Rich Mexicans turn to microchips to foil kidnappers

If you've missed the news, kidnapping is big business in Mexico these days, with the incidence rate about 40 percent higher since 2004, now hitting about 6,500 abductions a year. Earlier this year the State Department issued a warning for U.S. travelers heading south of the border, saying that dozens of citizens had been kidnapped and/or murdered in Tijuana alone last year.

Locals are scared, too, so the wealthiest among them (after all, it isn't the line cooks that are getting kidnapped) are turning to technology for protection. A company caled Xega is now selling a small chip about the size of a grain of rice, which reportedly transmits location information to a satellite, a la GPS. If Xega subscribers fear they are being kidnapped, they can hit a panic button to alert the company, which then calls police and feeds the location info to them.

I'm curious how they get this kind of functionality into such a small package, but I can't find any additional details on how the technology actually works; products like the similarly-sized VeriChip, used here mainly to track pets, rely on RFID and can't be located remotely.

At $4,000 for the unit and $2,200 a year in additional fees, it isn't cheap, but still in striking range for a middle class that is increasingly being targeted by kidnappers. Intriguingly, Xega used to make garden-variety GPS technology until one of its owners was himself kidnapped. His experience led the company to refocus on security hardware.

Is a microchip appropriate or extreme as protection against violent crime? How scared would you have to be to get your own implant?

LINK: Satellites track Mexico kidnap victims