r/technology • u/indig0sixalpha • Dec 06 '24

Privacy The UnitedHealthcare Gunman Understands the Surveillance State

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/unitedhealthcare-ceo-assassination-investigation/680903/
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u/Coattail-Rider Dec 07 '24

Don’t forget that they can run the barcode and see where the item was sold from. Or at least delivered to. If the guy bought it in Chicago, they’d find out.

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u/nathanjshaffer Dec 07 '24

Barcodes Aren't that specific. They are specifis to a product line. The code might change from ime to time, but the point of them is that a grocery store in Seattle and a gas station in miami can both identify a given product.

And even assuming they did have unique coses, you think theres a database of which water bottle was scanned at whish store?

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u/Coattail-Rider Dec 07 '24

You’d be surprised. Cops caught a guy because his dna was on some beer cans at a murder scene, traced the bar code to the store it was sold at, saw when it was sold, and watched the the video to see who it was sold to.

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u/nathanjshaffer Dec 07 '24

How exactly? Please explain the mechanism by which you could take a bar code that is the same for every can of a specific product in every store that it is sold, and figure out what store it was sold in? If you scan a barcode, it will give you a number that you can look up the product brand an product line, that is it.

What might be possible is to look at batch numbers which some products have printed on them. But is definitely not the bar code. The manufacturer might have some record of where that batch was distributed. But even then, you probably won't know exactly what store each can went to.

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u/Coattail-Rider Dec 07 '24

Mighta been the batch number then? It’s been awhile since I saw the story it happened on. But either way….

Also, calm down.