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Harnessing Subatomic Effects for Product Authentication

Posted by timothy on from the how-about-a-laundry-pen dept.

Anon writes: "Israeli company Microtag claims to have come up with a way to avoid counterfits, and they mean everything from CDs to clothes to cash to vegetable seeds. Mix several micrograms of their 'magic powder' - which is engineered with a unique identification using the matter's spin - into your product - and later you can verify its authenticity with a relatively low-cost reader. Although their presumption is that no-one else will be able to create this 'magic powder' (which is probably only a matter of time and enough money), an Israeli article claims that Motorola and even the Bank of England are interested in the technology."

2 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. A couple example applications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
    o tagging of paper, so thoughts contrary to current political or corporate regimes can be traced back to their source
    o tagging of removable media, so cases of copyright infringment can be linked to the purchaser of the blank CDR
    o tagging of currency, eliminating that pesky tax evasion, drug trade, and prostitution problems often associated with anonymity

    Yes, this seems like wonderful technology. Really.

    ~~~

  2. It's not really a "new technology"... by bardencj · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The only thing that's new about this, as far as I can tell, is the low cost deployment. Consider what they do say about it:

    - The technology uses materials with "very unique physical and chemical properties" at the "sub-molecular level."

    - The reader is an RF "transceiver" which can detect the material in a manner analogous to "magnetic resonance imaging."

    Sounds to me like they've build themselves a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer that doesn't have to be very powerful due to bulk effects -- fire some RF at it, stop, then listen.

    There's nothing keeping anyone from using a more powerful NMR spectrometer to isolate the material and reproduce it. So maybe they'd just lobby to have NMR spectroscopy outlawed as a "counterfeiting tool." Security through obscurity reigns...