Identification Chips - Embedded Credentials

Once upon a time, a person needed papers. They would be issued a phsyical drivers’ license. A physical passport. A birth certificate. Who you were depended on the papers. A forgery could turn James C Tailor into Micheal D Fredrikson. Outside of extensive testing, biometrics, and investigative work, there would be no way to know the difference. This paper-system enabled espionage, forgeries, identity theft, smuggling, and a fair bit more.

In building a ‘better’ future, the corporations standardized a new practice: all humans at birth are given an ID Chip.

The Identification Implant

ID implants are remarkably complex little machines. Each one is registered at implantation time. Their individual ID’s and serial numbers are recorded in databases that are then sold on a wide data-market. These will tie everything about a person’s life back to them. It’s a universarl and impossible to fake or change ID. This is one of the few pieces of technology that works almost universally the same in all systems. It was too foundational of a technology to fall to individual kingdoms and walled gardens of technology.

Throughout life, the implant will tie a person back to identity databases containing all their key documents. Everything. School records, advertising interests, hobbies, and more. It’s a deep and extensive portfolio. On top of that, each chip will have on-device documents stored. Each will have current ID’s, passports, and other key paper. These chips can be used to access bank accounts and other places with controlled access. In some way, every trace of a person is tied back to these chips.

Implant Security

The implants’ designers have already accounted for numerous possible weaknesses. It isn’t possible to just swap an implant. Each individual chip is tied to the person’s own body. An onboard controller monitors several biological measures, including vital signs, blood acidity, neural impulses. All told there’s about 1,500 traits being checked in real-time. It’s not that these traits are unique to a person, but that they can be recorded continuously. If these measures ever disappear or if there is an impossible change in the measures, the chip will deactivate.

In this way, it is essentially impossible to just swap ID chips. Any attempt to just take the chip from a person will ultimately lead to the chip’s destruction.

This same monitoring system detects the moment of the user’s death and also deactivates. In that way, decapitating someone’s head to carry the chip to a reader also will not work. From a security perspective, each individual chip is essentially unhackable.

Hacking ID Implants

The ID Implants themselves are hack-proof, but the rest of the system? Far from it. There are options to sidestep the rest of the system’s security measures. It’s possible to trick the ID Readers, if extremely expensive.

Database Hacks

Every ID scan relies on a commercial database being correct. There are multiple copies of these database, sold, updated, and outdated. Trillions of entries that all merge together in a soup of knowledge. The multitude of databases makes it possible to poison the well. A bribe to the right workers and companies allows for arbitrary entries into the databases. This can allow someone to create fake entries or embed false info on their own entry. It muddies the water and obfuscates the nature of the real person.

This alone isn’t enough. In fact, this can heavily flag a user as being a hacker or criminal without other measures.

ID Spoofers

ID Spoofers cost millions of credits. Common criminals definitely don’t have access to them. These units are made with stolen cryptographic keys and entries made in databases at the highest levels. It’s a complex and difficult process to exploit the right companies, build systems to automate those compromised systems, and build the necessary hardware to implant.

The implanted systems can transmit authoritative-seeming records, with all the proper cryptographic security. Combining this with fake database records makes someone appear to be someone else. They can have multiple identities, random identities (this doesn’t work with the databases), any number of options to fool the scanners reading them.

Impersonation

Impersonation is nearly impossible. Each ID implant has a unique private-key used to encrypt its information. The public databases record the matching public key. If a person’s records don’t match the keys, then they’re immediately known to be a fraud. There are a few hackers who can access and retrieve the necessary keys, but they’re few and far between. It will cost billions of credits to do. The skills are exceptionally rare and requires direct access to the victim.

Some would argue for updating the public key in the databases, but this doesn’t work either. The databases store all the information based on the public key and that key cannot be changed. A great deal of thought was put into making the system foolproof. The corporates feared fraud and greatly desired a universal ID system.

Replacing an ID Chip

ID Chips are implanted in the brain stem and red by a reader heald near the neck. These chips aren’t meant to ever break. In principal if a chip has failed, the owner has perished. Very few injuries in these areas can be recovered from.

On the rare occasion of a chip being destroyed, the only option is to start over. A person can purchase a new chip and have it implanted. They can have a note added to associate it with the prior chip, but this will always raise scrutiny. If the old chip and new chip are ever seen in concurrent usage, the records will be immediately blacklisted and all services cut-off permanently.

Such a banished person will have to buy a new identity. They will no longer have their ID documents and will need to buy new ones entirely. Whatever they had tied to their old ID will be invalidated. Except for debts and other such matters.

Life Without an ID Chip

It is possible to have an ID Chip removed. People born outside the “system”, slaves and others who do not have official birth records, will not have ID Chips. This is an extremely debilitating condition for most people. They lose access to all professional services, financial services, assistance, and so on. Without an ID, a person becomes an un-person. They just don’t exist in the system, can’t interact with it, struggle for work, struggle to enter ports and stations, and so on.

A person without an ID is essentially doomed and cut off from most of society.

Bot IDs

Bots have ID Chips. Even roaming AIs have ID Systems. In physical bodies, it is a chip that is cryptographically tied to their core system. Loss, damage, or destruction of the chip will render their body inert and non-functional. It is tied deeply into the architecture of all bots such that the AI cannot function without it. In the case of a roaming AI, their program is cryptographically signed with their ID system. Without a proper signed ID, computer systems will not execute their code.

A cryptographic ID generally cannot be added later. They are tied deeply into the system and once installed cannot be removed. They are quintessential to the functioning of the code.