The ID Sniper rifle is an art project, a fictional, hoax weapon devised by artist

Jakob Boeskov Jakob S. Boeskov is an artist based in New York. His work has been shown in museums such as New Museum and Stedelijk Museum. He is best known for infiltrating a Chinese weapons fair with his ID Sniper project but has also worked with music and fi ...

and industrial designer Kristian von Bengtson."RFID Gun Plays Into Privacy Fears"
'' RFID Journal'' (retrieved December 11, 2007) The rifle supposedly shoots

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

chips, and the

police The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and th ...

force may tag persons with this rifle for later easy retrieval. It was produced by the fictional company ''Empire North''. According to its specs, "It will feel like a mosquito-bite lasting a fraction of a second. At the same time a digital camcorder with a zoom-lens fitted within the scope will take a high-resolution picture of the target. This picture will be stored on a memory card for later image-analysis."

Unveiling

The design was presented in 2002 in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

at the China Police exhibition.An article in
'' Der Spiegel'' Boeskov created an artistic project, "My Doomsday Weapon", a travelling exhibition of the ID Sniper rifle, in which he humorously describes his "infiltration" of China police. Boeskov says that a Chinese company offered

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

and a location for manufacturing. The news about the weapon was spread over the internet. When the news was " slashdotted", the Empire North website was hit with about 1.6 million viewers. Even '' Computerworld'' was hoaxed although they quickly withdrew the report. In the spring of 2004 the news and work of the company reached Washington, DC, in the Homeland Security newsletter published by the Congressional Quarterly Group. ''

Engadget ''Engadget'' ( ) is a multilingual technology blog network with daily coverage of gadgets and consumer electronics. ''Engadget'' manages ten blogs four of which are written in English and six have international versions with independent editor ...

'' published a brief comment about the hoax, together with a picture of the "weapon" shortly after the Computerworld article was released. Nevertheless, on March 7, 2007, Engadget posted further images and news of the "weapon" under the title "ID Sniper Rifle fires GPS tracking chip into unwitting humans" despite having denounced it as a hoax three years before. On August 31, 2013 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the ID Sniper Rifle had been referred to in a 2011 police paper titled "Microchipping of human subjects as a productivity enhancement and as a strategic management direction of NSW Police".SMH: Lib's plan to microchip suspects by sniper rifle
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Unveiling

References

Further reading