Hitachi Develops RFID Powder

Published on May 18th, 2009

Hitachi Develops RFID Powder | Wired.com This is just peachy.

Conspiracy-minded types can thank Hitachi for something new to worry about — RFID chips so small you’ll never know they’re there.
The electronics conglomerate recently showed a prototype of an RFID chip measuring a .05 millimeters square and 5 microns thick, about the size of a grain of sand. They expect to have ‘em on the market in two or three years. The chips are packed with 128 bits of static memory, enough to hold a 38-digit ID number.

Adam Curry discussed this on the last No Agenda and I pooh-poohed it. More interesting is the spec that has the dot holding a 38 digit number. Following Moore’s law this storage becomes a dossier or a 155,000 word novel in less than 20 years.

26 users responded in " Hitachi Develops RFID Powder "

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# 1 KD Martin said, on May 18th, 2009 at 1:57 pm

This is scary beyond words. I wonder what the ultimate range will be.

# 2 SparkyOne said, on May 18th, 2009 at 2:07 pm

Personal EMP “guns” are available on the interweb, to clear these type of dandruff issues.

# 3 AC_in_Mich said, on May 18th, 2009 at 2:08 pm

Ummm following the links backwards – this came out Feb 14th, 2007.

Now, as the orignating article said they were 9 times smaller than the previous year, where are they now?

BTW – the Pic on the left was the older size, the one on the right showed the 2007 models compared to a hair

# 4 AC_in_Mich said, on May 18th, 2009 at 2:09 pm

Ummm following the links backwards – this came out Feb 14th, 2007.

Now, as the originating article said they were 9 times smaller than the previous year, where are they now?

BTW – the Pic on the left was the older size, the one on the right showed the 2007 models compared to a hair

# 5 AC_in_Mich said, on May 18th, 2009 at 2:10 pm

Sorry about that dupe post

Here’s the link http://www.pinktentacle.com/2007/02/hitachi-develops-rfid-powder/

# 6 chuck said, on May 18th, 2009 at 2:31 pm

Here’s a few more ideas for the conspiracy nuts:

1. Monsanto quietly lobbies the FDA to set a permissible level of RFID power in food.

2. Monsanto adds RFID powder to all its seed products – allowing it to easily track which farms are using its seeds, and which might be getting seeds illegally.

3. Monsanto adds the cyanide-kill-switch option to all it’s seeds (thanks to Adam Curry for this idea).

4. Everyone who has ever eaten a bowl of Corn Flakes will have to start paying Monsanto $10 a month, otherwise they kill you (by flipping the cyanide switch in the RFID powder that has now combined with your DNA).

# 7 Jägermeister said, on May 18th, 2009 at 2:35 pm

The UK overlords must be thrilled.

# 8 Troublemaker said, on May 18th, 2009 at 3:23 pm

Moore’s law is meaningless and has been discounted by Moore himslef. I would think that the head of a tech blog would have know this.

# 9 ECA said, on May 18th, 2009 at 3:27 pm

umm,
cant this be used as a HD format?? 155KB per dot?? WOW..

# 10 Whaap said, on May 18th, 2009 at 3:29 pm

This would be grit or sand NOT powder. Powder is two generations out yet.

# 11 brm said, on May 18th, 2009 at 3:37 pm

I’ll be dousing myself with tons of randomly numbered powder before I leave the house every day.

# 12 father time said, on May 18th, 2009 at 3:44 pm

How big the antenna?

# 13 David said, on May 18th, 2009 at 5:02 pm

The range on these RFID chips is still pretty low. But it does have the potential to make theft nearly impossible if they start using these in retail.

# 14 Hugh Ripper said, on May 18th, 2009 at 5:33 pm

What happens if you breath in this stuff or ingest it? It cant be good for your health (as well as your liberty).

# 15 faxon said, on May 18th, 2009 at 5:53 pm

I guess the reasoning of the jerks who develop this stuff is that it is not a problem for “honest” people. I guess that’s why the Feds don’t think we need the 4th Amendment any longer. How about “Free Thinking” people? Well, Obama is going to squash that, too, and put these in certain “unpatriotic” products and materials. How about these in Fast Food, and revoke your wonderful Obama Government Health care if you are spotted? Just wondering….

# 16 Tomas said, on May 18th, 2009 at 6:32 pm

I give up. This is just fucking evil.

# 17 RSweeney said, on May 18th, 2009 at 7:13 pm

The Hitachi “dust” has always had the issue of power, you need to enclose and cover the dust with a resonant cavity reader to get enough power into the chip to make it work.

Not the reading at a distance that everyone fears.

# 18 Dallas said, on May 18th, 2009 at 7:44 pm

Way cool. These things are mesh configured.
Uses include: weather modeling in a hurricane, temperature and moisture sensors, seismic monitors.

In 5 years they will be even smaller than Bush’s brain.

# 19 Uncle Patso said, on May 18th, 2009 at 7:49 pm

It may be that the true cause of global warming is all the radio frequency radiation we are constantly bathed in, day and night. Cell phones, wireless data services, wi-fi, bluetooth, now RFID readers will be everywhere. It’s a wonder we’re not all running a fever!

# 20 Buzz said, on May 18th, 2009 at 9:28 pm

These will soon be applied to ammo. As you buy it, all rounds will be “assigned” to you. As you shoot it, accounting will be possible.

As you murder with it, you will go directly to jail. Do not pass Go.

# 21 soundwash said, on May 19th, 2009 at 2:50 am

the “American” version of this is called Smartdust.

other words to search on would be nanodust & nanoradio. add +military to see all military projects related to this stuff.

iirc, one the “above board” uses of this stuff
was to track animal migrations. -use your own imagination.

they have been working on “dust” the size of blood cells for other interesting applications. -powered
by something akin to the ATP in your cells.

also, for some really easy to understand far out nano concepts, search on “Ray Kurzweil+nano” and Ray+Kurzweil+nano+video -this will give you a wealth
of “commercial uses envisioned” for smart/nano dust.

i believe it was spawned partially from UC Berkely’s carbon nanotube “AM/FM receiver” breakthroughs a while back.

one carbon nanotube will resonate at given frequency
and make a good receiver. put a “tube within a tube”
and you get something that will use resonant energy to transmit.

this stuff was in DARPA’s crosshairs back in 1999.
i’m sure you will find something on their site

conspiracy 101:

-consider: they have this stuff down to less than a penny per “dot” -and $2.3trillion was missing in the pentagon (that we know of) on 9/10/2001. -no doubt some of that was “highly leveraged”

now, add this dust to the aerosol campaign (chemtrail) and its likely parts of the USA
have already been walking around with this stuff in them. -you know, to track the “migration habits” of Homo Sapiens…

imo, typically, major breakthroughs like this have already been in use in the military sector for 10+ years before it “breakthroughs to the civilian sector” -since it’s usually DOE or DARPA that
funds the work.

food for thought

-s

# 22 Special Ed said, on May 19th, 2009 at 4:52 am

Stops jock itch too!

# 23 Less secure said, on May 19th, 2009 at 5:10 am

Something about these things being so small that they can be sprinkled on ice cream that doesn’t make sense. It’s like trying to keep track of dust compared to keeping track of the whole house. I don’t buy it.

# 24 Olo Baggins of Bywater said, on May 19th, 2009 at 6:32 am

I just love how everyone automatically hates RFID…take off your foil hats!

RFID tags of this type reflect some tiny amount of the signal applied to them, and the nature of the reflection is determined by the data in the tag. OK, something this small can only reflect a miniscule amount of RF, meaning the read distance is very, very short. It’s probably a bit longer than the distance for reading the magnetic strip on the back of your credit card.

Two, these chips, like most others, don’t work directly on metal or under any amount of flesh or moisture. Inside your body they are just as useful as an optical barcode within your colon.

RFID on this blog is like listening to those who think there are cameras in their cable boxes. This is new tech that relies heavily on old tech, something very few of you whippersnappers have the patience to learn these days….RF propagation. (I work in the tech school industry, and I know that this subject is not taught much these days)

# 25 Fred Jones said, on May 19th, 2009 at 9:57 am

I come from England and there is a lot on this blog about CCTV and the fascist state. I don’t think it matters how good the tech becomes in the UK, the government is so incompetent that they can never track anybody. Everybody is filmed on CCTV but then they loss 5 million people from the child benefit database.

# 26 brendal said, on May 19th, 2009 at 1:26 pm

Saw an article last year in Scientific American about them developing this and…ah-ah-

cHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

’scuse me.

Did you get the number of that particle, btw?

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