Laser-Scan
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Laser-Scan refers to the method of both burning a barcode into a prisoner's skin and reading the same barcode. This was used for identification purposes for prisoners in Skynet work camps, rather like prisoner identification markings used by SS and other Third Reich military entities in Austwich and other Nazi concentration/death camps ( Nazi extermination camps run by the SS, like Auschwitz, also marked prisoners with identification numbers. The tattoos were the prisoner's camp number, sometimes augmented with a special symbol: some Jews with a triangle, Roma with letter "Z" [from German Zigeuner for "Gypsy"]) which of course furthers the similarities between these concentration camps and Synet's work camps.
In the real world, devices capable of both burning and reading barcodes (or optical media) use two different lasers. The scanning laser requires very little power (5mW), while the burning laser (usually of the same type) can use as much as 400mW of power[1] (which, itself, is not very high as compared to a typical audio circuit, for example). The types of lasers used vary from device to device, but are usually semiconductor based[2], as opposed to gem or gas-based.
