Tracking ammo and firearms sales in the future

[Selfdfenz]

I was just listening to a discussion of RFID systems which is basically barcoding taken to two or three orders of magnitude more power. From the sound of it, this technology may make it cheaply possible to ID, trace and track individual items like specific firearms and rnds of ammo and who bought them etc anytime any where they have a reader.

Seems like many major companies like WM are totally interested in this and already using it to some extent.

I just wondered if any here would stop purchasing from a company that places RFID in their products. Since I don't care for the idea that someone might be able to walk up to the side of my house one day and count the rnds of ammo in my closet I think I would (assuming I am even aware Win or Rem or S&B will fess up to adding RFID to their products)

Wouldn't this technology be the ultimate in gun control. While we are worring about how long the fed save copies of our background checks and purchases, they have the ability to know what we bought and track it forever regardless of who we sell it to etc. When you buy a box of WB at WM that purchase is in the WM db and someday you have to think each bullet might be.

http://www.spychips.com/

Sometimes I think if you live long enough a tinfiol hat starts to look pretty good.

S-

 

[LAK]

Outside of boxed ammunition (RFID chips are small enough to sandwich in a label, packing etc), pistols with synthetic frames will be prime candidates. Of course they could easily be placed in any wood or synthetic rifle stock too.

 

[TheBluesMan]

I've been wondering.

Would a low-level EMP disable an RFID chip?

 

[raz-0]

screw the tinfoil hat, if you are really paranoid, rip down the drywal and put alayer of copper screen material over your vapor barrier. Then put your drywall back up.

That should pretty much do you, RFID is really low powered.

it's also the current fad in business technology, and everyone and their brother is trying to make it look liek the solution to their problem.

Anything that is nto sufficiently high volume is pretty useless for it. For walmart, it could be huge savings. you get a couple robots following a stripe on the floor with an RFID scanner (or heck, have the shelves do it), and inventory becomes a push of the button rather than something you pay a bunch of employees to do overnight. That doesn't apply to most of the firearms world except perhaps the ammo manufacturers and distributors warehousing things. Doubly so on anything the ATF makes you fill out a buttload of individual paperwork on. RFID save no time or money if you still have to handle it individually and fill out froms.

 

[LAK]

RFID tags are low powered because they do not need to be high powered to be picked up by the right scanners.

These things will be in everything from shoes to food products. If you are wearing just one tag you can be tracked anytime you walk within the sensitivity radius of the appropriate machine.

The "public-private partnership", the info-gathering programs and recent legislation makes all this info available to great uncle you know who. Along with anyone who has access to the data along the way.

 

[raz-0]

RFID tags are no powered. They absorb the microwaves of the transmitter, and turn it into juice to rebroadcast back. You throw the moral equivalent of a faraday cage in between them and the transmitter, and they simply won't work. PERIOD. end of story. You won't be able to watch TV, use your cell phone, listen to the radio, use your GPS, or any number of other things if you got nice fine mesh screen.

they start range limited and will remain range limited despite what you throw at them. Throw too much microwaves at them, and you'll cook the subject, or overjuice the circuitry. The transmitter in them can only put out so much, and the power circuitry can only handle so much input and can only gnereate so much output.

Copper scrren is pricey, but if you are paranoid about people "scanning" your ammo stash form the street, just make an ammo closet that is a faraday cage. Problem solved. As far as wal-mart's inventory system, I hate to tell you, but the bar-code scanner already tracks the stuff. It isn't like RFID harken's the era of inventory management. IN case you haven't noticed, it's already here.

You show me an RFID tag that is small enough to not be intrusive in a product, and then show me any of them that you can scan from more than a couple feet away.

Heck, even thinking evil, about the only really nasty ones are the ones they want to put in car tires. You could put the antennas in the road, and track where a tire goes. On top of that there isn't much in the way of alternative sources of tires.

But heck, ez-pass and all the cameras basically have that one covered anyway.

It's in our general interest to make technology that helps you find things wherever they may be. It's also in our interest to make existing technology cheaper and cheaper. It has it's consequences in the end, and we all have to deal with it. But as far as people poking into your life and watching what you buy, sell, do , etc... we are already pretty far down that path, and RFID is your wake up call, I hate to tell you but the house already burnt down around your ears.

 

[LAK]

The developing RFID tag technologies are going to go far beyond inventories, EZ-tag and freeway cameras. You are right though, many people who are just realizing what the threat is do not quite realize just how far along it is already.

At some point your major stores are going to have your name - your identity - associated with all your purchases. And the system will track you from there. On foot or on wheels. Yes, it can be said they already have many peoples' identities through the credit cards, checks, discount cards, etc. But there will come a time when the system will be exclusively based on the cashless model.

People should be as concerned about this as some of the other abominations that are being rammed down their throats. Personally, walking around wearing a Faraday cage is not in my future plans.