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Non-Lethal Sniper Rifle: You're Tagged For Life 121

Posted by timothy from the is-this-a-joke dept.
gbjbaanb writes "Cool new urban battlefield weaponry for the geeks to fear. The Id Sniper is a nonlethal sniper rifle that fires tiny GPS microchips into the body of the target. The idea is that a rowdy crowd can be tagged for later 'processing' by law enforcement officials. Apparently the chip hitting you will feel like a mosquito-bite lasting a fraction of a second. Although it looks, and sounds like a cyberpunk weapon, its for real from a Danish company that has already shown it off at a Chinese Police exhibition. check out the tracking software." Here's hoping this is cautionary artwork.
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Non-Lethal Sniper Rifle: You're Tagged For Life More

Non-Lethal Sniper Rifle: You're Tagged For Life

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  • LOL (Score:2, Funny)

    by 2nd Post! ( 213333 )
    I was just talking about this with a friend, and now it's real!

    Use it to 'mark' the kids your child hangs out with so you can always keep track of what they do. Love and trust your kid, but be wary of his/her friends!
    • Except it isn't. At least, not in sniper rifle form.

      Though it does remind me of IMIPAK [missouri.edu]. The only proposed defense against it was slavery.

  • Good aim... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Beatbyte ( 163694 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @02:25PM (#8839753) Homepage
    Besides the fact that this is invasion of privacy (in the weirdest possible way), what happens when the sniper decides to shoot and it hits your eyeball?

    It may be a tiny device but you're either dead or blind either way.

    • Here is what happens (Score:5, Funny)

      by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @02:30PM (#8839810)
      "Besides the fact that this is invasion of privacy (in the weirdest possible way), what happens when the sniper decides to shoot and it hits your eyeball?"

      It is just the first step. Eventually, you will look like this [slashdot.org]

    • Re:Good aim... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by JabberWokky ( 19442 )
      Although this is almost certainly a parody, most non-lethal weapons for crowd (read: riot) control can cause serious injury. Things that explode and fire pyramids of hard rubber, hard baseballish balls shot at high speeds. These are non-lethal in the sense of "we're trying not to kill, but we're willing to accept some losses".

      There are appropriate times for these weapons, but they are all too often used casually.

      --
      Evan

      • most non-lethal weapons for crowd (read: riot) control can cause serious injury.

        They're actually referred to as "less-lethal [google.com]" weapons, since pepper spray, tear gas, etc. CAN and DO kill. Just not as much as, say, a bullet.

      • Indeed. So-called "non-lethal" projectile and chemical weapons are not really non-lethal. That's propaganda: it's what the police call them to make them sound safe. Aw, a fluffy little bean bag. Aw, a plastic bullet. How much can a little thing like that hurt.

        The reality is organ damage, serious wounds, broken bones, spinal injury, miscarriage, blindness, and death. And that's when the police don't deliberately aim for maximum injury, or fire at point blank range - the sadistic bastards.

        Some weapo

        • Troll?

          I thought the information was accurate and relevant to the parent post, which discusses the lethality of non-lethal weapons, although arguably offtopic from the original article.

          A moderation of Off-Topic would have made sense. Troll makes no sense to me.

          -- Jamie

        • The reality is organ damage, serious wounds, broken bones, spinal injury, miscarriage, blindness, and death.

          I can believe most of those, but when is the last time you saw a pregnant woman in a crowd rolling a cop car over? Smashing parking meters, setting fires or looting stores and houses?

          Isn't adding "miscarriage" to that list going a bit far? I'm sure it can happen, but an over-the-top statement like that makes it reek of propaganda. (These are the weapons of the baby-killers!!!)

          We outnumber

          • I can believe most of those, but when is the last time you saw a pregnant woman in a crowd rolling a cop car over? Smashing parking meters, setting fires or looting stores and houses?

            The police use projectile and chemical weapons at non-violent protests too. That is wrong, of course, but it happens. It is a lapse in the professionality of the police.

            Experienced people can often tell when the police are about to turn violent, for example if you see one smacking his/her hand with their baton like they

      • Re:Good aim... (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        No kidding, check out some pictures here. [indybay.org] Click on the numbers next to the Photos label at the bottom of the story, notably numbers 1, 5, and 6. And remember this is Oakland and it wasn't a riot it was a peaceful demonstration.
      • Something this small could never transmit it's location for lack of power. Where are the batteries? Even if it runs off blood glucose, then it's antenna would be tiny and impotent, not like Bender's
      • Probably causes cancer.
      • A little device floating around one's bloodstream is a recipe for a stroke

  • It's not 4/1/04 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by scumbucket ( 680352 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @02:25PM (#8839756)
    Dear Editors,

    Today is not April Fool's day...........

  • Runs on OpenBSD? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jazman_777 ( 44742 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @02:30PM (#8839809) Homepage
    Now I know it's just a joke. _No_ commercial software runs on OpenBSD.

  • Good Job, Junior Citizen! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bravo_Two_Zero ( 516479 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @02:32PM (#8839823)
    Almost more disurbing... check out the JuJu in the Products section of the company's site. Creepy!
  • Here. [backfire.dk] All it says is "this is not the way..."
  • This reminds me of Mike Oldfield's Maestro [mikeoldfield.com] music/VR videogame.

    In the default/demo mode, you can hit the spacebar and fire at whatever is in front of you. The bullets resemble tiny circuitboards.

  • Yep (Score:3, Funny)

    by GreyOrange ( 458961 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @02:35PM (#8839857) Journal
    Full body Aluminum foil get-ups just got more popular.

  • BS (Score:5, Informative)

    by jsimon12 ( 207119 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @02:35PM (#8839859) Homepage
    That is not a "GPS Chip" on the website, it is a tiny microchip used to ID dogs and cats [avidmicrochip.com]. The website is surprising slim on any details and to me appears to be a complete farse.
    • Be that as it may the chips that are implanted in pets do work. There is no reason why they couldn't be used in humans. Of course, according to my cat the implantation is extremely painful and you would notice it. Also the chip is easily detected (that's the idea) so real bad guys would have no trouble finding and removing it.

      • Re:BS (Score:3, Funny)

        by s0l0m0n ( 224000 )
        Sure, they work.

        To identifiy a pet when you have it at a location where it can be scanned (such as a vet or the humane society). It does not allow you to track your pet.

        And my dog thinks your cat is a pussy.
      • I agree the gun looked fake. And the details were suspicious.

        If you don't care if the rioters see you fire at them, and you don't care if they feel the pain of the, um, "injections", could chips like those used for pets be loaded into something like a shotgun shell?

        After the riot you could scan pedestrians to see if they got chipped. Snap their pictures then. Have the turnstiles at the Subway activate hidden cameras to take the pictures of chipped riders automatically.

        If you are scanning people sho

        • When I got my cats "chipped", 12 years ago, the "chip" was about 2 millimetres by 2 millimetres.

          About the size of a piece of confetti. Or maybe quite a bit smaller.

          What if you had riot control personnel carrying shotguns loaded with shells that shot out clouds of RFID confetti?

          Back in the days of punch cards and paper tape some people used the "chad" from those cards in place of confetti. But it wasn't a nice thing to do. Chad, punched from card stock, with sharp edges, is much harder to remove t

  • It's fake. (Score:5, Informative)

    by stienman ( 51024 ) <adavis&ubasics,com> on Monday April 12, 2004 @02:35PM (#8839864) Homepage Journal
    It's fake. The "GPS Pellet" is nothing more than a picture of a common transponder (RFID). Even if they could get the GPS electronics that small, and fit a tansmitter in there, the battery needed for more than a few minutes of GPS calculations would be significantly larger than the capsule.

    Furthermore, the GPS signal doesn't go very deep through human tissue, it degrades as it goes, and a transmitter strong ernough to be received more than a few hundred yards away would be comparable in size and power consumption to a cell phone.

    Interesting concept. It's not impossible, but it's not cost effective now.

    -Adam

    • I believe it could possibly be real. When they call it a "GPS chip", what they really mean is that it's an RFID transponder, which when combined with their RFID tracking stations will GPS-locate the wearer of the chip. The idea would be to pepper a metro area with their transponders, which do have GPS hardware, and to track the transponders the person passes by.

      Of course, current RFID transponders have far too limited a range (a few feet) to do this effectively. But who knows if they've managed to work
      • They just need to make a deal with Walmart and a couple other major stores to be notified if a certain range of RFID tags are seen.

      • Re:It's fake. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by sfjoe ( 470510 )


        There is no way you could reliably hit a target with a projectile that lightweight. To put the velocity behind it that you'd need to have enough kinetic energy to penetrate the skin would vaporize anything that small. Not to mention that it would become useless in even a light breeze.

        • Building a proper projectile around that capsule wouldn't be too hard. Obviously the RFID capsule itself isn't what's chambered into the rifle. More than likely you would construct something similar to a standard centerfire rifle cartridge, but with a new-design projectile for implanting the things. Some lead weight in the back, a razor sharp front edge for piercing the skin, and the right velocity at the end of the flight path (enough to penetrate the skin with a razor isn't much). The real challenges/

        • To put the velocity behind it that you'd need to have enough kinetic energy to penetrate the skin would vaporize anything that small.

          I strongly disagree. Look up Discarding Sabot rounds.

          If the charge won't scramble the electronics, maybe you could fire them with a magnetic linear accelerator, also.

          Windage, however, remains a problem.

      • Range? Lol. The article said the chips would be tracked "by satellite".
    • PASSIVE rfid's dont need to a battery.

      WHEN WILL PEOPLE LEARN ABOUT RFID'S ???

      The 'emforcement' could corral everyone in an area and one by one scan them with a passive rfid reader which ENERGIZES the rfid tag with the tiny bit of electricy on that specific frequency.
      • I know RFIDs. This article isn't talking about RFIDs. It's talking about a GPS satelite person tracking system. Then it has a picture of a freaking RFID tag.

        I'm saying that it can't be what they claim it is (GPS and/or satellite tracking transmitter).

        The idea behind this system is that the people won't know that they're wearing this tag, and that they can be tracked remotely. RFID tags this small can only be read from so far away.

        So, in short, this is not what it claims to be. If it's RFID, th
  • Snake Plissken: Got a smoke?
    Malloy: The United States is a non-smoking nation! No smoking, no drugs, no alcohol, no women - unless you're married - no foul language, no red meat!
    Snake Plissken: Land of the free.

  • Big "A-10 Warthog" Mosquito (Score:3, Informative)

    by kmahan ( 80459 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @02:41PM (#8839929)
    After looking at the "GPS-chip Verichip(r)" all I could think was that if that hit me with enough force to penetrate my skin it would hurt a lot more than any mosquito bite I've ever gotten. Maybe if the mosquito had malaria and I was hospitalized for a couple of weeks the pain would be equivalent.

    Even assuming wire a LOT finer than typical magnet (coil wrapping) wire, that looks like one hell of a big device. Maybe you are required to bend over so they can inject it as a suppository.

    Just a little late for April 1st...

  • Good vs. Evil vs. ??? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RobertB-DC ( 622190 ) * on Monday April 12, 2004 @02:42PM (#8839942) Homepage Journal
    it's for real from a Danish company that has already shown it off at a Chinese Police exhibition.

    This sentence leads to some interesting concepts:

    * If the Chinese authorities had this cyber-weapon at their disposal, would lives have been saved at Tiananmen Square [bbc.co.uk]?

    * If the demonstrators had been tagged instead of shot outright, would it have been any better for them in the long run?

    * Isn't the whole idea incredibly creepy?

    Actually, I have my doubts that a map, like the one tracking the terrorist padre [backfire.dk] in the demo, is currently possible. Remember the distance-squared law, frequently mentioned in other RFID articles?

    This sounds more like a James Bond [projectorbooth.com] tracking device than anything possible in the Real World.

    Something similar that *would* be useful against *real* criminals would be a TollTag [ntta.org] gun -- fire a vehicle tracker into the body panel of a fleeing vehicle, and track it as it travels the freeway system in a wired-up town like Houston [houstontranstar.org].
    • Uh, Tianamen Square happened in 1989. Even if this technology is real. It's about 15 years too late..
    • I can't believe I fell for it. The site is such an obvious fake [backfire.dk]. These guys are laughing their collective butts off at our readiness to don the tinfoil hat and march into battle.

      Mod me down... after replying to such a fake, I don't deserve Karma.

      Now, what do we do about Timothy [monkey.org], the editor, and gbjbaanb [sourceforge.net], the submitter?
    • No, more people would have died. Remember, alot of people "got away". Something that this technology, at least theoretically, would have prevented. Police would just show up at the "offender's" home or work and pack em off to slave labor camps, I mean, reeducation, to make those cheap Chinese goods we seem so hungry for these days.

  • Fake can be just as good (Score:3, Informative)

    by babbage ( 61057 ) <cdevers.cis@usouthal@edu> on Monday April 12, 2004 @02:46PM (#8839976) Homepage Journal

    This can't be real.

    The image of the rifle in question [backfire.dk] looks like CGI from a video game [backfire.dk] -- if it was real, why not just use a photo rather than a photo-realistic synthetic graphic?

    And their other product [backfire.dk], with the silly cartoons [backfire.dk], is even more implausible. But let's not get distracted by the obvious fake -- the gun is more interesting anyway.

    As a hypothetical exercise, could this kind of coverty GPS planting work? Let's say that the GPS beacon / transmitter is small enough to be mistaken for an insect's sting, so no bigger than a grain of sand. What then?

    1. Do GPS receivers that small currently exist? Are they reliable? What power supply do they need, and how long could an implanted one continue to operate?
    2. Would it be possible to remotely track [backfire.dk] these devices from, say, NSA headquarters in Fort Mead, Maryland? The graphics suggest [backfire.dk] that they can monitor a tag's movement on a 1000 mile journey from Maine to North Carolina -- was this data gathered from close to the target (in which case why bother with the beacon since you can presumably track them with more conventional means), or was the data gathered remotely (in which case how powerful can that little transmitter be?

    I don't believe for a minute that this is real, but I had no problem believing that various Three Letter Agencies would love to treat this as a prototype for devices they would like to build. How close are we to being able to approximate this with current technology?

    • You're absolutely correct... Some more supporting arguments:

      - A 'GPS Bullet' small enough to be injected would not have any range to speak of. Atmospheric drag would stop it long before it got close to the target.

      - If you can make a 'GPS Bullet'... Why spend any time/money developing a rifle? There are lots of ready-made rifles already available.

      - If you insist on making a rifle, make it feasible. ie. not a crappy long-barrel pistol with a scope and a shoulder stock that will fold up whenever it is
    • Actually, their camera with wireless (satellite) comm capability is just at the edge of feasibility. A wireless camera about that size with WiFi and cell-phone capability is feasible right now, but we have obvious problems with WiFi access and/or transmission speed. Satellite capability would obviously be useful in situations where there is a serious prospect of the camera (and maybe the photographer) being destroyed, but that's hard to do without a somewhat larger piece of hardware.

      But it's probably not
      • (Anyone have any links to the best wireless cameras right now?)

        This [dpreview.com] do?

        • Hey, cool! I didn't know about that one. It's a bit pricey, but that's to be expected now.

          My one pointed observation is: FTP????? WTF?

          Someone should explain to them that FTP sends everything, including login id and password, in the clear. So anyone with a good sniffer can intercept all your packets, assemble your pictures, and they also know your login id and password.

          But I suppose what you'd do is use an anonymous login, with the ftp directory off in its own partition so your competitors can't brin

  • [Note: I've had plenty of reservations all along about the US decision to invade Iraq and still believe it was not the right thing to do.]

    Now that US Marines are confronted with some of the worst of all possible scenarios(*) this technology would be helpful.

    (*) Namely, a large crowd of demonstrators, 97% comprised of unarmed civilians, wearing civilian clothes, has 3% composition of similarly-dressed individuals but toting Kalishnokov's and firing at the Marines.

    Current option: Marines could start firin

  • Where's the crap-science filter? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Flumph ( 58891 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @02:55PM (#8840051) Homepage
    GPS antennas must be pretty big, because the signals from orbit are pretty weak.

    Small projectiles are less stable. A projectile the size of a grain of sand could barely cross a room.

    The kinetic energy required to overcome air friction would make the impact pretty serious, if you could magically overcome the instability problem, and magically make the tiny projectile carry that much kinetic energy without vaporising it.

    As for tracking the thing, where's the transmit antenna? RFID tags have a short range, and they're a lot bigger than a mosquito-sized impact. No antenna means no signal range.

    And as other posters have noted, there's no room for a power source, the GPS signals don't penetrate well, etc. etc.

    Ardent Pedantry R Us,

    Flumph
  • Feel free to shoot this with far less discrimination than using a lethal weapon. Got a small demonstration that you think might get out of hand? Shoot everyone now just in case. Oh, people can still die from this? Well, it's safer than firing lethal weapons at them. If a surly mother or overly-concerned consumer buys the farm once in awhile on a picket line, well, maybe they should have stayed at home instead of being out agitating.
  • priest in the picture look like Duke, from Doonesbury?
  • This was on the radio last night. See here: http://nextbigthing.org/ (the third item)
    • Thanks for the link and the admission the thing is a fictional media art project.

      Snipped from the China Police link.

      "His recent works has been created within the framework of his self-styled "sci-fi art" (or "fictionist") concept where he takes "an imaginary product from the future" and tests it out today, in a real environment.
      He did this most notably in his MY DOOMSDAY WEAPON project where he created "the most horrible weapon in the world" (- a piece of "pre-crime technology" designed to mark demonstrat
  • Here we go again, waiting for the conspiracy theory crowd to get their claws on this one.

  • Sorry kids, it's a fake (Score:5, Informative)

    by ug52slh ( 770654 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @03:06PM (#8840141) Homepage
    Its based on an essay in Abuse your illusions [amazon.co.uk] called "How I crashed a Chinese Arms Biazaar With A Rifle That Doesn't Exist"

    My favourite use would be tagging girls in night clubs and then stalk them. So much easier than asking for phone numbers.
    • Why the hell even bother to go inside? Most places have lines outside, and noone will object to you standing on a dark roof with a sniper rifle (as opposed to inside, where this possibly could get you kicked out for rowdy behaviour).

      Then again, why not a nude beach? Might as well have a good look at what you're going to get (take) before choosing...
    • I heard the author interviewed by Terri Gross on Fresh Air yesterday. It's definitely a fake, but an interesting story.
  • Use 'infra-red paint' paint balls. Better real-world sniper range than a grain of sand and ruffle the same affect as a rubber bullet. Target knows they got hit, so maybe they will stop what they are doing and worry about the mess. Then use a infra-red camera to track local movement, they have to break away for a restroom break eventually.
  • As pointed out by others, this is almost surely not a reality yet.

    And no, it's not going to use a real GPS transmitter.

    But the implications of this even as a thought (and while not real I bet it -has- been proposed to government folks as a concept) strike right back at the heart of the RFID debate.

    While RFID may not be strong enough via commercial application to track this more than a few dozen feet, I am sure that with the right amount of money a much more sensitive receptor could be engineered. Even if
  • Any GPS transmitter that small that implants something without you knowing will have so little energy in it, that unless oyu have sensors everywhere, there is no way whatsoever to track it. Especially track a person from satellite.

    Unless there is some miraculous battery I don't know of, this is an obvious fake.

  • I'm from Denmark (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Xel'Naga ( 673728 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @03:27PM (#8840350)
    I'm 100% certain it's a fake. I remember seeing interviews on the television with the guy behind this, talking about his experiences in China with this completely nonexistant weapon.
    I'll try to dig up a link with the real story about this.

    Xel'Naga

    • Re:I'm from Denmark (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Xel'Naga ( 673728 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @03:33PM (#8840420)
      Googling finds this: http://www.lixen.dk/artikel-arkiv.asp?code=2003-2- blackbox

      Kunstneren Jacob S. Boeskov, redaktør på 'Answering Machine', rejste i sommer til en våbenmesse i Kina under dække af at være våbenhandler. Med sig havde han billeder af det fiktive våben, ID Sniper. Artiklen om Kina-turen i Black Box beskriver, hvordan Jacob S. Boeskovs fiktive våben tiltrak sig så stor interesse på våbenmessen, at Boeskov til sidst var mere eller mindre ødelagt af frygt for at blive opdaget.

      The artist Jacob S. Boeskov, editor at "Answering Machine", this summer travelled to a weapon-con (?) in China, pretending to be armsdealer. He brought pictures of a fake weapon, ID Sniper. The artikle about the trip to China in "Black Box" (Magazine, Xel.) tells who Jacob S. Boeskovs fictious weapon attracted great interest at the weapon-con, untill Boeskov was terrified if he was revealed.

      Xel'Naga

    • Re:I'm from Denmark (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Xel'Naga ( 673728 )
      The artist who pulled this stunt, explaining how he faked this [jakobboeskov.com]
      Click on "My doomsday weapon".
      Xel'Naga
      • Mod the parent and grandparent messages up.

        I'm a bit torn between marvelling at the genius and the stupidity of someone willing to pretend to be an international arms dealer for the sake of art and a few yuks.
  • This obviously isn't a real product... YET. It's a scary thought, but I'm personally confident that the technology required to implement something like this is still at least 10 years away. But then again who knows?

    Major problems
    • Power: How does the "gps chip" get power?
    • Signal reception: You can block GPS signals with your hand. They're essentially line of sight.
    • Signal transmission: Where is it going to transmit to?
    • Chip size: It's as big as a grain of rice. It'll hurt like hell and leave a serious wound
    • It looks more like a RFID tag, the one injected in pets. They can then be scanned when the tag is close to a transmitter.

      So no you couldn't track someone with it as in james bond. You would need to place scanners in places like public transport entrances, hospitals, shops, banks, all the places people have to go. Then anyone you want can be easily tracked moving through the transmitters and arrested at your convenience.

      I am reminded of a similar project several decades ago. It was a bit more primitive. It

  • I wish I'd seen THIS page on their site before I submitted my first post, now I'm starting to think that HUMOR is their goal

    http://www.backfire.dk/EMPIRENORTH/newsite/produc t s_en002_instructions.htm [backfire.dk]

    Notice how everybody in the instructions is white except for the one "suspicious" guy. These guys must have had a brain storm after watching Brazil [imdb.com].
  • If you recieve the mark of the beast involuntarily, you can still switch sides, right? ...right, guys?
  • Time to get my gps jammer working

    http://www.phrack.org/show.php?p=60&a=13

  • It's not parody, it's art. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Leven Valera ( 127099 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @03:55PM (#8840636) Homepage Journal
    This was a performance art project...this artist (Danish, iirc) put together this idea, took it to a international arms fair, and then documented the reaction of the crowd...read about it in one of Russ Kick's books.

    Sorry folks, nothing to see here, move along, citizens.
    • I guess you could call it "art", whatever that means. I personally wouldn't lower it down to that level though. Let's face it, what people call art these days is meaningless self-masturbation, and this is far more interesting than that.

      I think it's more like journalism, or some kind of subversive research. As someone else pointed out, this isn't "nothing to see here". Your claim would seem to be the "Oh my god look at that horrible device" is the thing to see, and since it doesn't exist, forget about i
  • Hell with the government! She'd be hell on wheels if I had to wear a collar like that!
  • The site was created as part of a hoax to see if the chinese police would actually buy something like this. They did. The whole sordid affair is documented in this book [amazon.co.uk].

  • Hoax: Admission by the Creator (Score:4, Informative)

    by WaldoJMU ( 2651 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @04:35PM (#8841069) Homepage
    Jakob Boeskov, the purported "CEO" of "Empire North", is a satirist. Here is a link to his personal homepage, along with an explanation of the FAKE GPS Sniper Rifle (emphasis is mine):

    http://www.backfire.dk/JB/indexreal.html [backfire.dk]

    "Giant balloon sculptures, voodoo-cursed technology and blueprints for hi-tech weapons smuggled into Chinas first international weapons fair - in the world of Jakob S. Boeskov the amazing meets the political in a unique mix.

    Coming from a background in comics, Copenhagen based artist Jakob S. Boeskov seems destined to work with satire and pastiche. Using a palette of different media such as web, paintings, writings, 3D drawings and animations, as well as collaborations with musicians, writers, voodoo priests (!) and industrial designers he "hacks and bends" media, reality and technology to give a startling and shocking view of life in the 21st century.

    His recent works has been created within the framework of his self-styled "sci-fi art" (or "fictionist") concept where he takes "an imaginary product from the future" and tests it out today, in a real environment. He did this most notably in his MY DOOMSDAY WEAPON project where he created "the most horrible weapon in the world" (- a piece of "pre-crime technology" designed to mark demonstrators with GPS (Global Positioning System) chips "before the crime is committed"). Jakob S. Boeskov brought drawings of this weapon to China Police 2002, Chinas first international weapons fair, where the international weapons dealer elite and greeted this nightmarish weapon with much enthusiasm."

    Happy April Fools Day, 11 days late! :)
  • If you can track the monsters coming to find you, just run away when you know you're low on ammo!
  • I believe back in the 50s and 60s both the US and USSR attempted to use radioactive tagging to track people. Sucked to be the subject. A subdermal device would not be useful as it is too small to have enough power for satelite. A variation on an RFID would be interesting, though - you could literally pick people up as they moved through town.

  • Here's the scoop: (Score:3, Informative)

    by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @05:30PM (#8841684) Homepage
    from www.jakobboeskov.com [jakobboeskov.com]

    For this daredevil project Jakob S. Boeskov infiltrated an armsfair in Beijing with "the ID Sniper - the worlds most horrible hi-tech weapon" Too fantastic to be true? No its not! Read parts of the story here:
    In June 2002 Jakob S. Boeskov travelled to the belly of the dragon to meet the enemy eye to eye - infiltrating China Police 2002 the first international weapons fair in China. He brings with him four hundred fake business cards, a promotional poster of a horrible hitech weapon, and the worst stomach cramps ever. Tag along to the Kingdom in the Middle and meet robot salesmen, enthusiastic Chinese entrepreneurs and singing teenage policemen.

    Basically, the idea was to come up with the most terrible weapon imaginable, and to test it in a real environment. We had three days to finish up the weapon. Our fake company, Empire North, already had a logo and a slogan ("The Logical Solution" aping the Nazi classic "The Final Solution") but we had no weapon yet. Genius designer Von B and I worked overtime, and in two days we had the ID Sniper ready.
    The day before I was leaving, BLACK BOX editor Mads Brügger called designer Von B and asked him to change the design, because "it was too far out and he couldn't be responsible for what happened, if I was found out."
    Changing was not possible at this late stage. I guess he knew that. Maybe he was just, more or less elegantly, trying to shake off his share of the burden. I can understand it, because we were all becoming afraid. Afraid of what would happen if I was found out, and afraid of what might happen if the weapon was taken seriously. Would it be copied? Would we be responsible for the production of one of the most inhumane weapons in the history of man? We justified our project by telling ourselves that right now, a few people were walking around with socalled VeriChips implanted in their bodies, chips manufactured by the company Applied Digital Solutions. We kept reminding ourselves that right, now prisoners in Sweden are doing time at home wearing GPS chip wristbands. It would merely be a question of time before the technology would be used preemptively on suspicious persons, and as we repeatedly told ourselves, all new technology has been used for military purposes, and this technology would too, we concluded. Why not bring it out prematurely, so at least we could have a small part in getting a thorough discussion about this kind of technology? With this question, we basically came up with a brand new art concept. Let's for now just call it scifi conceptual art, defined like this: take the essence of an imagined future, turn it into a concept and present this concept in present day reality. Report the reactions.
    Would this new concept lead to a brave journey, searching for truth or would it just be a highly irresponsible prank? There was only one way to find out, and that was to do it.
    This is how it was done.


    FACTS
    THE ID SNIPER RIFLE AS PRESENTED ON THE EMPIRE NORTH POSTER

    GPS microchip based identification rifle

    Empire North is proud to present the preliminary showcase of the ID Sniper Rifle a brand new tool in longterm riot control, and antiterror management. Please notice that some aspects of this cuttingedge technology are still in its outmost infancy, and more research is needed before the ID Sniper Rifle is a reality. Hence we are welcoming investors and business partners to join us in the important quest of developing the ID Sniper Rifle.


    What is the ID Sniper Rifle?
    To put it short, the idea is to implant a GPS microchip in the body of a human being, using a highpowered sniper rifle as the long distance injector. The microchip will enter the body and stay there, causing no internal damage, and only a very small amount of physical pain to the target. It will feel like a mosquito bite, lasting a fraction of a second.
    At the same time, a digital camcorder with a zo
  • Someone confirm its just a bad joke..

  • Juju..

    "citizen narc"

    This whole thing must be a joke....
  • Definitely not the real deal.

    Take a look at the link at the bottom of the JUJU instructions [backfire.dk] pointing to whitehouse.org/homeland [whitehouse.org].

    Looks like hours of fun.

  • And who is liable for the first person who dies from an infection from this device? There's a reason why you rub the skin with alcohol before and after a shot. I see no safety precaution here. I also see no mention of sterility for the device itself.

  • The GPS-tag gun is a joke... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by barakn ( 641218 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @07:51PM (#8842939)
    but it reminds me of when the Hell's Angels held their annual rally in Missoula, MT in 2000 (the full story in 4 parts: 1 [missoulanews.com], 2 [missoulanews.com], 3 [missoulanews.com], 4 [missoulanews.com]). They decided to party at a local ski hill, and the army of police officers that had been recruited from far and wide attacked the local citizenry in the downtown area instead. A friend of mine whose sole indiscretion was to have a job downtown that let him off at midnight was pepper-sprayed while trying to make his way home. The moral:

    Just because you've been GPS-tagged doesn't mean you're guilty.

  • Innocents get killed regularly by people running from police.

    Maybe police should tag the cars of those that run, then stop the chase. They could then track the car later at sane speeds.

  • For those of you still wondering whether this thing is for real...well its not. Check the guy's behind (Jakob S. Boeskov) this website [backfire.dk]. He has this weird thing with "fictionism". Quote: Basically, the idea was to come up with the most terrible weapon imaginable, and to test it in a real environment. We had three days to finish up the weapon. Our fake company, Empire North, already had a logo and a slogan ("The Logical Solution" aping the Nazi classic "The Final Solution") but we had no weapon yet. Genius
  • The ID sniper is a deliberate hoax by a politically motivated "perofrmance artist". He REALLY went to the Chinese police weapons show, but with a BOGUS product, just to see what would happen... http://www.backfire.dk/JB/
  • A low pressure firehose spraying dark blue skin staining food coloring.

    Taged, lasts at least a week, non-lethal (unless they drown), and if it's a vegtable dye also biodegradable.
  • Imagine... DEFCON Some guy: "Wow, Homeland Security is really trying to keep us safe, look, they even got snipers. Me:"Ouch, Goddamn... Someone set us up the tracking" Big Brother "We get signal... Main screen turn on. Move all agents for great justice"

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