Down and Dirty Vs Commercialized Innovation.
I had asked for a RFID development kit for Christmas, but nobody got me one. Imagine the fun you could have!
U.S. warns about Canadian spy coins
I am not sure what these spies are up to, but I have some ideas of what is possible.. For 100 bucks, I can get everything I need to start playing with RFID. I would bet it wouldn't take me more than an hour to get a working application where I can tell which RFID chip came near my sensor.
I wonder how many new technologies are going to come out of this war. It seems that with a few hours and cheap micro-controller, you could cause some pretty accurate destruction.
Doesn't it seem likely that this innovation is more likely to happen on the enemy's side where cheap duct tape solutions are made to accomplish a objective, than on our side, where we have a massive infrastructure making weapons for a profit?
I think that corporate America is stifled by commercialized innovation as well. A company is not going to release a product unless it is not only useful, but supportable, mass producible, and has potential to be profitable. Sometimes a market for a solution is so small that only one company would be interested in having it. As a result, the big trusted players are not interested in solving that problem without a massive up front fee.
Other times the solutions are rather duct-tape like, and a company doesn't feel comfortable supporting or putting their name on the technology. As a result they go with a more expensive trusted solution. Sometimes the expense of getting a job done neatly prices the problem out of being solved at all.
Seems like the enemy has some advantage here. They have a relatively specific target. They can do it using whatever inexpensive technology that they can string together to achieve their result, and failure is an option for them.
