Coke cans compromising national security

by Peter Rojas posted Jul 1st 2004 at 9:14AM

We'd forgotten all about it, but remember that contest where Coca-Cola is putting special GPS-enabled Coke can-shaped phones? It's going on right now, and if you find one of them you press a button which instantly connects you to an operator who'll tell you that you've just won a Chevy SUV, and then instructs you to press another button that activates a GPS homing beacon on the can so that Coke can immediately deliver the prize to your location.

Anyway, an Air Force base in Ohio and an Army base in Kentucky have decided that they're too much of a security risk, and is requiring all cans of Coke to be inspected before being brought into secure areas, just in case one of them happens to have a GPS chip in it. There's only a hundred of those cans out there total, meaning there's only a one in 2.5 million chance that any given can of Coke brought onto the base is a winner, not to mention the fact that the cans don't transmit the location of the winner unless a big red button is pressed on it, but with the War on Terror and everything you really can't let these things slide.

[Via TechDirt]