RFID Implantation

Getting An RFID Implant

Introduction

I've been getting into RFID research recently and so I decided to get an RFID implant in my body. Being trans and managing my hormones myself means that this isn't technically my first foray into biohacking however this was my first journey into doing it with electronic components.

Implant choice

The implant I chose is the injectable combination Magic Mifare 1a & T5577 from Dangerous Things. The implant contains a traditional "magic mifare" 1k tag along with a T5577 chip for emulating low-frequency rfid cards. I chose this implant because it's relatively forgiving for new folks and allows for both high and low frequency experimentation with a relatively low probability of bricking either chip.

The wrapper that contained the implant injector. A label showing the specifics of the tag and size of the injector needle is applied to the package.

The Kit

I ordered the kit from Dangerous Things and it arrived promptly in the mail. It contained both a pouch designed to remained sealed until ready for implantation and several other items. Unrelated to the implant itself were two field detectors approximately the size of the implant encased within a plastic shell as well as a credit-card sized field detector. These field detectors light up when brought within range of either a high-frequency or low-frequency RFID field and can thus be used to determine the presence or absence of RFID fields. The implant-sized field detectors can be used to determine the alignment of the implant to use in relation to a given field to ensure the best coupling and thus the best read/write performance.

I did notice both some discrepancies between the documentation and what was supplied in the kit along with what I'm going to call some weirdness involving the items included in the kit.

Discrepancies

The documentation [1] specifies that the tags “can be easily installed using a hollow 10G or 11G piercing needle.” However, what was received was a needle 3mm in diameter which falls between an 8G and 10G size piercing needle.

The professional installation guide [2] states that the implant will be packaged with chlorhexidine (CHG) wipes but the package I received included alcohol swabs instead. These two chemicals are not identical and should not be substituted without notice because they apply to two different risk profiles. My piercer did have CHG available to use and offered to use it but I was comfortable proceeding using alcohol alone.

Weirdness

The kit contains a sterile drape rather than a non-sterile drape. There is certainly nothing wrong about including a sterile drape but I found this odd given that there is no real benefit to be gained from a sterile drape placed below the injection site compared to a non-sterile, clean drape.

The professional installation guide [2] makes reference to the “operating field”. The installation video [3] linked to from the installation guide references a “sterile field”. This is simply wrong. We are not establishing a sterile field and the injection of these devices is not a sterile procedure. The devices themselves are sterilized, we are using some sterile supplies, and we are doing a handful things that bear a resemblance to sterile technique but we are not being sterile and we are not using sterile technique. These words have specific definitions that we are not meeting.

The sterile pouch that contains the injector specifies which tag it contains, but not all of the details. I purchased the Magic Mifare 1a & T5577 combination tag but the sterile pouch omits the 1a detail. The packing slip I received with my order indicated that the tag was the “1a” type, but it would make sense to indicate this information on the sterile pouch in order to avoid any potential mixup. Verification of the tag prior to implantation is not possible because the metal needle acts as an RF shield for the tag within. Thus, the tag is only readable after implantation which requires the user to place a high degree of trust in whomever is shipping these orders.

Experience

I started by contacting my piercer a couple weeks in advance. My piercer had never installed one of these devices before but has an enormous amount of experience piercing and performing body modifications over a decades-long career. He’s known very well and highly recommended locally and as taught classes both locally and nationally on piercing. I’ve attended more than one of his classes in order to gain knowledge on safe piercing technique. He was very excited to install one of these devices and I was more than willing to be his first!

I provided him a link to the implant as well as Dangerous Thing's installation guide [2] well in advance for him to review. He performed some additional research online to gather more information and made sure that he felt comfortable with the procedure before proceeding. On the day of, we went through a discussion of the process. This is how most of the discrepancies discussed above were discovered. My piercier made sure that I understood every step of the process in order to ensure that I understood what I was consenting to. The most important parts of this were the skin preparation and the fact that procedure is not sterile even though the implant and injector are sterilized.

With the discussion out of the way, the procedure could begin. My piercer took a fresh skin marker, marked the correct location on my hand, pinched the skin, pushed the needle in, injected the implant, withdrew the needle, and held pressure on the opening with some gauze. I turned my head away and didn't watch any of it, my boyfriend took the picture shown below. The pain was quite intense. Not unbearable by any means, but very intense. I'm used to performing HRT injections using a 22 gauge hypodermic needle and this felt about an order of magnitude worse, which is not surprising given the difference in needle diameter. Immediately I started to feel light headed and my skin got a bit clammy. This lasted about 10 minutes so I made sure to stay seated and sip a bit of water while I recovered. After making sure that the bleeding was completely stopped - which didn't take long at all - I put a band-aid on which remained there for several hours.

Using The Tag

Dangerous Things recommends waiting about 24 hours before attempting to read or write to the tag in order for the swelling to reduce because swelling can made it very difficult for the antenna in any reader to couple with the tag. In my case, I waited about a day before attempting to read and write to the high-frequency portion of the tag. When I did so, I used a proxmark 3 RDV4 in conjunction with a tank circuit made by hamspiced. This seemed to give good performance. I waited for a couple weeks before attempting to write to the low-frequency portion of the tag because T5577 chips notably do not have anti-tear protection and i was far more concerned about potentially causing problems with the tag. I used the "Tom Harkness" biohacker low frequency antenna on my proxmark for this purpose in order to further enhance the probability of success.

Ultimately, the tag is slightly tricky to write to but by no means impossible. It can help to have a friend hold the reader and tank circuit to your hand so that you don't need three hands.

I use the low-frequency portion of the tag to take the place of a badge for convenience at work and I use the high-frequency portion of the tag exclusively for kink. The 1k of memory provided by the mifare tag allows for a tremendous amount of extraordinarily filty, incredibly queer words to be written to a chip under my skin. I love it.

Conclusion

Unfortunately we live in an era of black-and-white thinking where nuance is unwelcome and opinions more complicated than a 140-character “hot take” are likely to provoke a fight so I feel compelled to point out that this is in no way a criticism of Dangerous Things, their implants, or the folks behind the company. The weirdness I’ve indicated above is minor and needs to be taken in the context of what the device is: a body modification product to be installed into an informed and consenting individual by a professional. Minor variations of needle gauge size within technical documentation are not a problem when the professional is explaining the procedure to the end user. Substitution of skin preparation chemicals should not present a problem for a professional who should have those chemicals on-hand anyway. And incorrect terminology shouldn’t cause a serious problem when at the end of the day the instructions result in skin being properly prepared, surfaces being properly cleaned, and the procedure being properly conducted. The issues I’ve identified should be corrected for the sake of completeness. I’ve written this post for the sake of learning, education, and personal development.

References

[1] Introduction to Implantable Transponders for Professionals https://dangerousthings.com/wp-content/uploads/Introduction-to-Implantable-Transponders-for-Professionals.pdf [Accessed Nov 24, 2024]

[2] Professional Guide to X-Series Injectable Product Installation https://forum.dangerousthings.com/uploads/short-url/jGSs2UrYyDxTxaHwVIfb3nWbsd9.pdf
[Accessed Nov 24, 2024]

[3] VivoKey Spark Professional Installation Procedure Guide video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-JH-YO4Lwk [Accessed Nov 24, 2024]

Hog Slapping OR: How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate Factory Farming

Hog slapping?

There exists a device known as a "hog slapper". That's literally what it's called. It's a device made by Ketchum Manufacturing and its purpose is to tattoo livestock - primarily pigs - for identification prior to slaughter. It's a simple device resembling a hammer into which metal blocks are loaded. Each metal block is adorned with spikes spelling a letter or number. The device is soaked in ink and then slapped into the animal, forming a tattoo.

A hog slapper loaded with metal letter blocks and covered in tattoo ink

This device is... janky. It's janky as fuck. There's no other word for it, it's a janky fucking thing. The spikes on each of the metal blocks are crooked, the metal is obviously cast and what it's cast out of is anyone's guess but you don't have to be a metallurgist to figure out that they're not exactly building this thing out of high grade stainless steel. 

What did I do?

My friends and I bought a hog slapper, a bunch of metal blocks to spell out kinky words and phrases, some tattoo ink, and smacked each other to give ourselves janky as fuck tattoos.

Why? Because it was hot, it was kinky, and it was queer as fuck. Just like us.

So what's this got to do with factory farming?

This device is made for tattooing livestock for slaughter. This slapper is extremely typical of how we treat livestock: not a care in the world for their welfare. The design of this device makes that incredibly clear. The jank of this device makes it pretty hot when used with consenting humans but raises some concerns when talking about its use on animals. 

Let's look at some specifics:

• The device is somewhere between difficult and impossible to disinfect. There are internal corners and recessed pockets all over the place. This was a concern for us when using it that we decided to overcome as best we can by an excessive application of Cavacide prior to use.
• The spikes comprising the letters in each block aren't straight, many are crooked. This is obviously going to make it more painful to use.
• The metal this device is made out of isn't stainless steel it's made out of what I suspect is some kind of zinc alloy.
• The ink pad sold with this device is entirely impossible to disinfect, or even clean. It's supposed to be used like an ink pad that you'd use for a rubber stamp: you push the spikes into it in order to cover them in ink. Its porous nature means that pathogens could be easily trapped within. It was for this reason that we never seriously considered using it when slapping ourselves. 
• The promotional video for this device shows a man using the device to tattoo multiple hogs one after the other, re-using the ink pad and spikes for each one. Clearly, blood borne pathogens aren't a concern for that application. Again, we never seriously considered sharing the spiked blocks for exactly that reason.

I'm not sure why exactly hogs get tattooed before slaughter. It clearly has to do with identification, but why slaughter houses need each hog individually marked is beyond me. Do they lose hogs inside the slaughterhouse on a regular basis?

 Conclusion

Slapping hogs with a janky tattoo hammer is hardly the worst thing that industrial meat production does. The internet is full of documentation about this and the animal liberation front has been around for decades because of those issues. But I've never heard or read about this topic specifically. I didn't go into this expecting to examine animal welfare through kink, but it was a very welcome detour.

As for factory farming, it's something I've hated for a very long time. I'm not vegan or vegetarian, but there's a world of difference between believing that eating other animals for sustenance is morally justifiable and mistreating animals on an industrial scale while promoting a wholly unsustainable industry for the sole reason of making money. Factory farming is obscene in every way possible and it should be abolished in its entirety.