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Electronic identification chips have found their way into everything from Gillette shavers to prison inmates. But in September, with the Gulf Coast reeling from Hurricane Katrina, some people found an entirely new use for the technology: identifying the dead.

Gary Hargrove, coroner of Mississippi's Harrison County, began injecting radio frequency identification (RFID) chips into cadavers to cope with the mounting body count. He said the chips, supplied by a Florida company called VeriChip, helped the county identify and return storm victims to their families without mix-ups. The county also injected the chips into bodies dislodged from graves during flooding.

VeriChip specializes in human RFID systems and has marketed the technology mainly to hospitals as a way to track live patients. It's also pitching the systems to businesses as a more secure authentication technology than ID badges and cards. But human implantation is extremely controversial. Some critics worry about potential civil liberties violations. Others oppose it on religious grounds.

Do such concerns pertain when the subjects are dead? Hargrove spoke with CNET News.com recently to weigh in on that question and others.
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Read More / Source: News.com