Workers embedded with ID chips to aid 'tracking'

Tiny silicon chips were embedded into two workers who volunteered to help test the tagging technology at a surveillance equipment company, an official said Monday.

The Mexico attorney general's office implanted the so-called RFIDs -- for radio frequency identification chips -- in some employees in 2004 to restrict access to secure areas. Implanting them in the workers at CityWatcher.com is believed to be the first use of the technology in living humans in the United States.

Sean Darks, chief executive of the company, also had one of the chips embedded.

"I have one," he said. "I'm not going to ask somebody to do something I wouldn't do myself. None of my employees are forced to get the chip to keep their job."

The chips are the size of a grain of rice and a doctor embedded them in the forearm just under the surface of the skin, Darks said.