Have you heard the story of a young American boy volunteering to have a microchip implanted in his body? It made me shudder.

We know that governments the world over have been secretly testing the design and storage capability of microchips for many years. Now they are launching the idea to the public - apparently to great effect.

These small chips are said to be the newest technological advancement towards being able to eradicate terrorism. How? You ask. Simple. They store information on the carrier, such as name, date of birth, religion and so forth. Social security number, tax number, and anything else, too.

"If we all wear these, no one will be able to enter our countries without us knowing about it" is the rationale fed to an unsuspecting public.

Yet, as so often in this upside world, not all is as it seems. The chips not only have the capacity to store information, they also have the capacity to respond to high-wave radio frequencies. Wearers could log on to computers, turn on the lights at home, open garage doors, set microwave ovens pinging and much more…..

The darker side is the possibility that the chips could be used to stimulate a thought or suggest a course of action to the wearer without the wearer knowing it. This would amount to the most covert of all forms of control - from within the body itself.

The point is this - how would we ever know the true purpose of such chips? Whatever assurances we are given, how could we KNOW for certain that our children would not be at the mercy of more sinister developments? The answer - we can't. And, judging by recent control-freak examples from Australia, USA, UK and many other governments I, for one, will be campaigning against this most insidious piece of engineering.

Made by Applied Digital Solutions (ADS), the VeriChip stores six lines of text and is slightly larger than a grain of rice. It emits a 125-kHz radio frequency signal that can be picked up by a special scanner up to four feet away.

The company initially plans to market the chip in the United States as a medical device that would allow hospital workers to simply scan a patient's body in an emergency situation to access their health record.

Derek Jacobs, a twelve year old boy who lives in Boca Raton, Florida, first heard about the microchip in a television news report.

"Derek stood up and said, 'I want to be the first kid to be implanted with the chip,'" his mother said. "For the next few days all he did was talk about the VeriChip."

ADS chief technology officer Keith Bolton said he was a bit wary about the family's motives at first, but the Jacobses quickly convinced him they'd be perfect subjects. Since the VeriChip was announced in December, the company has been bombarded with queries from people interested in the device, Bolton said.

"Right now we have over 2,000 kids who have e-mailed, wanting to have the chip implanted," he said. "They think it's cool."

"I think it's one more step in the evolution of man and technology," said Derek, "There are endless possibilities for this."

How right he is. Yet, how sad it is that people are so keen to have their freedoms removed.

Those of you who have heard me speak at conferences will have heard the following quotation from John Stuart Mill, but it is worth repeating once more. For me, it encapsulates what freedom is:

"The only true freedom which deserves its name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it."

For those of us who care about our freedoms, we can, at very least, do our best to act in this way, both at work and at home.