuts and scratches on my arms and legs as part of my normal life. They are all a serious health risk according to this guy. As for the âpotentially cancerousâ I am assuming that this is a claim that the electromagnetic radiation could potentially cause cancer. I donât think that the risk is significantly higher than the risk from cell phones or NFC tags that arenât implanted. I disagree almost entirely with the health risks he is associating with it, if implanted properly.
His point about âif it doesnât add any significant valueâ gets back to my usual point about what is your use case?
He did miss the fact that a non implanted chip cannot be used to guarantee your identity, while an implanted (non cloneable) chip can.
An interesting view, but one that is in my opinion less than accurate.
As an implantee:
1/ I fucking hate keys and passwords with a passion, and I hate body-worn devices. Point moot for me.
2/ He used an NFC glassie. RFID glassies are much more forgiving. In fairness, NFC glassies are difficult buggers. Heâs right. And if youâre a hygiene freak (isnât everyone a bit these days), yeah⊠youâre fondling a device you shouldnât be fondling in an ideal NFC world.
3/ If I was an SAS customer and I wanted to board a flight with NFC (and boy I guarantee you that I would, because thatâs one less occasion to carry bits of paper or a cellphone around) then I would get yet another implant. And most likely a flex. If the readers in my local buses worked with my converted bus card, thatâs what I would have done too. The issue is, you canât multiplex in todayâs NFC world. The guy is totally right: one chip, one application. If you donât want to implant more than one chip, that forces you to format the one you have and it totally blows the usability out of the water.
4/ The chip should be chameleon as much as possible (and for certain applications, they already are to a certain extent). But ideally the infrastructure should understand the concept of a single tag usable for multiple purposes. Thatâs not the case today, and I fear it wonât be until the very concept of implants starts being taken into account by designers. Because if the tag isnât an implant, why even bother? Just use several tags. Thatâs whatâs happening today because implants and the need to avoid collecting multiple implants arenât even on the radar.
5/ The guyâs health argument hinges on risk/benefit. His conclusion is that the usability benefits donât outweigh the health risks for him. Fair enough. They do for me, 10 times over. To each his own.
At least unlike the usual crazies, you can have a real discussion around what he says.
Counterpoint: Javacards 
(and the next)
Iâm not saying the technology doesnât exist, Iâm saying by and large, the world has more dumb Mifare readers and single-application smart readers than multi-application ones.
Thatâs kind of my fear with the Apex when it comes out: itâll be multi-role, it will do many things, but nobody and nothing will take advantage of its capabilities out there. Then again by the time it comes out, Vivokey will have become as big and powerful as Google is today, so there is hope
I think that he might be referring to the tumors in rats thing. Amel covered this a while back:
Another weird thing is that the guy who made the video against it, mentioned that people where âpushing the use of NFC implantsâ. Sure, some of us love the idea but I donât think that anyone in the biohacking community would press others into getting implants. Weâre the ones talking about morphological freedom after all.
I understood what he said in his video re health issues as âI spent 15 minutes on Google and found concerning material, but I have my doubt about the material and I didnât bother to research it more, so I wonât reach any conclusion about this.â He does recognize that he doesnât really know, which is at least intellectually honest.
To be fair, there is cause for concern. Personally, I donât really worry about the glass envelopes of glassies - especially since bioglass has been pretty well tested in animals for decades now. Amalâs magic coating however⊠who knows what that stuff will do to you in 10 or 20 years. We ARE the guinea pigs The guy in the video didnât want to be a guinea pig and thatâs fair enough.
I am certain he did his best. But itâs very hard to predict long-term effects of anything. Even companies with vast resources canât always predict accurately what time does to components. Accelerated wear tests arenât always representative of actual wear.
In the case of implants, what other tests of time are there than simply implanting the stuff and waiting to see what happens? Weâre doing that. And itâs okay. Just like vapers chose to test what vaping does to their bodies over many years, because when it was invented, there was no data. There is now, but it didnât come from pre-testing.
However all materials are classified as either Known carcinogens, Probable Carcinogens, or Unknown whether they are carcinogens. There was one that was classified as Known not to be a carcinogen, but it was reclassified recently.
At the very least I assume he is only using materials that are not known whether they are carcinogens.
Yes of course. But going back to my vaping analogy: all the ingredients in vape juice are classified as GRAS (generally regarded as safe). But that classification was done when ingested, not when vaporized and sent to a pair of lung. The assumption was that the ingredients should be more or less okay, but it turned out to be false for at least 4: menthol, diacetyl (butter flavor), ethanol and vitamine E acetate. Now we know, but the enthusiasts who voluntary played guinea pigs to test that assumption are either pushing up the daisies or breathing through an oxygen mask now.
I donât know what Amal uses in his magic goo. Thatâs proprietary. Iâm sure the stuff comes with assurances with regards to carcinogenicity and safety and such. But for what purpose? Is it proven to be safe inside the body? Does it stay safe even when flexing for many years - and possibly work-hardening or changing composition during that time? I donât know. I assume Amal has done his homework and I choose to trust him, but ultimately itâs still kind of unknown territory.
Amal had a flex for ever 4 years, my PAY comes out after 4 years. Dunno about longer, weâre at least not the first. Amals will fail first.
AFAIK itâs used for packaging medical stuff, idk where I picked that up, but I do not think amal produces the polymer.
Well it is low risk to me thanks to people who did it before me (else I wouldnât do it ) but my point is, it is not zero risk.
You know more than I do. Whatever it is, I donât know whether itâs approved for long-term internal use.
The Magic Goo as itâs called here is made of polymers that are themselves classified as safe for permanent implantation. The material and gras use case are identical. I totally understand the issue with vaping versus ingesting⊠Itâs the same issue as with nanoparticles versus macro particles and their safety in vivo. The size shape and use case of materials like this heavily impact safety. In our case, the size, shape, and material are all identical to previously tested use cases for permanent implantation.
The other issue to discuss here is the idea of multi-use RFID or NFC chips. Itâs one thing to design against a minimum specification or a minimum requirements document put to you as an engineer by your marketing team⊠But itâs quite another for your executive team to tell you as an engineer you need to figure out a way to make sure the customer can only buy their cards or key fobs from us. Thatâs an entirely different type of approach to customer lock in⊠and unfortunately when we start talking about more secure applications in the NFC or RFID space, those very useful security features inherent in the silicon are leveraged against the customer to lock them in to a particular vendor.
I am hoping that the idea of a Java card platform like Apex combined with the idea of a reliable cryptographic provable identity token, will allow third parties to build on secure identity platforms like VivoKey with confidence. Just like third party websites are now allowing you to log in with Google⊠Iâm hoping that support for standards-based identity applications and protocols will be entertained by a larger set of applications and service providers⊠including governments and travel companies.
Soooo, I can vape the magic goo?
I doubt anyone will try and stop you.
The security is why I accept the idea of wearing an implant whose private key isnât in my possession but in Vivokeyâs. As you know, thatâs not normally my sort of thing. But I understand the concept and I think itâs an okay compromise.
What worries me more is this: if Iâm the guy in charge of implementing a solution for contactless transport tickets at my local PTA, an amusement parkâs ID system or my countryâs contactless national ID card, why would I go to the extra step of working with Vivokey? The simplest solution for me is to buy a bunch of blank cards, burn whatever private key and Java apps I want onto them and give those to my customers.
The only reason Iâd want to work with Vivokey is if I recognized the need to deal with customers who essentially come with their own card vs me issuing them a new card, and the only reason a customer would come with their own card and wouldnât want a new one is because said card is an implant. Unfortunately, the market share for people with implants vs people with a wallet that can contain several cards is extremely tiny. So I wonât bother.
If there was a lot of people who wore implants, I as a designer, I would worry about catering for them. But there isnât so I wonât. Iâll just do my own thing and issue yet another NFC card like everybody does today. As a result, there isnât a strong use case for implants and not very many people will want to get a Vivokey chip. Chicken and egg problem.
Thatâs what I fear will happen with Vivokey. Youâre on the right track technically, but you donât have the size or customer base to even register on anybodyâs radar. As a result, nobody in charge of building the compatible infrastrusture that would make a Vivokey chip appealing will bother.
I trust you to make safe products, but somehow Iâm happy you clarified this nonetheless
There is no incentive to work with VivoKey, however if they are interested in deploying their solution as a Java card app, then they donât need to work through VivoKey, just allow their applet to be deployed securely to VivoKey devices. Itâs a slightly different but important difference.