RFID tracking people has already arrived...

[CGofMP]

Paranoia?

How about this...

I do not have any idea how robust these rfid chips are to heat, spinning and impact. I also do not know how many unique numbers each one can hold.

Given the technological advances and the potential for hardening electronics (remember when the slight bump of a vacuum tube could take a tv or radio off-line...) I do not think it would be too hard to see a future where rfid like devices (arent they the size of a grain of rice?) become pretty tough.

Remember a few years back when they wanted to put 'marking agents' in all the gunpowder? Well what would happen if you encased RFID into each bullet sold?

Suddenly if someone has a reader:

* You are NOT CCWing any longer - anyone with a reader knows what ya got on yer hip under that coat

* "Your bullets" are all registered as soon as you leave the wal-mart making 4473's far less of a worry than your next purchase for federal tracking purposes

* Police might be able to scan your car and develop Probable Cause for search for an arbitrary number of rounds as decided by the government - we all know that if you carry more than 200 rounds you must be a terrorist right?

Theres probably a lot more...

As for the mark Of The Beast comments... I can understand where the posters are coming from. This specific item may not be THE MARK, but this technology, and the usage of them to track people and allow or disallow specific actions/transactions is certainly a way to prove technology. We now DO HAVE the capacity to track every single financial transaction (no matter how tiny) in real time and track every person who made it in the world. The technology for this did not even exist when I graduated high school... The mark of the beast was a technological laugh then. As society becomes cashless, it becomes more and more of a technological possibility.

 

[SMMAssociates]

Yup....

CGofMP:

Technically, a metal "ball" (i.e., about any standard bullet configuration except sabot loads or those "plastic tip" rounds) would be difficult to bug because of all the metal around the RFID device.

All the metal in the gun may get in the act, too.

If reloading isn't forbidden, making your own bullets is still pretty simple.

But, on the whole, you're not being paranoid.

I've not followed the technology enough at this point to be certain that this hasn't been dealt with, but I think the major complication in being able to track about any object you can embed a chip into is the issue of multiple responses.

IOW, if you bugged a box of 50 rounds, being able to register the ID of each round as the box went across a scanner, is still a problem. If you send a pulse (remember these things essentially receive a radio signal for a small fraction of a second, and then use some part of that signal to power a response that's a digitally encoded serial number) to that box, all 50 rounds will more or less reply at the same time. Sorting that out's got to be a bear. Any sort of synchronization or timing in the chips - "listen for a clear channel", for example, raises the parts count and cost, and increases the scan time.

This probably can be made to work when you're counting cases of mouthwash going into WalMart, but at some point individual products get hard to separate.

(Somebody _could_, I'm sure, be able to read the fact that you have one or more rounds on your person, though, with a handheld device. Actually getting the serial number may be another issue.)

The anti-theft widget you'll find on many CD's and DVD's (and other products) in the local stores are a bit simpler, but theoretically every product you buy could be equipped with one of them, or a smaller equivalent, making "who's carrying" pretty easy to spot.

'Course, when we're talking about ammunition, it's still the same junk science as "smart guns" and "ballistic fingerprinting".

If you're not a handloader, though, it's quite possible.

 

[Waitone]

I can see a robust future for handheld Tesla coils.

 

[Gifted]

Well, I happen to be a Christian too! Are you a better Christian than I because you see the mark of the beast in everything you read?

Where am I seeing it in everything I read? Please, enlighten me. All it means would be that there's a religious objection to having it. Of course, they'll probably take away the first amendment, so then I can't object that way.

Religion aside, having the government being able to track where I go and what I do, even so far as to put a note that I can't buy something or other, and so when I scan my card or whatever, it checks a national database to see if I'm allowed to shop there, or buy a particular item, or force me to buy something.

I can see RFID for secure stuff. My dad carries around a little thing on his keychain, instead of a badge. It lets him into work. I can see having one for the military. The SPs wouldn't have to check your ID, if the machine doesn't beep, something's wrong.

 

[CGofMP]

Looks like the little experiment is over....

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/10917144.htm?1c
a couple quotes:

Company pulls out of contract to track students with RFID

SUTTER, Calif. (AP) - The grade school that required students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move has ended the program because the company that developed the technology pulled out....

Paul Nicholas Boylan, the lawyer for the Brittan school district, said the school board had no plans to do away with the tags. But InCom cited the intense media attention its experiment generated and concern that the badges were being damaged by families opposed to them as factors in its decision, he said.

NOTE the last paragraph was NOT posted in most versions of this story that I saw online.... interesting.

Good for the families and their microwaves, hammers, tinfoil, or tinsnips!

This will be back... and will have to be fought.

 

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

...the badges were being damaged by families opposed to them

Heh!!

Way to go, families!