Gesund Auf
Also known as a Health Monitor, the Gesund Auf is a very common bionic implant in the Cosmic era, especially in the Atlantic Federation and other leading edge nations.
The Gesund-Auf
The Gesund-Auf was originally designed in the former nation of Germany, now the Neo-Hanseatic Consortium. The device is the size of a fingernail and is a biometric sensor. It is typically implanted when the host human is only a few months old. This device is wired into the spinal cord by a feathery filament and can read basic information such as pulse, blood pressure, activity cycles, sleep patterns, and construct a general picture of the host's activities. This device is biometrically coded to the host, with the code being generated when it is linked to the nervous system, thus each has a different identifying code. Most MUSE devices have incidental access to the G-A, and many actually use this as a biometric security feature.
The Gesund-Auf is somewhere between the functionality of a FitBit or some other fitness tracker and the Progressive 'Snapshot' device that tracks the activities of your vehicle. Thus, the device records not just your good behavior, but your bad behavior as well, equally capturing exercise and healthy eating as easily as snatching data from eating and netflix binges.
Distress Alert
The principle and most visible use of the G-A is to alert medical responders in the case of an accident, disaster, or emergency. The G-A functions as a life beacon, so long as the host is alive, the unit will transmit data if pinged by an outside tracking device, such as those carried by said first responders. This can be very useful for dealing with things like heart attacks, but it is used for finding survivors in disasters. So long as a tracker pings back, there is a reason to keep searching, plus it adds basic information, showing not just the location, but the health of the trapped person, allowing for disaster triage, rescuing those in the most peril.
Biofascism - the health of the herd is paramount to the strength of the Atlantic Federation, and to the bottom line of the Medical Industrial Complex. Monitoring the G-A data allows for metadata compilers to find the unhealthy members of society and make adjustments as required. This can range from sending health and Ordered Life Doctrine motivators to those with the bad habits to levying fines and penalties on those in violation of the Health Guidelines. The final step is mandated sanctions, raising the prices of the items most responsible to become financially punitive.
But where does the fascism come in? Where is the angle? The megacorps behind certain products can have their goods exempted from these bans and tariffs. Thus, a corp can leverage their wealth and influence to make sure that the medi-nazis don't shut down their products from their most profitable customers.
Cybah-Punk
The Gesund-Auf is the ubiquitous sub-cutaneous personal biometric tracking device. Those in places of power can access the device to find anyone, at anytime, to see what they are doing.
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? Responses (2)
I can imagine that removing or modifying this implant would be the first step for anyone considering a criminal or espionage career. There have got to be really, really good private security firms in your universe, Scras, even if just for the very wealthy. Otherwise, kidnapping a celebrity would be as easy as hacking their Gesund and grabbing them during transport or sleep.
There is a security firm in place, and it largely originates from the machine intelligences that networked the CogNet together. I do need to elaborate on them, but they are basically the 'gods' behind the network, and are one of the reasons that the same network is available regardless of what country you are in. There are private security firms, there are national and international security firms, and like a living organism, there are AISC generated security systems. For the most part, hacking someone's gesund is as likely as someone having their pacemaker hacked. Another layer is that everyone who has a gesund also has a Muse, and to hack into the gesund, any hacker would have to get through that first, without it being able to alert anyone or anything.
I would also posit that there is going to be something along the lines of biological encryption, in that you wouldn't be able to hack into something like someone's cyberware without having access to their genetic information.