Slashdot Mirror
Motorola Developing Pill and Tattoo Authentication Methods
redletterdave writes "In trying to solve the 'mechanical mismatch' between humans and electronics — particularly wearables — special projects chief Regina Dugan unveiled two new projects currently in development at Google's Motorola Mobility centered on rethinking authentication methodology, including electronic tattoos and ingestible pills. Of the pill, which Dugan called her 'first superpower,' she described it as an 'inside-out potato battery' that when swallowed, the acids in one's stomach serve as the electrolyte to power an 18-bit ECG-like signal that essentially turns one's body into an authentication token. 'It means my arms are like wires and my hands are like alligator clips [so] when I touch my phone, my computer, my door, I'm authenticated,' Dugan said. 'This is not science fiction.'"
Didn't we have a problem with this in Europe last century?
So I have to check my poop all the time for my auth token?
Eat it again? Renegotiate?
How do you authenticate yourself without the "inside out potato" - not science fiction maybe, but rather far out research - I like it ! :)
Good news! It's a suppository!
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
You become a were-cyborg.
It also sounds vulnerable to replay attacks. I can have you touch something that secretly records the signal, then play it back to the actual input device. Seems like a password you're always broadcasting from your skin...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I poop information!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
What kind of shitty future did I wake up in where 'unlocking your cellphone' is a "superpower"?
...Because I'm a potato!
And yet the prevailing political philosophy I see expressed by Slashdot commenters falls somewhere in the anarchist/libertarian area of the political graph, where there's little to no government and virtually unfettered personal (and corporate) behavior. In concept, it's nice to imagine a world where everyone can do anything they want as long as it's not harming anyone else. In practice, we find that "harm" is not always easy to see, and can result from complex sequences of events and interactions that are not individually problematic but nevertheless result in systemic harms.
I am by no means saying that government is the perfect solution to every problem. In fact, there is no perfect solution to most problems. There's only bricolage and compromise. Some things are better managed by government. Some things are better managed by the private sector. Both need to be accountable, though: the business world is accountable to the government, and the government is accountable to the people. When any of those mechanisms fails, the system has failed.
That is to say, I am deeply unhappy with the current state of US politics, since any efforts at accountability for government are stymied by the total lack of accountability in the business world.
But there's no way I'm going to take that and conclude the option is to nearly get rid of the government and just trust the market to work everything out. That way lies insanity, or at least a whole lot of misery.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Brings a new meaning to "Logging out"