OT: A curious mystery of probably very little importance.

[geoschmo]

This GPS tracking chip isn't that farfetched. It doesn't take a huge amount of power to broadcast a simple digital code. It's not like you need enough bandwith to send audio or video signals. The emergency locator beacon for emergency raft on an aircraft can be picked up by satelites. It's not much bigger then a roll of quarters and that's almost all battery. And that's 30+ year old technology. They already have implantable devices that work like a credit card/identification device. The chip itself has no internal power supply, it's just an inductor that picks up a signal from the chip reader and uses that for power to rebroadcast. The same company that makes them claims they are only a few months/couple years from a marketable GPS chip for humans.

I'll try to find a link. I was just reading about it a couple weeks ago.