Motorola Developing Pill and Tattoo Authentication Methods 194
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.'"
Re:Tattoo Authentication Methods (Score:4, Insightful)
This would be voluntary. That is a pretty big difference.
At first. It would be voluntary at first.
There are many people in power in this world today who would love to be able to tattoo some sort of ID on people from birth, or embed an RFID in their bodies at birth, and so on, so they can be tracked everywhere they go (with greater ease than we already are with goddamn fucking cameras everywhere. NO. JUST. NO.
Yes, I understand the article is talking about something like a henna tattoo or a sticker you wear.. but it would set a dangerous precedent. The line has to be drawn here, no farther!
Re:Clip this! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: Tattoo Authentication Methods (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems like a strange idea, for a small market...I mean, we've seen how well the inject-able RFID chips have sold....