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'

[garcia]

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

Then it would be a real news site and not Slashdot. They have to keep raising the bar to set themselves apart from the rest!

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'

[d3ac0n]

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.

Ok, a couple problems here.

1) 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. You are going to notice if someone walks up near you and starts wanding you to get an RFID signal. In practical applications, the RFID tag is often (although not always) little better than a barcode tag due to interference from nearby radio sources and environmental signal blockage. This is a big reason why it hasn't seen widespread adoption yet. It costs much more than comparable technologies but only adds a small value.

2) In the case of regular citizens, I absolutely agree with you. But for Soldiers the RFID tattoo has a great advantage over the dog tag as it cannot be lost. If it is small, removable via inexpensive laser surgery, and placed on a couple different points around the body, it is useful for identifying bodies that have been badly mangled due to things like bombs, mines, and other explosives.

It also has an excellent practical application for use with criminals, both in prison and out on parole. If you place RFID readers at certain strategic locations, you can go a long way to detecting the presence of, say, pedophiles that have been paroled and are hanging out near a school (assuming you have hidden RFID readers near schools, of course.) Naturally, the law-enforcement uses are very limited, due to the limitations of RFID that I mentioned in the first point. But the uses for identifying soldiers are very practical, and I imagine that we will be seeing RFID used in that manner sometime in the very near future.

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'

[Kozz]

... it is useful for identifying bodies that have been badly mangled due to things like bombs, mines, and other explosives.

Or it could also be used specifically to TRIGGER bombs, mines and other explosives upon detecting a particular group of persons, or even an individual that matches an exact code.

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'

[zombiestomper]

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.
When's the last time you saw a doorway over 4-feet wide? Unless you plan on staying in the wide-open spaces the rest of your life, you're going to be scanned and tracked. All it takes is a simple scanning device and a building entrance. They already have tags and scanners at doors for tracking stolen, they just add a new scanner that tracks RFID and viola`. We track and store that data, throw it into a database maybe link a couple of other databases together and now we know where you are, who you're with and what you're buying--all the time... But you don't care, it's not like you're a criminal or a terrorist or anything..

Re:Could have just said 'tracking cattle'

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

If you place RFID readers at certain strategic locations, you can go a long way to detecting the presence of, say, pedophiles that have been paroled and are hanging out near a school (assuming you have hidden RFID readers near schools, of course.)

There must be some term coined by now, akin to Godwin's law, that as the length of a discussion increases, the probability of someone using combatting pedophillia to justify their argument approaches 1.

However, unlike Godwin's law, the person who brings up pedophillia usually ends up "winning" the argument, or at least persuading the most amount of people.

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?

Re:eh?

[FooAtWFU]

RFID means that they send out a radio pulse with an RFID reader, and they get something back. If the pattern of dots can somehow elicit the proper response on the proper frequency, then it's RFID, whether or not it's in a neat little grain-of-rice-sized microchip of some sort.

I'm not sure whether this can conform to the same specifications as what we normally consider RFID, but it's probably something they can read with radio waves, not an optical scan. Radio wave scanning can detect patterns and stuff too, you know.

Re:eh?

[mrogers]

My guess is that it uses reflective glass beads injected into the skin with compressed air. The pattern could then be read with any electromagnetic wave that can penetrate a few millimetres of skin, eg microwaves.

Re:eh?

[LMacG]

At the company's website, they say it is

a proprietary ID system based on a biocompatible ink tattoo with chipless RFID functionality. When applied, the ink creates a unique ID that can be detected without line of sight.

Tattoos as ID?

[Vinegar Joe]

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

Re:Tattoos as ID?

[Marko DeBeeste]

When they came for the Jerseies, I didn't protest, because I wasn't a Jersey

When they came for the Angus, I didn't protest, because I wasn't an Angus

When they came for the Herefords, I didn't protest, because I wasn't a Hereford

When they came for the sheep, there was no on left to protest for me

Re:Tattoos as ID?

[Tired_Blood]

I wasn't aware that the Nazis experienced any particular problems with their system of tattooing people.

Members of the Waffen-SS had a tattoo that indicated their blood-type. This identifier helped war-crime prosecutors considerably, so being branded in such a way did prove very problematic to those soldiers after the war.

Animals!

[nighty5]

"Somark Innovations, has successfully tested RFID tattoos to be used for tracking cattle and other animals."

So when does every member of Congress receive their tattoo?

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.

By any chance

[organgtool]

Are these tattoos shaped like barcodes? All I know is that if an EMP devastates the United States, I'm going to move to Seattle, join the fight against Manticore and get a chance to meet Jessica Alba (with sexy results)!

mark

[Anonymous Coward]

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

No metal?

[Cheesey]

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.

No metal? This doesn't sound like a radio transceiver at all. Can you make an electronic device without using any metals?

I wonder what it actually is. Glorified barcode?

Evolution of tracking.

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans already have multiple tracking methods, fingerprints, dna, phermones, iris identification, and even facial recognition. Most of these aren't useful in tracking and identifying animals. In the past hot iron branding has been the major identification for cows and this is just the natural evolution of that tracking method. If only they can track e. coli laced food this way as well...

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).

Re:*sniff*

[QuantumRiff]

While I disagree with this idea completely, the one thing I could see as a "benefit" for the soldiers would be to have scanners in the hospitals (mobile and permanent) as well as mobile scanners for medics. Might be useful if someone is badly injured or burned, can't find the dog tags (they blew away!) or something, perform a quick scan, and know that its Gunnery Sargent Hartman (the senior drill instructor!), he is allergic to penicillin, blood type 0-, and has a pin in his leg, so you can't put him through an MRI machine. Of course, you'd have to put it on the chest, or more than one location, in case of a missing limb.

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.

Re:New ID?

[trippedn]

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

Innovation RFID with temperature

[Camel Pilot]

At one time I did some work for a company that uses a purely passive (no battery) RFID inside the cow. They embed a temperature a/d device within a microchip RFID to provide identification along with accurate body temperature measurement. The device is packaged in a bolus that sits in the cow rumen. When the cow walks by a reader board the id and temperature is transmitted. The cool thing is that the device is energized by the reader board so that no battery is required.