FWIW, the tech in the mid 1980's was good enough to recover data from mag tape and floppy disks that had been erased / over-written 7 times.
One guy I worked with had a project that was going to create a product that could read mag tape codes (like CC strips) from a distance - dozens of feet away. Imagine putting a code on a car, and reading it as the car drove by on the highway. To test the concept, they loaded him up with test gear and batteries to run the gear, and sent him out into the parking lot to read all the codes hidden on the cars. He had no idea where they were, but he found them. Then the project got shut down. It would have been quite profitable, lots of applications, and the company he worked for liked making profits.
Good info.
FWIW, the tech in the mid 1980's was good enough to recover data from mag tape and floppy disks that had been erased / over-written 7 times.
One guy I worked with had a project that was going to create a product that could read mag tape codes (like CC strips) from a distance - dozens of feet away. Imagine putting a code on a car, and reading it as the car drove by on the highway. To test the concept, they loaded him up with test gear and batteries to run the gear, and sent him out into the parking lot to read all the codes hidden on the cars. He had no idea where they were, but he found them. Then the project got shut down. It would have been quite profitable, lots of applications, and the company he worked for liked making profits.
Yep and then gov comes in, classifies the tech and takes it from there.