By Michael. Would you wear an electronic tattoo if you couldn’t log on to the Internet without one? That may sound crazy to many of you, but the technology for such a system already exists. RFID tattoos have existed for quite some time, and they are already being used on animals. But now an entirely new generation of electronic tattoos are being developed that can monitor your vital signs, interact with your mobile phone and even communicate directly with your mind. These new electronic tattoos are thinner than a human hair, and they are going to fundamentally transform the way that we think about human identification.

Right now, the Internet is being absolutely plagued by hackers and identity theft has become a multi-billion dollar enterprise. It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine if someone is actually who they say that they are. And as even more of our commerce gets conducted through the Internet, identity security is going to be absolutely critical. Without a doubt, there will continue to be a push for more secure forms of identification than we have today. But there is also a very dark side to this kind of technology.

What if someday a tyrannical government decides to make a permanent electronic tattoo for identification purposes mandatory for all citizens? What if you are not able to buy, sell, get a job, have a bank account or log on to the Internet without “proper identification”? What if the price for receiving your tattoo is to swear absolute allegiance to that tyrannical government? The truth is that technology is always a double-edged sword. It always brings with it the promise of progress, but it also always has a dark side that could potentially be abused. Read more from this story HERE.

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Motorola Pushes Plans for Electronic Ink and Digital Pills to Authentic our Daily Activies

By Victoria Woollaston. Motorola has announced it is looking at alternatives to traditional passwords in a bid to make logging into online sites, or accessing mobile phones, more secure.

Among the ideas discussed at the D11 conference in California on Wednesday were electronic tattoos and authentication pills that people swallow.

The tattoos, developed by Massachusetts-based engineering firm MC10, contain flexible electronic circuits that are attached to the wearer’s skin using a rubber stamp.

MC10 originally designed the tattoos, called Biostamps, to help medical teams measure the health of their patients either remotely, or without the need for large expensive machinery.

Motorola claims that the circuits, which also contain antennae and built-in sensors, could be adapted to work with mobile phones and tablets. Read more from this story HERE.

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Pentagon’s Mad Scientists Want a Tattoo That Tracks Troops’ Vitals

By Nick Stockton. In its ongoing quest to measure every aspect of U.S. troops’ physiology, Pentagon researchers are looking to develop a durable, unobtrusive device that can track the body’s physical response to stress. Military scientists believe that using the device — preferably a tattoo — to track heart-rate, temperature or bio-electric response during various training situations will help them crack the code of combat fatigue.

The Navy recently requested research proposals to develop the next generation of bio-statistic devices. The solicitation, which opened last month, hopes new technologies can transcend the current paradigm of patient monitoring of needles, gels and electrodes. And advanced materials make it possible to integrate everything from the sensors to the transmitter into thumb-sized membranes that can stick to skin — like temporary tattoos.

The Navy is hoping that whichever company wins the research contract will be able to use a relatively new technology known as epidermal electronic systems (EES) to make sensors that are both unobtrusive and durable enough for modern combat training. Using state-of-the-art, highly flexible materials, researchers can coil sensors, electronics, and transmitters into serpentine shapes that form a stretchable net. “This innovative design contains all of the necessary components in an ultrathin layer about the thickness of a human hair,” writes Zhenqiang Ma, an electrical engineer at the University of Wisconsin, in a review of the technology.

They are nearly as flexible as hair, too, and adhere to the skin using strong molecular forces. According to research by EES’ inventors at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, they can be pinched, poked, pulled, and stretched without damaging the device. In one experiment, researchers left a sensor tattoo attached to their subjects’ necks for over 24 hours before it wore off. Read more from this story HERE.