Companies in Sweden are developing COVID passes that come under the skin
Just a few months ago, it seemed like we could only see this in movies, but now it’s slowly starting to become a reality.
Dystopian nightmare or a simple convenience? A Swedish company that implants microchips under the skin markets its devices for use as a COVID-19 health card in a country with thousands of early users.
“I think it’s very much a part of my own integrity to have myself chipped and have my personal information there with me, I actually feel that it is even more controlled on my side”, developed Amanda Back, Stockholmer who has implanted it subcutaneous chip. of DSruptive Subdermals, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Although it is still rare, several thousand Swedes have chosen to have an electronic implant inserted under the skin in recent years, which eliminates the need to remember key tags, business cards, public transport cards and more recently: vaccine cards.
The country that created the show “Real Humans”, and its English-language adaptation “Humans”, is also a stronghold for so-called biohackers who are convinced that people will become increasingly entangled with technology in the future.
“I have a chip implant in my arm and I have programmed the chip so that I have my covid-19 passport on the chip and the reason is that I always want it available and when I read my chip I just swipe my phone on the chip and then I lock up and it opens up, says Hannes Sjoblad, CEO of DSruptive Subdermals, when a PDF with his vaccine certificate appeared on his phone.
“A chip implant costs a hundred euros if you want to buy the more advanced versions, and you can compare it with, for example, a health laptop that may cost twice as much but at the same time a chip implant you can use for twenty, thirty, forty years. While a laptop you can only use for three, four years “, he added.
For Sjoblad, the Covid-19 passport is just one example of a possible application, which will be a “thing for the winter of 2021-2022.”
The Swedish entrepreneur added that he has a “strong interest in integrity.”
While acknowledging that many “people see chip implants as a scary technology, as a surveillance technology,” Sjoblad said they should instead be seen as a simple ID tag.
“They have no battery, they can not send the signal themselves, so they basically sleep, they can never tell you where you are, they are only activated when you touch them with your smartphone,” he said.
All implants are voluntary and if someone were to make them mandatory for prisoners or the elderly in nursing homes, “you will find me on the barricades”, said Sjoblad.
“No one can force anyone to get a chip implant.”