Re: Is theft becoming impossible?

From: Randall Randall (randall@randallsquared.com)
Date: Thu Sep 04 2003 - 07:21:37 MDT

  • Next message: Chuck Kuecker: "Re: Is theft becoming impossible?"

    On Thursday, September 4, 2003, at 08:41 AM, BillK wrote:
    > But if everything can be 'tagged' then surely this means that theft
    > becomes impossible? It would need a central database to record changes
    > of ownership of course, with the previous owner required to authorize
    > the transfer. But if the authorities want to do suspect tracking then
    > they will
    > need to build the central database anyway.

    It's currently a simple matter to disable these RFIDs, and I
    would expect that the knowledge of how to do so would become
    quite widespread if the RFIDs themselves were being used in
    this way.

    > Police would just need to visit your home and the scanner computer
    > would
    > list everything on the premises that was not registered to you. In
    > future they might be able to do this without even physically entering
    > the premises.

    So thieves would have a faraday cage in the closet.

    > So we can look forward to a near future without casual theft, burglary,
    > mugging, car theft, etc.

    Probably not.

    > That should help to empty the prisons as well.
    >
    > Oh joyous day!

    I'm not sure if you're joking or not. At least in the US, those
    imprisoned for theft are a small percentage of the total. Per
    http://www.aic.gov.au/media/20000821.html , the same is true for
    Australia.

    Ending the "War on Drugs" would have a far larger impact on prison
    population. 

    -- 
Randall Randall <randall@randallsquared.com>
"You assist an evail system most effectively by obeying its orders and 
decrees." -- Mahatma Gandhi

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