![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselkingDigital Water marks thieves and property
SmartWater is a clear liquid containing microscopic particles encoded with a unique forensic signature that, when found coated on stolen property, provides a precise trace back to the owner and, when detected on a suspect, can conclusively implicate a felon.
Likened to giving household items and vehicles a DNA of their own, the fluid is credited with helping cut burglary in Britain to a 10-year low, with some cities reporting drops of up to 85 percent.
A decade in the making, SmartWater is the name for a suite of forensic coding products. The first, Instant, is a property-marking fluid that, when brushed on items like office equipment or motorcycles, tags them with millions of tiny fragments, each etched with a unique SIN (SmartWater identification number) that is registered with the owner's details on a national police database and is invisible until illuminated by police officers using ultraviolet light.
A second product, the Tracer, achieves a similar goal by varying the blend of chemical agents used in the liquid to produce one of a claimed 10 billion one-off binary sequences, encoded in fluid combinations themselves.
SmartWater is a clear liquid containing microscopic particles encoded with a unique forensic signature that, when found coated on stolen property, provides a precise trace back to the owner and, when detected on a suspect, can conclusively implicate a felon.
Likened to giving household items and vehicles a DNA of their own, the fluid is credited with helping cut burglary in Britain to a 10-year low, with some cities reporting drops of up to 85 percent.
A decade in the making, SmartWater is the name for a suite of forensic coding products. The first, Instant, is a property-marking fluid that, when brushed on items like office equipment or motorcycles, tags them with millions of tiny fragments, each etched with a unique SIN (SmartWater identification number) that is registered with the owner's details on a national police database and is invisible until illuminated by police officers using ultraviolet light.
A second product, the Tracer, achieves a similar goal by varying the blend of chemical agents used in the liquid to produce one of a claimed 10 billion one-off binary sequences, encoded in fluid combinations themselves.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-16 05:23 pm (UTC)