The New New

To Combat Thieves, Farmers are Spraying their Goods with an Invisible, Data-Encrypted Liquid

But is SMARTWATER CSI just ‘scientific hogwash’?

Jessica Pishko
OneZero
Published in
15 min readNov 29, 2018

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All photos by Alex Welsh

ItIt started about two years ago, when David Machado was held up at gunpoint. He was working in his shop in Tulare, the county seat of Tulare County, California, when he heard the house alarm go off. He jogged to the home he shares with his wife and saw a car parked out front. Initially, he thought the car belonged to a friend. Perhaps someone had accidentally pushed open the front door, which had a faulty latch. He went around to the back door and turned off the alarm. Then he heard the car horn.

‘Shoot his ass! Shoot his ass!” After a few tense moments, the men jumped into the car and left.

Walking back outside, Machado said he confronted three men. One pointed a gun at his chest. “I just went like this,” Machado said, lifting his empty hands in the air, “and the guy standing behind him says, ‘Shoot his ass! Shoot his ass!” After a few tense moments, the men jumped into the car and left. They only got one thing: a rosary that belonged to Machado’s grandmother-in-law.

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