RFID Tattoo for Tracking Cattle and Humans 181
ack154 writes "The Register reports that a St Louis based company, Somark Innovations, has successfully tested RFID tattoos to be used for tracking cattle and other animals. Details are limited for the actual tattoo, but it's said to contain no metals and can be read up to about four feet away. Engadget has some more details on the matter. And yes, the article does mention RFID tattoos are possible for people, specifically the military. From the article: 'The system developed by Somark uses an array of needles to quickly inject a pattern of dots into each animal, with the pattern changing for each injection. This pattern can then be read from over a meter away using a proprietary reader operating at high frequency.'"
Could have just said 'tracking cattle' (Score:5, Insightful)
eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
If its a pattern, and using a propriatory ( presumably optical ) reader, this is not radio based tech and thus not rfid.
surely?
Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle' (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a sad thing to see - RFID is essentially a stock tracking system, add it to people and you too are stock to be tracked.
Tattoos as ID? (Score:5, Insightful)
No offense but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle' (Score:5, Insightful)
1: Barcodes can't be read at distance, without me knowing about it. If somebody, for example, tried to read a barcode in my passport, I'd know. I wouldn't know if somebody had tried to read a RFID tag in my passport.
2: I'm sure that if the article related to barcoding cattle and soldiers, you'd have received similar comments. To be honest, I don't want RFID or barcodes printed on me for the world to see.
Good for the sheeple (Score:4, Insightful)
mark (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle' (Score:3, Insightful)
How, exactly, do you think the military works? Every soldier is treated as a precious little snowflake?
Mistake for covert ops (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless the tattoo is easily and cleanly removable, it would be a mistake to use on the general military population, since tattooed grunts couldn't aspire to covert ops (too easily identifiable).
Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle' (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd go out on a limb and guess that what he meant was that it was alarmist. This isn't about the use of RFID as such. It's just a new innovation using the technology. Mentioning that humans could be tattooed as well is superfluous and not at all different from saying the same thing about any tracking technology used for animal life. "Barcodes/RFID/generic radio tags/GPS/ect is used to track animals and could be used to track humans, too! Your privacy is at risk!". It'd be slightly annoying to have to read that every time some sort of identification technology was frontpaged on Slashdot.
Should have just said 'and humans' (Score:1, Insightful)
Then, won't someone think of the children? They'll be far safer if we know where they all are at any given moment.
Plus, it will aid in all types of commerce. Instant checkouts. No more airport shakedowns. Walk inside an entertainment facility (sports arena, porn theatre, anime convention, etc.) and have admission automagically deducted from your available balance.
Followed by inevitable abuse by the powerful. And I don't mean the subtle kind of manipulations you might expect. But the really nasty kind from futurists' novels.
It's possible all the serpent-teasing Christian wackos may turn out to be right about the Mark of the Beast. Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.
Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle' (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle' (Score:5, Insightful)
I think 4 feet is plenty. Someone doesn't have to "wand" you, they just need to walk past you with a reader in their pocket. Also think about readers at entrances to subways, on the "walk" button poll at every street corner, entrances to buildings, on the money collector on the bus, etc.
The whole RFID thing is pretty disturbing when you look at the behavior of governments throughout history, and the behavior of the US government recently. The trend towards tracking and investigating everyone in more and more detail every month is not encouraging at all. I'm not concerned too much about today or tomorrow, but 20 years from now when the cost of readers is $2, and they can communicate wireless to a central reporting system - all in the name of anti-terrorism. I used to think that this was all tin-foil hat stuff, but recent (past 4 years) actions by the government have changed my mind.
GB isn't much better at the moment with tracking cameras everywhere, automated license plate readers, etc.
Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle' (Score:5, Insightful)
You won't notice if... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, one wouldn't notice if someone dressed in an LED clown suit with a megaphone started jumping up and down with a wand announcing, "Please remain immobile, I am about to scan you." But you're not going to notice if there's a reader embedded in the wall of a hallway where you're walking.
Still suffers from short read-range problem (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle' (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle' (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see why people get their panties in a bunch over RFID when it doesn't offer anything that we don't already have with bar codes.
The issue I would have with this, being ex-military myself, is the fact that an RFID tattoo would be permanent. When you're done with the military you can just throw your ID card away. Not-so-easy when that ID is tattoo'd permanently into your skin.
Re:New ID? (Score:2, Insightful)