Sunday, December 30, 2007

Potential spy gear

While watching Rush Hour 3 (I know, I'm going to get in trouble over my movie selections soon), I had a thought for a great spy device: an implantable GPS tracking device that also monitors health or brain activity. That way, if the spy with the GPS brain tracker is killed, the trackers (i.e., the ones tracking the tracking device; humans) will know the precise location (and time) where the death occurred.

It could also be a nice deterrent to prevent killing of the spy: "I have a brain-scanning tracking device; if you kill me here in your secret headquarters, then my organization will know exactly where you're located!" Then again, that might prompt the movement of the spy elsewhere before the killing. It would be useful to perhaps have it keyed with Bluetooth such that the spy could mark various spots and send messages (e.g., location names, descriptions, etc.) along with the coordinates.

Of course, being fitted with such a device might be less than pleasant...

PS: if you don't know the meaning of "i.e.," "e.g.," or "etc.", see this post.

7 comments:

Hence said...

Oooooh! What a great idea for a book/movie!! (Sounds of brain sparking and frantic scribblings in notebooks)

They either have done or are toying with planting GPS devices under the skin of certain people, e.g., Alzheimer's patients (ha! I learned my lesson! and probably spelled Alzheimer's wrong), so if they wander off, they can be found. In the brain, though, woof... My father-in-law has Parkinson's, though, and has an electrical impulse thingy implanted in his brain, so why not a Garmin...

Brilliant idea! (Really, I'm not trying to negate it by using that word!)

Tony M said...

Thanks... actually, I have several movie ideas (plot/script), but have yet to put them on paper (or hard drive). Started to once, but it never turned out so well. I do better at short stories than longer length items. My wife, on the other hand, seems to be able to stick with something for a long time. She's working on a novel, a mystery thing... it's really good. I wish she'd finish it and then maybe I could quit working and live on her income... :)

Anyway, they're putting implantable GPS tracking devices in all sorts of things. Cars, computers, pets, people. I also thought it might be kind of neat to have a Bluetooth headset-type device implanted in your brain that reads your thoughts directly and can be controlled that way as well. Of course, you'd need some sort of way to "turn off" the headset, and some sort of recharging port for it...

But maybe I'm just techno-crazy. (FYI, I don't have even a Bluetooth headset... in fact, I just got my first Bluetooth-capable phone a few weeks ago when my old phone quit working properly.)

Hence said...

What other ideas, if you don't mind my asking?

Hence said...

FYI, I don't have even a Bluetooth headset...

What, do I sound like a Luddite or something?

Hence said...

nhOr, my husband said, they simply remove the device after they've killed them in their secret headquarters, then destroy it. No....no, they take it apart to see if they can change it to their advantage, or...DARN! I just had another idea and promptly forgot it!! Darndarndarn!!

Sorry, I should have put all these in one comment. But hubby just got home for lunch with his comment. He also noted that if someone hacked into the system they'd know where all the spies were. But that could be quite a good plot advancement.

Tony M said...

I hesitate to post my script ideas before they're fully put into paper (or electronic) format, for copyright reasons (not you, other "script spies" scouring my blog for script ideas...). I have a secondary reason or two as well, but will consider putting them here (once I've had a chance to at least review them in my head to make sure I put them down in a logical, sensible format).

As for the FYI on the Bluetooth headset thing, that was simply in reference to my "techno-crazy" comment. (Then again, if I had tons of money, I really would be techno-crazy, so maybe it's not really worth mentioning anyway.)

As for the GPS tracking/brain scanning device, it would be too late for the bad guys (assuming the person with the device was the good guy) once they'd killed the good guy, since it would already have transmitted the coordinates (location) and time of death before the bad guys would be able to remove the device. The best bet for them would be, assuming they knew it was present, to keep the spy with the device moving around while their hackers located the device, figured out how it was wired, and found a way to pretend the device was still attached to the spy's brain while removing it, then kill the spy after having already removed the device. Then they could do that other part, you know, hack the device to draw the good guys into an ambush/trap.

That would work, though... maybe we should continue developing this thing into a script... :)

But not next Saturday at 4:30 ET (3:30 CT, etc.), since the 'skins are playing then.

Speaking of the 'skins... I once heard a news reporter (or maybe it was a radio host, I don't recall) talking about the protesting about the "Redskins" moniker, how some native Americans are upset by it. Per this reasoning, the Chiefs could also be considered "bad," and his suggestion was:

Change the Redskins name to simply the "Skins" (which they're often called anyway, and that can't offend anyone - we all have skin!), and change the Chiefs to the "Shirts" - that way, when they played, we'd have a real "shirts vs. skins game"...

Hence said...

Oh....yeah.

No, don't leak your ideas on my account. :)