Microsoft proposes tattooing patients. PopSci appears to like the idea. — MB

Photo: Yuichiro C. Katsumoto/Flickr CC

You might take this PopSci bit about an “invisible,” ultraviolet tattoo ID system, for another inconsequential workup of an industry press release.

But what bothers me about this webby, is that it uncritically pushes the RFID industry’s latest, dubious storyline: that the only way to be “truly safe” (from phantom villains, hacking into pacemakers) is with “permanent,” implanted devices and IDs.

This graf, for example, exemplifies the imprecise prose George Orwell describes, in Politics and the English Language. Rather than encouraging critical thinking, it conceals and prevents it:

“More and more implantable devices, like pacemakers or defibrillators, are turning to wireless signals as a means to communicate with external devices, but in doing so they open themselves to security breaches. Several solutions are in the works that tackle this problem by upping device defenses, but by piling on security measures, yet another risk emerges: that at a critical time an authorized physician might not be able to access the device.”

The graf — as does the rest of the piece — tosses up unspecified threats, against which it proposes tattooing patients (i.e., everyone). In all that vagueness, the vulnerabilities posed by implanted devices become infinitely vast and dark.

Without those threats, the RFID industry will have a tough time tattooing serial numbers on people for whom the tagging, tracking, and tracing of humans remains a bitter, and fresh, memory, and Christian end-timers, for whom the Mark of the Beast is a very real fear.

via Tattooing Patients With UV Ink Could Protect Pacemakers From Hackers | Popular Science.

The PopSci piece uses this Microsoft paper, proposing the tattoos, as its primary source.