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Non-Lethal Sniper Rifle: You're Tagged For Life
gbjbaanb writes "Cool new urban battlefield weaponry for the geeks to fear. The
Id Sniper is a nonlethal sniper rifle that fires tiny GPS microchips into the body of the target. The idea is that a rowdy crowd can be tagged for later 'processing' by law enforcement officials.
Apparently the chip hitting you will feel like a mosquito-bite lasting a fraction of a second.
Although it looks, and sounds like a cyberpunk weapon, its for real from a Danish company that has already shown it off at a Chinese Police exhibition.
check out the tracking software." Here's hoping this is cautionary artwork.
I was just talking about this with a friend, and now it's real!
Use it to 'mark' the kids your child hangs out with so you can always keep track of what they do. Love and trust your kid, but be wary of his/her friends!
GPL Deconstructed
i can only hope that this is an april fools joke coming in too late
Besides the fact that this is invasion of privacy (in the weirdest possible way), what happens when the sniper decides to shoot and it hits your eyeball?
It may be a tiny device but you're either dead or blind either way.
Get paid to code OSS
Dear Editors,
Today is not April Fool's day...........
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
Now I know it's just a joke. _No_ commercial software runs on OpenBSD.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
"Besides the fact that this is invasion of privacy (in the weirdest possible way), what happens when the sniper decides to shoot and it hits your eyeball?"
It is just the first step. Eventually, you will look like this
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...I'll just microwave myself everytime I come home from rioting!
Almost more disurbing... check out the JuJu in the Products section of the company's site. Creepy!
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
Here. All it says is "this is not the way..."
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
that's a nice 3D studio render there :)
This reminds me of Mike Oldfield's Maestro music/VR videogame.
In the default/demo mode, you can hit the spacebar and fire at whatever is in front of you. The bullets resemble tiny circuitboards.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Full body Aluminum foil get-ups just got more popular.
Insert Witty Remark Here ===>____________________________
That is not a "GPS Chip" on the website, it is a tiny microchip used to ID dogs and cats. The website is surprising slim on any details and to me appears to be a complete farse.
It's fake. The "GPS Pellet" is nothing more than a picture of a common transponder (RFID). Even if they could get the GPS electronics that small, and fit a tansmitter in there, the battery needed for more than a few minutes of GPS calculations would be significantly larger than the capsule.
Furthermore, the GPS signal doesn't go very deep through human tissue, it degrades as it goes, and a transmitter strong ernough to be received more than a few hundred yards away would be comparable in size and power consumption to a cell phone.
Interesting concept. It's not impossible, but it's not cost effective now.
-Adam
Snake Plissken: Got a smoke?
Malloy: The United States is a non-smoking nation! No smoking, no drugs, no alcohol, no women - unless you're married - no foul language, no red meat!
Snake Plissken: Land of the free.
a little modification, and it's just like the matrix.
"The value of a man resides in what he gives,
and not in what he is capable of receiving."
--Albert Einstein
After looking at the "GPS-chip Verichip(r)" all I could think was that if that hit me with enough force to penetrate my skin it would hurt a lot more than any mosquito bite I've ever gotten. Maybe if the mosquito had malaria and I was hospitalized for a couple of weeks the pain would be equivalent.
Even assuming wire a LOT finer than typical magnet (coil wrapping) wire, that looks like one hell of a big device. Maybe you are required to bend over so they can inject it as a suppository.
Just a little late for April 1st...
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
it's for real from a Danish company that has already shown it off at a Chinese Police exhibition.
This sentence leads to some interesting concepts:
* If the Chinese authorities had this cyber-weapon at their disposal, would lives have been saved at Tiananmen Square?
* If the demonstrators had been tagged instead of shot outright, would it have been any better for them in the long run?
* Isn't the whole idea incredibly creepy?
Actually, I have my doubts that a map, like the one tracking the terrorist padre in the demo, is currently possible. Remember the distance-squared law, frequently mentioned in other RFID articles?
This sounds more like a James Bond tracking device than anything possible in the Real World.
Something similar that *would* be useful against *real* criminals would be a TollTag gun -- fire a vehicle tracker into the body panel of a fleeing vehicle, and track it as it travels the freeway system in a wired-up town like Houston.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
This can't be real.
The image of the rifle in question looks like CGI from a video game -- if it was real, why not just use a photo rather than a photo-realistic synthetic graphic?
And their other product, with the silly cartoons, is even more implausible. But let's not get distracted by the obvious fake -- the gun is more interesting anyway.
As a hypothetical exercise, could this kind of coverty GPS planting work? Let's say that the GPS beacon / transmitter is small enough to be mistaken for an insect's sting, so no bigger than a grain of sand. What then?
I don't believe for a minute that this is real, but I had no problem believing that various Three Letter Agencies would love to treat this as a prototype for devices they would like to build. How close are we to being able to approximate this with current technology?
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
[Note: I've had plenty of reservations all along about the US decision to invade Iraq and still believe it was not the right thing to do.]
Now that US Marines are confronted with some of the worst of all possible scenarios(*) this technology would be helpful.
(*) Namely, a large crowd of demonstrators, 97% comprised of unarmed civilians, wearing civilian clothes, has 3% composition of similarly-dressed individuals but toting Kalishnokov's and firing at the Marines.
Current option: Marines could start firing into the crowd, risk injuring unarmed civilians, and create even more ill-will.
Or, now, sharpshooters could fire GPS mosquitoes at armed demonstrators for later surveillance, weapons-search missions. If they hit an unarmed civilian, it's not as much of a PR catastrophe.
Finally, after giving the Iraqi people democracy and an progressive constitution guaranteeing regular elections, women's suffrage, human rights, freedom of worship, no state-sponsored religion, leave them to deconstruct all of that and fashion their own hell - we've got enough of our own hell to deal with already.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
GPS antennas must be pretty big, because the signals from orbit are pretty weak.
Small projectiles are less stable. A projectile the size of a grain of sand could barely cross a room.
The kinetic energy required to overcome air friction would make the impact pretty serious, if you could magically overcome the instability problem, and magically make the tiny projectile carry that much kinetic energy without vaporising it.
As for tracking the thing, where's the transmit antenna? RFID tags have a short range, and they're a lot bigger than a mosquito-sized impact. No antenna means no signal range.
And as other posters have noted, there's no room for a power source, the GPS signals don't penetrate well, etc. etc.
Ardent Pedantry R Us,
Flumph
Feel free to shoot this with far less discrimination than using a lethal weapon. Got a small demonstration that you think might get out of hand? Shoot everyone now just in case. Oh, people can still die from this? Well, it's safer than firing lethal weapons at them. If a surly mother or overly-concerned consumer buys the farm once in awhile on a picket line, well, maybe they should have stayed at home instead of being out agitating.
"If the Chinese authorities had this cyber-weapon at their disposal, would lives have been saved at Tiananmen Square"
Probably not. The Red Chinese regime has seen no problem at all with executing more than 30,000,000 civilians so far. Less-lethal means of stopping the pro-democracy demonstrators would have still meant killing them later. Why waste a trigger-pull while you have them in your sights?
Chairman Mao: "The One-Bullet Manager"
priest in the picture look like Duke, from Doonesbury?
This was on the radio last night. See here: http://nextbigthing.org/ (the third item)
Here we go again, waiting for the conspiracy theory crowd to get their claws on this one.
This sig no verb.
Its based on an essay in Abuse your illusions called "How I crashed a Chinese Arms Biazaar With A Rifle That Doesn't Exist"
My favourite use would be tagging girls in night clubs and then stalk them. So much easier than asking for phone numbers.
I can't believe I fell for it. The site is such an obvious fake. These guys are laughing their collective butts off at our readiness to don the tinfoil hat and march into battle.
Mod me down... after replying to such a fake, I don't deserve Karma.
Now, what do we do about Timothy, the editor, and gbjbaanb, the submitter?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Use 'infra-red paint' paint balls. Better real-world sniper range than a grain of sand and ruffle the same affect as a rubber bullet. Target knows they got hit, so maybe they will stop what they are doing and worry about the mess. Then use a infra-red camera to track local movement, they have to break away for a restroom break eventually.
As pointed out by others, this is almost surely not a reality yet.
And no, it's not going to use a real GPS transmitter.
But the implications of this even as a thought (and while not real I bet it -has- been proposed to government folks as a concept) strike right back at the heart of the RFID debate.
While RFID may not be strong enough via commercial application to track this more than a few dozen feet, I am sure that with the right amount of money a much more sensitive receptor could be engineered. Even if not, having many very inexpensive receptors in various locations could form a detection mesh.
I sort of think that if anyone shot an RFID tag into me at high velocity I would probably be aware of it, but there are plenty of other ways to tag a person or item without them necessarily detecting it (anyone here ever slip a library anti-theft tag into someone's backpack?).
Since it comes down to the same ideas as gun control (ie, the criminals can always get the guns even if it is illegal just like the government can always aquire RFID trackers even if they legislate them out of the public sector), we're back to the same idea of needing to find ways to destroy and/or shield RFIDs.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Any GPS transmitter that small that implants something without you knowing will have so little energy in it, that unless oyu have sensors everywhere, there is no way whatsoever to track it. Especially track a person from satellite.
Unless there is some miraculous battery I don't know of, this is an obvious fake.
~ kjrose
I'll try to dig up a link with the real story about this.
Xel'Naga
Major problems
Okay so for all of the above and more, we can conclude that this product is not for real. So what are the motivations of the people responsible for the web site? Who knows. FUD is probably one of their goals. Establishing prior art, maybe? Scaring you, probably.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
I wish I'd seen THIS page on their site before I submitted my first post, now I'm starting to think that HUMOR is their goal
t s_en002_instructions.htm
http://www.backfire.dk/EMPIRENORTH/newsite/produc
Notice how everybody in the instructions is white except for the one "suspicious" guy. These guys must have had a brain storm after watching Brazil.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
If you recieve the mark of the beast involuntarily, you can still switch sides, right? ...right, guys?
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Time to get my gps jammer working
http://www.phrack.org/show.php?p=60&a=13
So no you couldn't track someone with it as in james bond. You would need to place scanners in places like public transport entrances, hospitals, shops, banks, all the places people have to go. Then anyone you want can be easily tracked moving through the transmitters and arrested at your convenience.
I am reminded of a similar project several decades ago. It was a bit more primitive. It was a yellow star sewn onto the clothes.
This looks like a hoax but not a funny one. Oh well at least for this we can rely on the christian fundamentalists to be on the good side. Marking someone like this is the devils work.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
... it seems that this isn't really real, either... ;)
This was a performance art project...this artist (Danish, iirc) put together this idea, took it to a international arms fair, and then documented the reaction of the crowd...read about it in one of Russ Kick's books.
Sorry folks, nothing to see here, move along, citizens.
Woot w00t w007.
Why the hell even bother to go inside? Most places have lines outside, and noone will object to you standing on a dark roof with a sniper rifle (as opposed to inside, where this possibly could get you kicked out for rowdy behaviour).
Then again, why not a nude beach? Might as well have a good look at what you're going to get (take) before choosing...
Hell with the government! She'd be hell on wheels if I had to wear a collar like that!
Just need something the uses bodyheat to draw out power.
I call bullshit on this one.
But, since it is an RFID tag, this could be employed much like how they are using it. To make this system a reality:
Not goin' to happen anytime soon, although putting a camera in a sniper rifle and hooking up to a db is a stroke of genius. Makes me wonder who they stole the idea from.
The site was created as part of a hoax to see if the chinese police would actually buy something like this. They did. The whole sordid affair is documented in this book.
Jakob Boeskov, the purported "CEO" of "Empire North", is a satirist. Here is a link to his personal homepage, along with an explanation of the FAKE GPS Sniper Rifle (emphasis is mine):
:)
http://www.backfire.dk/JB/indexreal.html
"Giant balloon sculptures, voodoo-cursed technology and blueprints for hi-tech weapons smuggled into Chinas first international weapons fair - in the world of Jakob S. Boeskov the amazing meets the political in a unique mix.
Coming from a background in comics, Copenhagen based artist Jakob S. Boeskov seems destined to work with satire and pastiche. Using a palette of different media such as web, paintings, writings, 3D drawings and animations, as well as collaborations with musicians, writers, voodoo priests (!) and industrial designers he "hacks and bends" media, reality and technology to give a startling and shocking view of life in the 21st century.
His recent works has been created within the framework of his self-styled "sci-fi art" (or "fictionist") concept where he takes "an imaginary product from the future" and tests it out today, in a real environment. He did this most notably in his MY DOOMSDAY WEAPON project where he created "the most horrible weapon in the world" (- a piece of "pre-crime technology" designed to mark demonstrators with GPS (Global Positioning System) chips "before the crime is committed"). Jakob S. Boeskov brought drawings of this weapon to China Police 2002, Chinas first international weapons fair, where the international weapons dealer elite and greeted this nightmarish weapon with much enthusiasm."
Happy April Fools Day, 11 days late!
If you can track the monsters coming to find you, just run away when you know you're low on ammo!
~mingust
I believe back in the 50s and 60s both the US and USSR attempted to use radioactive tagging to track people. Sucked to be the subject. A subdermal device would not be useful as it is too small to have enough power for satelite. A variation on an RFID would be interesting, though - you could literally pick people up as they moved through town.
-- $G
from www.jakobboeskov.com
For this daredevil project Jakob S. Boeskov infiltrated an armsfair in Beijing with "the ID Sniper - the worlds most horrible hi-tech weapon" Too fantastic to be true? No its not! Read parts of the story here:
In June 2002 Jakob S. Boeskov travelled to the belly of the dragon to meet the enemy eye to eye - infiltrating China Police 2002 the first international weapons fair in China. He brings with him four hundred fake business cards, a promotional poster of a horrible hitech weapon, and the worst stomach cramps ever. Tag along to the Kingdom in the Middle and meet robot salesmen, enthusiastic Chinese entrepreneurs and singing teenage policemen.
Basically, the idea was to come up with the most terrible weapon imaginable, and to test it in a real environment. We had three days to finish up the weapon. Our fake company, Empire North, already had a logo and a slogan ("The Logical Solution" aping the Nazi classic "The Final Solution") but we had no weapon yet. Genius designer Von B and I worked overtime, and in two days we had the ID Sniper ready.
The day before I was leaving, BLACK BOX editor Mads Brügger called designer Von B and asked him to change the design, because "it was too far out and he couldn't be responsible for what happened, if I was found out."
Changing was not possible at this late stage. I guess he knew that. Maybe he was just, more or less elegantly, trying to shake off his share of the burden. I can understand it, because we were all becoming afraid. Afraid of what would happen if I was found out, and afraid of what might happen if the weapon was taken seriously. Would it be copied? Would we be responsible for the production of one of the most inhumane weapons in the history of man? We justified our project by telling ourselves that right now, a few people were walking around with socalled VeriChips implanted in their bodies, chips manufactured by the company Applied Digital Solutions. We kept reminding ourselves that right, now prisoners in Sweden are doing time at home wearing GPS chip wristbands. It would merely be a question of time before the technology would be used preemptively on suspicious persons, and as we repeatedly told ourselves, all new technology has been used for military purposes, and this technology would too, we concluded. Why not bring it out prematurely, so at least we could have a small part in getting a thorough discussion about this kind of technology? With this question, we basically came up with a brand new art concept. Let's for now just call it scifi conceptual art, defined like this: take the essence of an imagined future, turn it into a concept and present this concept in present day reality. Report the reactions.
Would this new concept lead to a brave journey, searching for truth or would it just be a highly irresponsible prank? There was only one way to find out, and that was to do it.
This is how it was done.
FACTS
THE ID SNIPER RIFLE AS PRESENTED ON THE EMPIRE NORTH POSTER
GPS microchip based identification rifle
Empire North is proud to present the preliminary showcase of the ID Sniper Rifle a brand new tool in longterm riot control, and antiterror management. Please notice that some aspects of this cuttingedge technology are still in its outmost infancy, and more research is needed before the ID Sniper Rifle is a reality. Hence we are welcoming investors and business partners to join us in the important quest of developing the ID Sniper Rifle.
What is the ID Sniper Rifle?
To put it short, the idea is to implant a GPS microchip in the body of a human being, using a highpowered sniper rifle as the long distance injector. The microchip will enter the body and stay there, causing no internal damage, and only a very small amount of physical pain to the target. It will feel like a mosquito bite, lasting a fraction of a second.
At the same time, a digital camcorder with a zo
AccountKiller
I just wanted to say that I agree with the poster. Although I am quite liberal (and think that the next regime change should be in Washington D.C.), we're screwed unless we can find a way to "liberate" Iraq without destroying it. This means pacifying demonstrations without killing everyone. Even though THIS rifle is B.S. (my friend at Boeing designs the GPS satellites) if a rifle like this could implant RFID chips (like the ones in my dog) it would make demonstrators think twice about protesting (especially violently).
My college roommate is now a diplomat with the U.S. foreign service. He says oftentimes visa applicants believe the U.S. has a supercomputer that keeps tabs on everyone so that when they apply for a visa, the U.S. checks their records. So what if whenever someone applies for a visa (or a job working for the U.S. overseas) we wave a scanner over them? If we had a decent database that could pinpoint when that chip was implanted in them, we might have an idea what kind of violent activities they were up to! (Either that or they're going to have to get used to the idea of surgery after demonstrations!).
If you don't care if the rioters see you fire at them, and you don't care if they feel the pain of the, um, "injections", could chips like those used for pets be loaded into something like a shotgun shell?
After the riot you could scan pedestrians to see if they got chipped. Snap their pictures then. Have the turnstiles at the Subway activate hidden cameras to take the pictures of chipped riders automatically.
If you are scanning people shortly after they get chipped it doesn't matter if the chip is merely embedded in their clothing.
Use different id chips for each riot.
No, I don't like this idea.
Someone confirm its just a bad joke..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Juju..
"citizen narc"
This whole thing must be a joke....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Indeed. So-called "non-lethal" projectile and chemical weapons are not really non-lethal. That's propaganda: it's what the police call them to make them sound safe. Aw, a fluffy little bean bag. Aw, a plastic bullet. How much can a little thing like that hurt.
The reality is organ damage, serious wounds, broken bones, spinal injury, miscarriage, blindness, and death. And that's when the police don't deliberately aim for maximum injury, or fire at point blank range - the sadistic bastards.
Some weapons manufacturers more accurately label those same weapons "less lethal", meaning they still kill people, but they're not specifically designed for killing.
Such weapons are meant to be used by professional, trained officers in the correct way: such as aiming at people's legs, or the ground, and from a minimum distance. They come with specific instructions to this effect, and warnings of what will happen when these instructions are ignored. Police officers routinely ignore them.
When a police officer aims the same projectile weapons at someone's head, or at their neck, they are intending to kill that person or break their spine, and sometimes they succeed. Disturbingly, police actually do that in crowd control situations.
Even when they hit your back or legs, they can cause severe organ damage and/or broken bones.
And we haven't discussed the chemical weapons, yet. Exercise for the reader.
Here's a fairly good and accurate article.
-- Jamie
Take a look at the link at the bottom of the JUJU instructions pointing to whitehouse.org/homeland.
Looks like hours of fun.
I guess you could call it "art", whatever that means. I personally wouldn't lower it down to that level though. Let's face it, what people call art these days is meaningless self-masturbation, and this is far more interesting than that.
I think it's more like journalism, or some kind of subversive research. As someone else pointed out, this isn't "nothing to see here". Your claim would seem to be the "Oh my god look at that horrible device" is the thing to see, and since it doesn't exist, forget about it. The far more startling fact is that this thing isn't that far away from what's possible. Sure, you couldn't really do the GPS tracking because of power requirements. But what about shooting someone with just an RFID? The range of the transmitter wouldn't be very good of course, but it would be proof later on that someone was at the protest.
AccountKiller
And who is liable for the first person who dies from an infection from this device? There's a reason why you rub the skin with alcohol before and after a shot. I see no safety precaution here. I also see no mention of sterility for the device itself.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Just because you've been GPS-tagged doesn't mean you're guilty.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Innocents get killed regularly by people running from police.
Maybe police should tag the cars of those that run, then stop the chase. They could then track the car later at sane speeds.
Mod the parent and grandparent messages up.
I'm a bit torn between marvelling at the genius and the stupidity of someone willing to pretend to be an international arms dealer for the sake of art and a few yuks.
I guess nobody noticed this, under the article title.
from the is-this-a-joke dept.
Please flee in terror in an orderly manner.
I mean, what the hell is that guy doing in North Carolina? There is nothing here but toothless rednecks. Obviously, the image is fake.
Eat at Joe's.
For those of you still wondering whether this thing is for real...well its not. Check the guy's behind (Jakob S. Boeskov) this website. He has this weird thing with "fictionism". Quote: Basically, the idea was to come up with the most terrible weapon imaginable, and to test it in a real environment. We had three days to finish up the weapon. Our fake company, Empire North, already had a logo and a slogan ("The Logical Solution" aping the Nazi classic "The Final Solution") but we had no weapon yet. Genius designer Von B and I worked overtime, and in two days we had the ID Sniper ready. The day before I was leaving, BLACK BOX editor Mads Brügger called designer Von B and asked him to change the design, because "it was too far out and he couldn't be responsible for what happened, if I was found out." Changing was not possible at this late stage. I guess he knew that. Maybe he was just, more or less elegantly, trying to shake off his share of the burden. I can understand it, because we were all becoming afraid. Afraid of what would happen if I was found out, and afraid of what might happen if the weapon was taken seriously. Would it be copied? Would we be responsible for the production of one of the most inhumane weapons in the history of man? We justified our project by telling ourselves that right now, a few people were walking around with so-called VeriChips implanted in their bodies, chips manufactured by the company Applied Digital Solutions. We kept reminding ourselves that right, now prisoners in Sweden are doing time at home wearing GPS chip wristbands. It would merely be a question of time before the technology would be used pre-emptively on suspicious persons, and as we repeatedly told ourselves, all new technology has been used for military purposes, and this technology would too, we concluded. Why not bring it out prematurely, so at least we could have a small part in getting a thorough discussion about this kind of technology? With this question, we basically came up with a brand new art concept. Let's for now just call it sci-fi conceptual art, defined like this: take the essence of an imagined future, turn it into a concept and present this concept in present day reality. Report the reactions. I just can't believe some of you really thought this was for real.
The ID sniper is a deliberate hoax by a politically motivated "perofrmance artist". He REALLY went to the Chinese police weapons show, but with a BOGUS product, just to see what would happen... http://www.backfire.dk/JB/
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
A low pressure firehose spraying dark blue skin staining food coloring.
Taged, lasts at least a week, non-lethal (unless they drown), and if it's a vegtable dye also biodegradable.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Imagine... DEFCON Some guy: "Wow, Homeland Security is really trying to keep us safe, look, they even got snipers. Me:"Ouch, Goddamn... Someone set us up the tracking" Big Brother "We get signal... Main screen turn on. Move all agents for great justice"
Shenanigans!? I better get my broom!
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon