RFID Tattoo for Tracking Cattle and Humans

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.'"

Comments

Could have just said 'tracking cattle'

[MECC]

The poster could have left off the 'and humans' part.

Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle'

[solevita]

From the summary:

the article does mention RFID tattoos are possible for people, specifically the military

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.

Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle'

[solevita]

A couple of brief reasons:

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.

Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle'

[Goaway]

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.

How, exactly, do you think the military works? Every soldier is treated as a precious little snowflake?

Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle'

[mikkelm]

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.

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.

Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle'

[Nitage]

If you RTFA, you will note that the RFID tag is only readable from "Up to four feet away". I frequently find myself less than 4 feet away from other people - in crowds, in bars, on planes/trains/buses

Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle'

[walt-sjc]

If you RTFA, you will note that the RFID tag is only readable from "Up to four feet away". Somehow I don't think that really counts as a great distance.

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'

[run_w_xcors]

GB? When's the last time you looked at all the cameras that are pointed at you in the US? A friend of mine and I were walking around San Francisco and I told him to count the amount of cameras he saw while walking around town. Just about everywhere we went (admittedly, in nice parts of town, not so much in say, the Tenderloin) we could see some form of camera that could possibly be pointed at us. To make matters worse, I got stopped on the street by a crew of people shooting a video for a handheld video camera (only making things worse because it was ironic we were just talking about being recorded in public). Now look at school initiatives to place cameras in all classrooms. Our children are being raised with digital eyeballs on them. When they get older, they won't know any better than having cameras pointed at them. Tin foil hat stuff...heh. Remember when Greenpeace was a bunch of stinky hippies on a boat? Now a former presidential candidate is running around talking about global climate problems. Conspiracies aside, there are tons of information gathering tools in use by the government. At this time the good news is that you're still protected by the constitution, unless of course, an executive order trumps that in times of "emergency".

Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle'

[eno2001]

American and European humans are ALREADY stock to be tracked. There was a tipping point in the late 80s/early 90s when business became powerful enough that they lost interest in you buying their products. That wasn't profitable enough. The new profit center is buying, selling and trading humans and it happens daily. Do you honestly think that television ads and the companies that make them make much money from getting you to buy a product? They make MUCH more money by selling YOU to their true customers: the business selling the product. The businesses that are actually trying to sell something aren't interested in things like customer loyalty these days. If anything, it's more profitable to them if they take a group of their customers and sell them over to another company who will pay handsomely to own you and your patronage. This is why there is no attention paid to making you happy. You only need to be "happy enough".

Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle'

[Ziwcam]

... same as serial numbers and bar codes.
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.

eh?

[Phil246]

If its really rfid, the pattern of the dots wouldnt matter since it would have its own chip etc to send a unique id back. Optical patterns are irrelevent with it.

If its a pattern, and using a propriatory ( presumably optical ) reader, this is not radio based tech and thus not rfid.
surely?

Tattoos as ID?

[Vinegar Joe]

Didn't work out so well the last time somebody tried it.

No offense but...

[KKlaus]

I don't really see many additional privacy concerns here, seeing as RFID capsules already have been implanted in people. I guess this tech represents another theoretical vector (to the extent that its cheaper or more durable), but really the whole putting it in people thing and associated privacy issues seems pretty contrived for this issue, and only present to create artificial buzz. Here's a hint, when implanting objects (or dyes, etc) in animals, don't be surprised if those same objects can go in people because - hey! people are animals too.

Good for the sheeple

[Anonymous Coward]

I say we tag everyone apart from those with the hutzpah to refuse. Then us untagged folk can self-identify and conspire to clean up the gene pool.

mark

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough* mark of the beast *cough* *cough*

Mistake for covert ops

[devnullkac]

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).

Should have just said 'and humans'

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it be daft to have said only "tracking cattle" when there are far more applications which are patently obvious. The first "harmless" use is proposed as soldiers. Next, it will seem logical to track inmates of correctional institutes. Perhaps other behavioral institutes could benefit. Sex offenders. Prison guards. Other security applications.

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.

You won't notice if...

[sacrilicious]

You are going to notice if someone walks up [to within 4 feet of] you and starts wanding you to get an RFID signal.

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

[tulsaoc3guy]

Short-range (less than 4 feet) ways of collecting cattle ID numbers such as this technique all introduce "speed of commerce" issues in the U.S. cattle market. Thousands of cattle filter through U.S. cattle auction markets during sale days. Longer-range, simultaneous-read solutions would be more appropriate. Check out http://www.zigbeef.com/ .

Re:New ID?

[trippedn]

Its fun until you get a few smart assed friends who copy a pedo's tattoo and get you drunk!