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Sometimes I start asking myself questions, and it leads ridiculous places. Reading today NYTimes article about vaccine resistance, they were dividing the resistors into groups (I live in Wyoming, where those who are not yet vaccinated are at 65%; 25% of those people are Skeptics) - some of whom are sure that there are plots, and that maybe they're going to be implanted with ID chips and transmitters when they receive their vaccine. (!?!)
ANYWAY. Because of this, I went "that is so crazy, what, are you living in an X-Files episode?!" Then I realized, "hey, people chip their dogs and cats... maybe it's crazy, but is it possible?" Then I wondered, "How much would that cost, anyway? And what would be the point?"
So, if you, like me, start wondering about things for no good reason, I give you:
The Shocking price of RFID tags, from September 2016. And also, Tractive Dog Tracker, GPS vs. microchip from last Friday (May 2021).
Main points from article 1: these things require a reader ($1.5K to $20K), and each RFID tag can cost from $0.10 to $25, depending on whether its active or passive. Also, their range is about, oh, 100 feet at best.
Main point from article 2: microchipping is passive, and sure, you could inobtrusively microchip a person (the chips are in glass bottles the size of a grain of rice), but that won't give you their location. It would just beep! and link you to a database with more info on them if you scanned them. A GPS tracker is the size of a credit card, and about half an inch thick. Easy to put on a dog or ankle collar (I'm thinking Neal Caffrey's ankle tracker in White Collar now.) You can't inject that into a person without it being incredibly obvious. So yeah.
Extra thoughts:
~~ Also, why bother microchipping actual people when nearly everyone's car has GPS, everyone's phone is always on and usually has GPS location on too, everyone logs in to their phone and computers from locations that are mostly ISP-tagged, and everyone uses credit cards which can be checked for location of purchase, if not in real-time?
...I worry about my Wyoming neighbors, is what I'm saying, except I'm the one who went down this rabbit hole to get all these details in the first place.
ANYWAY. Because of this, I went "that is so crazy, what, are you living in an X-Files episode?!" Then I realized, "hey, people chip their dogs and cats... maybe it's crazy, but is it possible?" Then I wondered, "How much would that cost, anyway? And what would be the point?"
So, if you, like me, start wondering about things for no good reason, I give you:
The Shocking price of RFID tags, from September 2016. And also, Tractive Dog Tracker, GPS vs. microchip from last Friday (May 2021).
Main points from article 1: these things require a reader ($1.5K to $20K), and each RFID tag can cost from $0.10 to $25, depending on whether its active or passive. Also, their range is about, oh, 100 feet at best.
Main point from article 2: microchipping is passive, and sure, you could inobtrusively microchip a person (the chips are in glass bottles the size of a grain of rice), but that won't give you their location. It would just beep! and link you to a database with more info on them if you scanned them. A GPS tracker is the size of a credit card, and about half an inch thick. Easy to put on a dog or ankle collar (I'm thinking Neal Caffrey's ankle tracker in White Collar now.) You can't inject that into a person without it being incredibly obvious. So yeah.
Extra thoughts:
~~ Also, why bother microchipping actual people when nearly everyone's car has GPS, everyone's phone is always on and usually has GPS location on too, everyone logs in to their phone and computers from locations that are mostly ISP-tagged, and everyone uses credit cards which can be checked for location of purchase, if not in real-time?
...I worry about my Wyoming neighbors, is what I'm saying, except I'm the one who went down this rabbit hole to get all these details in the first place.
