The ID Sniper rifle is an art project, a fictional,

hoax A hoax (plural: hoaxes) is a widely publicised falsehood created to deceive its audience with false and often astonishing information, with the either malicious or humorous intent of causing shock and interest in as many people as possible. S ...

weapon devised by artist

Jakob S. 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 Kristian von Bengtson (born August 1974) is a Danish architect, specializing in crewed spaceflight, a resident of Copenhagen and married to animation director Karla von Bengtson. He is most notable for his involvement in founding Copenhagen Suborb ...

."RFID Gun Plays Into Privacy Fears"
''

RFID Journal RFID Journal is an independent media company devoted solely to radio frequency identification (RFID) and its business applications. A bi-monthly print publication and online news and information source, the journal offers news, features that add ...

'' (retrieved December 11, 2007) The

rifle A rifle is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting and higher stopping power, with a gun barrel, barrel that has a helical or spiralling pattern of grooves (rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus o ...

supposedly shoots

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geol ...

chips, and the

police The police are Law enforcement organization, a constituted body of Law enforcement officer, people empowered by a State (polity), state with the aim of Law enforcement, enforcing the law and protecting the Public order policing, public order ...

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, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

at the China Police exhibition.An article in
''

Der Spiegel (, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

'' 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 (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

and a location for manufacturing. The news about the weapon was spread over the internet. When the news was "

slashdotted The Slashdot effect, also known as slashdotting or the hug of death occurs when a popular website links to a smaller website, causing a massive increase in traffic. This overloads the smaller site, causing it to slow down or even temporarily bec ...

", the Empire North website was hit with about 1.6 million viewers. Even ''

Computerworld ''Computerworld'' (abbreviated as CW) is a computer magazine published since 1967 aimed at information technology (IT) and Business computing, business technology professionals. Original a print magazine, ''Computerworld'' published its final pr ...

'' 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 technology news, reviews and analysis website offering daily coverage of gadgets, consumer electronics, video games, gaming hardware, apps, social media, streaming, AI, space, robotics, electric vehicles and other potentially ...

'' 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 ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, Australia, and owned by Nine Entertainment. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper in ...

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
/ref>

Unveiling

References

Further reading