Harnessing Subatomic Effects for Product Authentication

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."

Comments

Re:chemical markers already in use?

[cperciva]

Each manufacturing plant, and each production run, is individually identifiable, but not because there is a conspiracy to tag products. They are identifiable because we're surrounded by trace elements, and smelting processes don't remove these trace impurities. Each ore deposit, and in fact each truckload of ore, will have slightly different proportions of these traces; with enough work, you can then track material back to its source.

IIRC during the cold war the US monitored soviet nuclear tests by measuring the atmospheric proportion of a few carefully chosen isotopes, and could not only work out how many nuclear tests had been performed, but how powerful the explosions were.

Re:chemical markers already in use?

[jfengel]

There was some talk about requiring manufacturers to use "taggants" back in 1996, in the wake of the McVeigh bombing. There's an article on it at CNN. It consisted of various-colored microscopic plastic bits.

The goal was not to detect explosives at a distance, but to be able to identify it after the fact. The usual debates: the NRA, the ATF, etc. It was above board, at the congressional level, not a consipriacy. In the end, nothing came of it.