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'

[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'

[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".

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.

Tattoos as ID?

[Vinegar Joe]

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

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.

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?

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).

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.