microdots for theft-proofing

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Kind of old news, but pretty cool...

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,50598,00.html

> Dot's All You Need for Security
> By Stewart Taggart
> 2:00 a.m. March 11, 2002 PST
>
> SYDNEY, Australia -- As Ian Allen fires up his BMW at a boat
> marina, he doesn't see much point in gunning the engine. It isn't
> horsepower that makes him fawn over his car -- it's the 10,000
> microdots sprayed all over it.
>
> Any thief wanting to steal Allen's prized possession would need
> to remove all 10,000 of them to fully rebadge, or "rebirth," the
> car.
>
> "Why 10,000 dots?" said Allen, a jocund Western Australian. "I
> figured it was a nice, big, round number."
>
> The financial potential of these microdots could be another nice
> big number. Allen has adapted World War II spy technology for the
> global anti-theft market, attaching millions of the laser-etched
> identification dots to cars and industrial products. In the
> future, the dots could also be used on legal documents and even
> cattle.
>
> Every new BMW sold in Australia since September is marked with
> the polyester adhesive dots, which each carry the car's unique
> manufacturer identification number. BMW is considering using the
> dots in all of its cars sold worldwide. Australian police and
> motoring organizations want the dots on all new cars sold in the
> country, and Ford, Holden and Mitsubishi are scrambling to follow
> BMW's example.
>
> The dots are as small as grains of sand, and the information on
> them can only be viewed with a magnifying glass. They're sprayed
> all over a car's engine parts, air ducts and other automotive
> nooks and crannies.  The dots are visible with black light
> because Allen wants thieves to know they are there.
>
> "It's a bit like putting legal graffiti all over a car," he said.
> "It lets thieves know how impossible their job will be."

hmm... I once heard that one advantage of Lojack devices [1]
over something like The Club is that they help discourage theft
from an entire area rather than just help recover cars equipped
with the device: thieves don't know which cars have lojack devices,
so they're afraid to steal anything at all in areas that are
known to have lojack devices deployed.

(devices like The Club just encourage thieves to move on to the
next car, just like these blacklight-visible microdots might.
So I think it would be better to make the microdots invisible.)

> [...]

[1] http://www.lojack.com/

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Gerald Oskoboiny <[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/

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