New "Radio Paint" using nano-technology. Our privacy at risk - again.

Be careful what you say – in the future, the walls really could have ears.

Electronic paint capable of turning any surface it touches into a clever tracking device has been created by scientists.

The James Bond-like technology could enable police to track suspects such as potential terrorists by secretly daubing the paint on to their clothing or other possessions.

www.metro.co.uk

Although this technology doesn't seem like too large of a leap from our current "bugging" technologies, I think that this stuff is too powerful to be trusted in the hands of any government, or anyone else for that matter.

Being powered by the electromagnetic energy in the atmosphere, "they" can literally place this stuff anywhere they want, and use it on anyone they want, without worrying about the limitations of batteries hindering their "investigations into our lives".

Additionally, the nano-technology itself has horrible implications. Scary stuff, if you ask me...

Hello,

I read about this in the Metro this morning an was going to start a thread.
I think is scary stuff. It says in the Metro that it is invisible:

"Radio paint is transparent and is infused with tiny 'nano-computers', or radio chips, which are almost invisible to the human eye."

I think that this will definitely be used against the general public.

there should be a easy way to see if something like this is tracking you. i have to leave it up the science guys for the solution, but if a tracking device puts out a signal it should be fairly easy for some type of intrumentation to pick up the signal off of the invisable paint. i'm just not sure what that would be. hello? any radio frequency experts out there?

Hey all,

Long time lurker etc.

I saw this in the Metro as well and joined so I could post about it. I also think its scary but doesn't surprise me in the least. The part I found interesting was the line "they run off electromagnetic energy in the atmosphere rather than batteries." I wonder how significant this is in relation to the zero point energy theories and Tesla's energy motors that are claimed to have generated free energy from magnetism. I thought this was a huge admission of applied technology that isn't supposed to be viable, buried in infotainment.

Could this energy harvesting tech be scaled up?

Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick and there's nothing unusual about it.

I'm not sure, but I suspect some may be confused at what this paint does. What it looks like to me based on the description is basically a paint-on RFID chip.

(That doesn't make it a good thing, but it does make it a little different than what I thought it would be based on the term 'radio paint')

reply to post by louiswu

Could this energy harvesting tech be scaled up?

Probably not. This idea works only really because the radio chips will need such a small amount of energy. I've seen similar ideas to power chips in an RF class I took a couple years ago. They used tricks like temperature differentials and kinetic energy (like if you wear a chip and move around, you recharge it) to power really small chips.

It also doesn't have anything to do with ZPE. The underlying scientific concepts are quite mainstream science. The real breakthrough is in the application and engineering, not the science.

I have a physicist friend who is repainting his house with lead paint. I asked why, and he began telling me the capabilities of our surveillance agencies, and to tell you the truth, according to him, some of that stuff we see in movies is a bit archaic.

He apparently mixes his own lead with his paint, and says it fouls up everything! He even suggests that children eating lead paint wasn't the real reason for banning leaded paint. After all, how much paint can a kid eat? And how much does he pass?

Something to think about.

And you wonder why there are so many microwave cell phone masts every where? the perfect all consuming electrical smog to power this 'paint'.

Now, ask yourself this - a 'mark' of this soultion that made sure all who brought and sold were eligable to?

We live in interesting times.