GPS in a Pill Bottle

[BEAR]

I am just wondering out load here, and lookign for ideas and comments. I read that the New York Police Department wants GPS trackers in every prescription bottle.
Two sides for this discussion. (1) Does anybody have any idea who is goign to pay for this? How much is a prescription going to go up, because it has a GPS tracker in it? How easy is it goign to be to defeat? Can I just pour the pills into another bottle and then destroy the tracking bottle with a hammer? Is this goign to do any good? Does it make sense to anyone? (2) If they can pull it off, can I use it in my rocket to help me track i? Can we get GPS tracking down to $10 or $15 with the NYPD's help? Maybe I can get GPS for all of my rockets? Will these trackers be on deposit and I have to bring them back when the prescription is empty? What if a black market forms for these things and it creates a new problem. What happens when there are 10,000,000 GPS trackers let loose in the north east and they are all transmitting at once? GEE, a new thought, what is the battery life?

Actually, they really only want to put trackers into fake prescriptions, hoping they will be taken along with real prescriptions. The idea is to find a way to stop prescription thefts and they hope they can track the fake bottles to find the thieves. Good luck. If the thieves have any brains, they just might check their goods to see if they are authentic, especially with this going main stream media now. I know, that was a GREAT BIG IF.

 

[Marc_G]

I'll restate / reinforce your closing point so that we avoid political overtones: nobody is suggesting consumer pill bottles get the trackers. There would just be a tracker randomly inserted into a dummy bottle in shipments. If the shipment (Say, a big box of bottles) gets boosted, the tracker is pinged and it reports the position, aiding law enforcement. No need for consumers to break their bottles. Besides, the gov't already tracks us via coins and if you ever touched a penny, Big Brother has your DNA. :wink:

The costs would be covered at the level of the pharma company/distributor. If it was cost effective, it would stick around. If it wasn't cost effective, the program would be dropped. Pharmaceuticals are a big, cost-conscious business and would only bother with this if there was a benefit. If the cost savings from recovery / deterrence didn't outweigh the outlay, no pharma would bother with it. So, there wouldn't be costs to pass on to the consumer.

The cost of the hardware is actually pretty trivial. The cost for network usage by the trackers might be more than the cost of the tracker hardware over the lifespan of the tracker.

I do think there would be some benefit to this, but it would take a studied analysis to show if it would be a NET benefit. More informed folks than I are clearly crunching the numbers.

Marc

 

[BEAR]

I agree with you on everything, BUT how do I get one of those cheap trackers and place it in my nose cone?

 

[Dork_Vader]

It's interesting suggestion. But if its use is as Marc_g suggests..

But I doubt it will have the effect they want. Really simply to get around it.. Just put the bottles into a box that blocks the GPS signal. Or empty the bottles fairly quickly. I think it would require a "dummy pill"

 

[jsargevt]

Bear, I doubt that the trackers differ much from the ones you can get from BRB in both price and size.

Marc has it pretty on the money. Additionally, say you have a large shipment of pseudoephedrine or a C-2 / Controlled drug. Trust me that not only the drug companies but the DEA wants to make sure that those pills make it to their intended destination and if something should take them off course a GPS would be very handy.

However, if this does end up creating a market for usable, cheap GPS trackers I am sure that lots of hobbyists will be clamoring to get them.

 

[Marc_G]

I agree with you on everything, BUT how do I get one of those cheap trackers and place it in my nose cone?

I can see the headlines now:

Rash of drug thefts tracked to Rogue Rocketeers

NY City, NY: A string of drug thefts has been solved today. Police have been trying to uncover a seemingly random string of drug shipment thefts. Several warehouses were broken into, and surprisingly, the only boxes of pills stolen were ones containing tracking devices. Police activated the trackers and proceeded on what they thought might be a wild goose chase. The pursuit ended, surprisingly, at a sod farm. It seems that model rocketeers have been stealing the trackers and using them as locator beacons for mid- and high- power amateur rockets. To avoid the problem in the future, legislators swiftly moved to ban model rocketry altogether...

 

[BEAR]

If you are following the news very closely, you will quickly see that New York City is having an epidemic of pharmacies being robbed, or citizens being robbed of their prescriptions as they walk out of pharmacies or are walking down the street. One of the methods that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is putting in place and enforcing is that hospitals and clinics that are under the authority of the city of New York will only keep a limited amount of pain killers, so that they cannot be robbed of a huge amount of inventory. The mayor says this will cut the number of armed robberies and if the dispensaries run out of pain killers, then some people will have to suffer a little inconvenience. Others ideas, as in what the NYPD wants to do is place dummy pill bottles with the GPS trackers on the shelves with the real item, so that when the robbery takes place and all the pill bottles are scooped into a bag, the bad guys will get the GPS units also. Now if I was thinking about doing something like this, (and of course I am talking about this because I only want to write a book or a screenplay), I would make my attempt in the middle of the night when everything is closed, then retreat to some place safe, check the bottles, ditch the GPS (or save them in a box that will not allow tracking, and sell the GPS to some unsuspecting rocketeer at a later time) Regardless, if this is going to make GPS trackers much less expensive, and possibly much smaller, albeit disposable, then this is something I want for my rockets. Can you get it in a BT-20 size?

 

[BEAR]

I can see the headlines now:

Rash of drug thefts tracked to Rogue Rocketeers

NY City, NY: A string of drug thefts has been solved today. Police have been trying to uncover a seemingly random string of drug shipment thefts. Several warehouses were broken into, and surprisingly, the only boxes of pills stolen were ones containing tracking devices. Police activated the trackers and proceeded on what they thought might be a wild goose chase. The pursuit ended, surprisingly, at a sod farm. It seems that model rocketeers have been stealing the trackers and using them as locator beacons for mid- and high- power amateur rockets. To avoid the problem in the future, legislators swiftly moved to ban model rocketry altogether...

Help, I need some pain killers, preferably bottles that have GPS trackers in them. I just hurt my sides from laughing at Marc G's comment. Help, I'm on the floor and I can't get up! Hurry, Hurry! (I've got a launch this weekend.)

 

[burnout]

Besides, the gov't already tracks us via coins and if you ever touched a penny, Big Brother has your DNA. :wink:

Marc

I hope you are joking but I suspect you are not.

 

[BEAR]

Why should he. My friends at the NSA tell me they are recording every e-mail and phone call to be used at a later time if someone shows up on there radar and they need to learn more about those individuals. Of course we are rocketeers and are always on some edge. Hmm, maybe the pills have GPS trackers in them, like the radioactive pills to track 007 in Thunderball, back in '64

 

[Marc_G]

I hope you are joking but I suspect you are not.

My tongue was firmly in cheek. I'm far from a conspiracy theorist, at least relating to stuff like this. No tinfoil hats for me (I prefer coat hangers on the ceiling--better signal attenuation).

I do think that the government tracks/maintains a lot of information about us from a SIGINT perspective, but I don't think they do much with it unless we're on their radar. I'm of the opinion that the big problem with the Constitution is that it doesn't mention the internet, the right to broadband, and related stuff. Warrantless wiretaps = bad. Net neutrality is probably the single biggest thing we need to push for to keep freedoms. But let's veer away from the political stuff and get back to the delicious idea of super cheap trackers that might "fall off a truck someplace." :wink:

 

[JStitz]

Hmm..sounds like "Entitled Addicts" They wont go score Heroin in NYC..:lol: but they will rob people of prescriptions.
This actually happened in my neighborhood 2 years ago, several blocks away from The I-95/I-10 interchange. It was 2 women robbing 2 other women that were spotted in Walgreens getting their pain pills.If anyone has followed this, addicts travel to several different states in one day to get drugs. The new era..meth and Oxy/Xanax.

 

[BEAR]

You mention meth. I presume you have been reading about the people cooking meth in their grocery carts while walking the aisles in Wal-Mart? My friends in law enforcemtn laugh in amazement when they hear about these events.

 

[JStitz]

It just happened in An Amelia Island Hilton Hotel! on the third floor! thre perps wrote a rubber check and cooked. here's where it gets kinda fishy on who is actually making money from this.
The supposed clean up cost by "Haz-mat teams is $10.000 per room!!!:y: C.mon...They had to clean all 3 floors?!!!

 

[BEAR]

I am surprised the authorities and the EPA folks did not demand the place be razed because of the suppossed contamination. We had a major forest fire here this last summer and I was told by some landowners that they were told that they supposedly could not clean up there own property because of contamination and a dangerous environment and that they would have to call in environmental mitigation specialists. They went to the county commissioners and got that BS changed.

 

[luke strawwalker]

(snip)
So, there wouldn't be costs to pass on to the consumer.
(snip)



Marc

There is ALWAYS a cost to pass on to the consumer... the question is, which is greater?? The cost of "doing nothing" and keeping things "as-is" or the cost of doing this sort of thing??

There's no such thing as a free lunch... (or a free launch)...
Later! OL JR

 

[luke strawwalker]

(snip)

One of the methods that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is putting in place and enforcing is that hospitals and clinics that are under the authority of the city of New York will only keep a limited amount of pain killers, so that they cannot be robbed of a huge amount of inventory. The mayor says this will cut the number of armed robberies and if the dispensaries run out of pain killers, then some people will have to suffer

---

(a little inconvenience.)

There, fixed it for you... (okay so strike through doesn't work... )

Others ideas, as in what the NYPD wants to do is place dummy pill bottles with the GPS trackers on the shelves with the real item, so that when the robbery takes place and all the pill bottles are scooped into a bag, the bad guys will get the GPS units also. Now if I was thinking about doing something like this, (and of course I am talking about this because I only want to write a book or a screenplay), I would make my attempt in the middle of the night when everything is closed, then retreat to some place safe, check the bottles, ditch the GPS (or save them in a box that will not allow tracking, and sell the GPS to some unsuspecting rocketeer at a later time) Regardless, if this is going to make GPS trackers much less expensive, and possibly much smaller, albeit disposable, then this is something I want for my rockets. Can you get it in a BT-20 size?

My question is, what happens when I buy a bottle of Nyquil and get home and find out that it's empty except for a d@mn GPS tracker?? Someone's gonna have to deal with one P!SSED PUPPY!!!

Later! OL JR

 

[JordanT]

I just came here to see what size medicine bottle you were using, but that I found a screw-top, plastic spice bottle was the perfect size for a BRB.

Of course, if the crooks were smart, they'd just hide the heist in a metal box (or cover it with carbon fiber cloth!) until the batteries were dead. That's what happened to the guns we shipped to Mexico, right?

 

[BEAR]

I would not know about the guns you are speaking of. I was not included in that loop. But I guess by your comment your possibly were? (LOL) =)

 

[cwbullet]

I wonder what type do tracker they use.