Slashdot Mirror

In the US, there has been RFID in car tires since 2003. Yes, they can be tracked with sensors at the side of the road.

track circuits...can't tell you which train [is on a section of track], nor distinguish between maintenance vehicles and trains, nor can it tell you how fast or long a train is.

RFID can tell you those things.

You're probably thinking of NFC. Passive RFID tags have a range of 1-3m, which is perfect for determining whether items on one of my lists of must-have items is on the user's body:
http://www.rfidjournal.com/faq...

1) http://www.rfidjournal.com/art... 2) It literally is exactly what it is: *Things*. On the Internet. Mechanical things. Sensors. Fridges. Not internet only concepts like web pages on the web.

When the K-cup patent expired Keurig tried to promote their "Vue" cups, some of which actually carried RFID chips that interacted with the brewer. Vue cups were bigger, didn't fit in the K-cup style brewer, and cost around twice as much as K-cups. You could get an adapter to use K-cups in a Vue brewer, which was great when those machines were cleared out super cheap because no one bought them.

no company will be tracking my whereabouts

Just the government, via license plate readers.....

Don't forget the RFID embedded in your tires http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?269 thanks to the TREAD (Transportation, Recall, Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation) Act passed in the wake of the Firestone/Ford Explorer news stories. The act mandates that car makers closely track tires from the 2004 model year on, so they can be recalled if there's a problem.

If you extrapolate, plus look at the hints Coke has been dropping...

Coke must be working on a phone app that allows you to configure your "preferred" drink at their multi-selection syrup dispensers. Yes, you can accomplish it with RFID, but If each individual machine is internet-aware, then it can geo-fence to know who is near the machine, report syrup levels for restocking, as well as more accurately track a customer rewards program. We can't rely on phones to have NFC/RFID, so they need to come up with some other way of communicating. If you can get the machine on the LAN of the restaurant, you can do all sorts of stuff... promotions, push notifications, preferences, etc.

Actually, just found that all Freestyle machines are already RFID enabled, since 2009.
http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?4967

Well - here's the RFID in tires:
http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?269

But the reader would not be in the tire. That would be installed on the road. Or in public buildings or in other cars driving by. RFID chips operate passively from the reader.

I thought the first paragraph was interesting. Then I thought the second paragraph sounded foilhatty. Then I googled "rfid tires" and the first article is almost a decade old:

http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?269

Michelin hopes manufacturers will pay a little more for tires with RFID transponders, because it makes the tires easier to track. The microchip stores the tire's unique ID, which can be associated with the vehicle identification number.

And more recently:
http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/racing/dunlop-rfid-tires-moto2-moto3/

For the moment, the technology will be used solely to track tire usage in Moto2 and Moto3. Tiny RFID chips will be built into the official Dunlop tires during the manufacturing process, each programmed with a unique identifying code.
Sensors in pit lane (shown in the photo here on the Dunlop website) will monitor when each tire leaves pit lane, and when they return. Using the database which maps which tires have been allocated to which riders, Dunlop can keep precise track of which tires have been used when, and for how long.

Anyway, it still feels a bit on the hatter side to think the government is currently monitoring who has what tires, but it is definitely something I could see it becoming interested in and something that could actually be done.

Your approach sounds like too much work.

I'd suggest instead edible rfid tags with a scanner affixed to your toilet bowl.

A system like this was proposed for the 2006 World Cup, but Adidas and FIFA opted not to use it because they found some issues with it. http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/2029/ I also heard somewhere that a few teams tried it in a few exhibition games (not sure if it was this same system), and the fans didn't like it because they couldn't argue with one another about whether someone actually scored or not! And since pro sports is just entertainment, you certainly don't want to alienate your fan base...

Well since the RFID can read up to 300 feet by design and a Medtronics device (thats what I'm using for example 'cause it's what I have and what was accessed in the 2008 paper) has a read range of up to six inches, they aren't designed for the same range.

http://www.rfidjournal.com/faq

"What is the read range for a typical RFID tag?
There really is no such thing as a "typical" RFID tag, and the read range of passive tags depends on many factors: the frequency of operation, the power of the reader, interference from other RF devices and so on. In general, low-frequency tags are read from a foot (0.33 meter) or less. High-frequency tags are read from about three feet (1 meter) and UHF tags are read from 10 to 20 feet. Where longer ranges are needed, such as for tracking railway cars, active tags use batteries to boost read ranges to 300 feet (100 meters) or more."

Also, it requires a signal close, looking around I find "long range RFID skimmers" to be 35 cm.

And, boy, you lose of those fuckin' shoes or they getcha!

Yeah, you know, I was worried about RFID in my soles so I made me some sandals* just to be safe. ;)

* this is not my page

Not only are PASS cards not passports, but they use a completely different technology. This story is pretty much debunked at http://www.rfidjournal.com/blog/entry/4615.

After looking around a bit..it appears you can fry these RFIDs like any other...there was one experiment I saw where they used I think a coil from a disposable camera and some other goodies...to create a mini-EMP type thing that would zap the RFID in the tire...

Since it is hard to bring the tire to the microwave to disable is...seems bringing the microwave to the tire is the way to go?

They already do. And without need for cameras and expensive image recognition. There are already RFID in your tires. http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1223/1/1/ T.R.E.A.D. act. I don't mind making deadly firestone tires easier to recall, but I don't like how the RFID is tamperproof.

My latest favorite conspiracy theory revolves around the T.R.E.A.D. Act, which, as you can probably guess, deals with tires. The conspiracy part arises from embedding RFID tags in them to surreptitiously track people.

From this article:

"Tires have to have a unique identification number called a DOT number," he said. "Cars have a vehicle identification number. Under the TREAD Act, carmakers have to associate the unique number on each tire with the VIN of the car it's put on. RFID offers a cheaper way to do that association."

Yes, the kid chip is being marketed via fear mongering
for their kids already.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2176543,00.asp

It will get worse too, and they have started putting the
RFID tags on medical implants as well.

http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/3978/1/1/

I expect phones, watches, and other devices will have them
with or without us knowing about it as well.

They will simply hide the devices.

Not very hard as small as they are getting.

http://www.i4u.com/article5046.html

I'd say you may not like the idea of being tagged,
but odds are they are thinking a stealth tagging method.

Only ppl that will use a active scanner to
find them on themselves will have any luck.

You should do it, then, and make a name for yourself. The maximum range that anyone has been able to communicate with these chips is about three meters, and that in a carefully-controlled, RF-damped lab environment[*].

Part of the thing that makes it so difficult is that the card is powered by inductance from the reader's field. Since power delivered to the card decreases with the cube of distance, this means that as range increases the power requirements go up dramatically. Another part of the problem is that the signal transmitted by the card is very weak and omnidirectional. While the reader can use a directional antenna to increase the effective range at which it can deliver sufficient power and a strong signal, the card does no such thing, meaning its signal rapidly falls below the noise floor as the distance increases.

[*] There are some papers floating around that demonstrate ability to communicate with a contactless smart card from arbitrary distances, but they do it by putting a powered repeater right next to the card.

Microwatt transmitters are routinely read at distances of dozens or hundreds of kilometres 1, 2. I don't see why a quarter milliwatt RFID chip couldn't be read from similar distances.

Much better, RFID in this field exists for years. RFID companies have long seen this as one of their early markets.
Just an example: http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/3572/1/1/
But GIYF.

RFID in your tires?

http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/269/1/1

http://www.rfid-weblog.com/50226711/goodyear_implements_rfid_in_tires.php

Yeah. That's to PROTECT the consumer... Yo' ass is tracked!

Is there something about RFID that allows only a certain set of RFID readers to be able to read the chip? What I want to know is: how do I get an RFID reader? I want mount an RFID reader in front of my house and log all of the cars that come by, when they come by, if they are staying within "view" of the RFID reader for a certain amount of time (like, say, arriving an hour after I leave for work and leaving an hour before I return), etc. Pretty much every car is going to have RFID tagging in the near future, if only by way of the RFID chips being placed in new tired these days, so the only "hard" part will be correlating the RFID to a person's identity, but if the RFID can trigger a video recorder then this challenge is narrowed down. Also, I want RFID stickers and/or micro-darts I can surreptitiously plant/shoot onto the neighborhood brat's skateboard so I can log and record their presence and what they're doing around my house... and above all else: I want an RFID jammer! Why? BECAUSE I'M MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!!!!

Is there something about RFID -- or "active" RFID -- that allows only a certain set of RFID readers to be able to read the chip? What I want to know is: how do I get an RFID reader? I want mount an RFID reader in front of my house and log all of the cars that come by, when they come by, if they are staying within "view" of the RFID reader for a certain amount of time (like, say, arriving an hour after I leave for work and leaving an hour before I return), etc. Pretty much every car is going to have RFID tagging in the near future, if only by way of the RFID chips being placed in new tired these days, so the only "hard" part will be correlating the RFID to a person's identity, but if the RFID can trigger a video recorder then this challenge is narrowed down. Also, I want RFID stickers I can surreptitiously plan on the neighborhood brat's skateboard and bike so I can confront his parents and/or press charge with evidence in hand.

And above all else: I want an RFID jammer! Why? BECAUSE I'M MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!!!!

What's the difference between passive and active tags?

Active RFID tags have a battery, which is used to run the microchip's circuitry and to broadcast a signal to a reader (the way a cell phone transmits signals to a base station). Passive tags have no battery. Instead, they draw power from the reader, which sends out electromagnetic waves that induce a current in the tag's antenna. Semi-passive tags use a battery to run the chip's circuitry, but communicate by drawing power from the reader. Active and semi-passive tags are useful for tracking high-value goods that need to be scanned over long ranges, such as railway cars on a track, but they cost a dollar or more, making them too expensive to put on low-cost items. Companies are focusing on passive UHF tags, which cost under a 50 cents today in volumes of 1 million tags or more. Their read range isn't as far -- typcially less than 20 feet vs. 100 feet or more for active tags -- but they are far less expensive than active tags and can be disposed of with the product packaging.

http://www.rfidjournal.com/faq/18

What is the read range for a typical RFID tag?
There really is no such thing as a "typical" RFID tag, and the read range of passive tags depends on many factors: the frequency of operation, the power of the reader [EMPHASIS MINE], interference from other RF devices and so on. In general, low-frequency tags are read from a foot (0.33 meter) or less. High-frequency tags are read from about three feet (1 meter) and UHF tags are read from 10 to 20 feet. Where longer ranges are needed, such as for tracking railway cars, active tags use batteries to boost read ranges to 300 feet (100 meters) or more.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:Xw0bOrVpWVQJ:p risms.cs.umass.edu/~kevinfu/papers/RFID-CC-manuscr ipt.pdf+rfid+passive+range+boost+hack&hl=en&gl=us& ct=clnk&cd=3

2.2 Read ranges
Industry claims around the security of RFID devices often hinge on their short read ranges.
Some cautionary notes are in order, however. As discussed in [32], RFID tags do not have
a single, definitive read range. While the nominal read range of an RFID tag may be quite
short, on the order of several centimeters, for example, a non-standard reader or large
antenna can provide a significant boost in range at which an attacker can skim an RFID
tag. Hancke [22] has recently demonstrated skimming ranges of over 20cm for RFID systems
in which most readers operate at a distance of only several centimeters, while Kfir and
Wool have hypothesized a possible skimming range of up to 50cm for ISO 14443-B [35].
Furthermore, while skimming requires that a reader power the targeted tag, an attacker
performing passive eavesdropping on a session between a legitimate reader and RFID tag
can

Michelivellian?

bad puns aside: http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/269 /1/1/

tm

I wrote a short paper concerning RFID technology about a year ago, it mostly concerned the hardware and systems architecture. There was no shortage of reports and studies of RFID keys being cracked like the mobile speedpass http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/home05/jan05/rfi d.html.

http://www.ti.com/rfid/shtml/news-releases-rel02-1 0-05.shtml. Some of these passive rfid tags have no access control whatsoever. Meaning one take a small RFID programmer into their favorite store and start changing prices, or worse, write a virus to the RFID tag so the next time it's polled it'll get injected into their SQL DB. Possibly compromising their entire POS system. Ironically, this sort of stunt if done well enough could result in a jackpot of creditcard numbers so it wouldn't matter if you used an RFID enabled card or not at that point :).

Some random RFID links.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/03/rfid _security_a.html
http://www.rfidgazette.org/2004/06/rfid_101.html
http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/133 9/2/129/
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Technology-Article.a sp?ArtNum=20
http://www.enigmatic-consulting.com/Communications _articles/RFID/Link_budgets.html

A nice article on RFID virus attack
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=B96 0208D-9ECF-4F0B-B964-4DD779BFF905

http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/securi ty/story/0,10801,100459p2,00.html

From which comes a nice quote, this is from 2005.
"The TI technology is vulnerable to attack because it uses a decade-old, 40-bit cryptographic key to encrypt communications between the RFID DST tags and readers, the researchers found. TI also used an unknown and proprietary encryption algorithm on its DST devices. But Rubin's team reverse-engineered the secret algorithm by observing how DST tags responded to specially crafted challenges. Once they guessed the algorithm, researchers created a software program that could be used in so-called brute-force attacks on DST devices to recover the secret cryptographic keys, Rubin said."

The site, http://rfidanalysis.org/ that hosted these findings no longer exists but you could probably find it cached on the net somewhere, wayback machine maybe.

Remember that RFID represents a system and not one piece of technology. The implementation of the system is dependent on the deployment plan. I could make an "RFID system" with 2 933Mhz radios and a pair of 8-bit microcontrollers from digikey for around $150. Sure, you could pull my data out of the air, but technically speaking I'm using RFID. I could also build my own RFID key system with 2048-bit encryption to act as the keys to my car. It's not that difficult to develop, really just assembling existing technologies. RFID can be done "right" and it is a promising technology. I wouldn't shun it for alot of commercial applications but for personal applications, well ask yourself the question. Is this thing a necessary part of your life?

Peter

KLM and Air France are already running a pilot project (pun not intended) on their service between Paris and Amsterdam. (See for example http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/260 0/1/1/ or go google yourself)

http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleprint/26 58/-1/1

Seems this guy is right though: http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/269 /1/1/

"The current state-of-the-art technology for tire identification consists of fixing a barcode onto the finished product. This method of identification only provides traceability between the moment the tire leaves the manufacturing plant of the tire producer, until it reaches the POS (Point Of Sale). As soon as the barcode is removed at the POS, the unequivocal identification of the tire is no longer possible. Thus, when quality problems occur, an it is extremely difficult, time consuming and costly to research the production lot the tire belonged to originally.

To ensure the maximum quality of each tire, is becoming more and more important to be able to guarantee the unequivocal identification and traceability of every single item put on the market throughout its entire lifetime."

"The US Congress passed the TREAD (Transportation, Recall, Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation) Act in the wake of the Firestone/Ford Explorer debacle. The act mandates that car makers closely track tires from the 2004 model year on, so they can be recalled if there's a problem. This technology could be available for the 2005 model year.

... But Michelin claims to be the first to meet the Automotive Industry Action Group's B-11 standard for North America, which calls for a read distance of 24 inches."

For this year's NASCAR racing season, Goodyear is using RFID to track the roughly 200,000 tires used throughout the NASCAR season at all three race series -- Nextel Cup, Busch and Craftsman Truck -- as part of a tire-leasing program. NASCAR organizers requested the leasing program as a means of evening the playing field.

Not sure about present day ... but in 2003 Hitachi had one at .3 square milimeters

Well, goodness me, some people already have had that idea

http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/104 1/1/109/

The real manipulation was the feds on the AIAG.. but TREAD RFID is also quite shockingly real. Why dont you please look at these following links and read all my extracted highlights here in this post:

Goodyear, Michelin and other tire manufacturers are claiming TREAD is the reason they are forced to put in spy RFID transmitter chips in all tires... not whims. A bylaw document addendum for TREAD is merely one strongarm tactic by feds that aided it to be fully adopted. AIAG manipulation was another.

Goodyear RFID tires from TREAD :
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"Tires have to have a unique identification number called a DOT number," he said. "Cars have a vehicle identification number. Under the TREAD Act, carmakers have to associate the unique number on each tire with the VIN of the car it's put on. RFID offers a cheaper way to do that association

web source : http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/122 3/1/1/

Michelin RFID tires from TREAD :

SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"The tire industry faces regulatory pressures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requiring tire companies to monitor pressure and temperature in tires as part of the Tread Act, a much-publicized law passed in 2000 in response to the rollovers of Ford Motor Co.'s Explorers equipped with certain Firestone tires. The Tread Act states that the vehicle identification numbers must correlate with the Department of Transportation's number for the tire."

web source : http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:NKrAuVWpXksJ:w ww.internetweek.com/allStories/showArticle.jhtml%3 FarticleID%3D49901229+%2B%22tread+act%22+%2Btires+ %2Brfid&hl=en

Industry and TREAD RFID ..

SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:

"There are no industry-based automotive mandates out there today. Perhaps the only exception to this is the Tire TREAD Act in which RFID is specified as a method of identifying tires supplied to OEMs. The U.S. Congress passed the TREAD (Transportation, Recall, Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation) Act after the Firestone/Ford Explorer issues emerged. The act mandates that carmakers closely track tires from the 2004 model year on, so they can be recalled if there is a problem. "

web source : http://www.zebra.com/id/zebra/na/en/index/rfid/faq s/rfid_considerations_specific_industries.html

Industry abd RFID TREAD :
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"For example, Michelin and Goodyear plan to use RFID to aid their compliance with the Transportation, Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation (TREAD) Act."

web source : http://www.fawcette.com/wss/2003_10/magazine/colum ns/trends/

Notice a theme ? Instead of blaming AIAG these tire companies blame TREAD federal law compliance for the RFID tracking chips in all passenger tires. Read those links, you government shill.

And next, you will start claiming the products dont work well on highways.

Here is a meticulous research PDF paper entitled "Test Report : Single-lane Vehicle identification with UHF RFID"

http://www.ipico.co.za/technology/Whitepapers/Sing le-lane%20EVI%20Test%20Report%2020030618.pdf

And that shows a LOW POWER 4 watt reader at a height of 5.7 meters (18.7 feet) above a passive RFID coil product can read at speeds of 160 km/h for common tollway type RFID. The feds buy >4watt readers and also use better gear.

I love the naysayers.

njyoder you ar wrong! TREAD is real.

Goodyear, Michelin and other tire manufacturers are claiming TREAD is the reason they are forced to put in spy RFID transmitter chips in all tires... not whims. A bylaw document addendum for TREAD is merely one strongarm tactic by feds that aided it to be fully adopted. AIAG manipulation was another.

Goodyear RFID tires from TREAD :
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"Tires have to have a unique identification number called a DOT number," he said. "Cars have a vehicle identification number. Under the TREAD Act, carmakers have to associate the unique number on each tire with the VIN of the car it's put on. RFID offers a cheaper way to do that association

web source : http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/122 3/1/1/

Michelin RFID tires from TREAD :
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"The tire industry faces regulatory pressures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requiring tire companies to monitor pressure and temperature in tires as part of the Tread Act, a much-publicized law passed in 2000 in response to the rollovers of Ford Motor Co.'s Explorers equipped with certain Firestone tires. The Tread Act states that the vehicle identification numbers must correlate with the Department of Transportation's number for the tire."

web source : http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:NKrAuVWpXksJ:w ww.internetweek.com/allStories/showArticle.jhtml%3 FarticleID%3D49901229+%2B%22tread+act%22+%2Btires+ %2Brfid&hl=en

Industry and TREAD RFID ..
SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:

"There are no industry-based automotive mandates out there today. Perhaps the only exception to this is the Tire TREAD Act in which RFID is specified as a method of identifying tires supplied to OEMs. The U.S. Congress passed the TREAD (Transportation, Recall, Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation) Act after the Firestone/Ford Explorer issues emerged. The act mandates that carmakers closely track tires from the 2004 model year on, so they can be recalled if there is a problem. "

web source : http://www.zebra.com/id/zebra/na/en/index/rfid/faq s/rfid_considerations_specific_industries.html

===

SNIPPET QUOTE EXCERPT:
"For example, Michelin and Goodyear plan to use RFID to aid their compliance with the Transportation, Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation (TREAD) Act."

web source : http://www.fawcette.com/wss/2003_10/magazine/colum ns/trends/

You are probably an FBI shill for wanting to FACTUAL INFORMATIVE mod the post to -1 like it was 4 out of five times before... all using the feds shill accounts.

njyoder, If you have a fact to dispute then post your facts! Otherwise read and learn! The feds aready scan car tires on the roads.

Did you even READ this post, did you even read the other? or are you a sock puppet account for the FBI?

The US military, for example, has developed sensitive electronics to extend the read range of passive RFID tags to large distances, as described in the article, "RFID Sensors: From Battlefield Intelligence To Consumer Protection," RFID Journal, Aug. 12, 2002, at http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/182. Such ultra-sensitive radio frequency receivers rely on filtering systems to separate the RFID signal from background noise.

Here in Sweden all passports issued since October 1st this year have an RFID chip containing biometric data. Currently a digital photograph along with digitalized information of all the regular printed information is contained in it, but within a few years fingerprints will be added to it as well.

The harsh feelings amongst the population towards these new passports is not restricted only to the potential integrity issues. The number of police stations where one can get these new passports is less than half compared to where one could get passports before, as the new equipment required for e.g. the photography is so expensive so they didn't get the equipment to every of the old places. Also these new passports cost more, and are only valid five years compared to the ten years of the old passports. So in the long term the queues at the police stations to get a passport will be far worse than it has been, and the queuing has been bad enough already for a long time.

Belgium and Norway are other European countries that have passports containing RFID implemented, and Germany will soon also have these.

• http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/194 2/1/1/
• http://www.europeanbiometrics.info/news/newsdetail .php?Id_news=31

• First you need to find the tag. Few people have scanners at home, and more and more tags are non-obvious (to avoid shoplifting by removing the tag in the store.) This is the current big problem.
• What happens if the tag is part of the product? Interesting you mention boots -- one of the first products to ship with embedded tags is likely to be sneakers. The tags will be in the soles of the shoes, no way to get 'em out without ruining the sneaker. Tags can be part of molded plastic (like the car keys that ship with them right now) so they'll also be in the handle of your toothbrush, not stuck on top of it and easy to remove. This is the coming big problem.
• Tag removal may eventually become illegal. A Proposed European Union IP Enforcement Directive failed, but had a small clause that citizens were not legally allowed to remove tags because -- I love this part -- it would violate the intellectual property rights of the manufacturers. See http://www.ipjustice.org/CODE/codewhitepaper.shtml #Ib3

This is going to be a big fight - no idea where it will end. Thus far, no one has a good solution for consumer privacy. A few things have been tried.

• The Metro group in Germany pledged to disable all tags at the point of sale. Turns out they didn't. But who knew, right? You take your purchase to a counter, the clerk waves something at it and tells you the tag is off, and you go on your way. Only, their system was broken. This points out that to have an effective assurance of privacy, consumers need a way to be able to check for themselves.
• Blocker tags (http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=20 60) not only don't work in practice yet, they won't work for many sorts of tags. Blocker tags are only effective against specific types of tag communication protocols. That may be good enough, but I'm not yet convinced. I'm taking a wait-and-see approach here. I think the right people are working on it, though, and I expect they'll eventually come up with something that at least helps.
• Ari Juels came up with the most serious proposal I've seen, "A bit of privacy," http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/153 6/1/133/ IMHO, the solution won't work. It depends on everyone behaving and following the spec, but doesn't enforce good behavior. However, if he's able to lobby for changes to the EPC spec, perhaps a solution like this will eventually come to market. I figure that's five to ten years at best.

http://www.rfidjournal.com/faq/23/102 [RFID Journal] says that:

The Electronic Product Code (EPC) was created by the Auto-ID Center as an eventual successor to the bar code...EPC tags were designed to identify each item manufactured, as opposed to just the manufacturer and class of products, as bar codes do today.

There are both passive (Gen 1) and active (Gen 2) tags. Active tags are now being sold as a means to protect high value items from shoplifting since they can have data written to them or be turned off.

http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/178 3/1/128/

The mindset behind Gen 1 was for it to be a replacement for bar codes. In Gen 1 systems, you can read a tag just like you would a bar code. In Gen 2, though, you also have bidirectional communication; not only can you read a tag, but you can also turn around and lock it, kill it or write new data to it.

Good thing all four of your car's tires already contain RFID chips.

http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/269 /1/1/

Enjoy your so-called "freedom".

HK has been using a contactless cash card since 1997 called Octopus It's proprietary RFID system (built before the standard appeared), that seems to work quite well for public transport and retail.

Zonk,

We all know you don't read Slashdot, but we assumed you were at least reading the stories you approved. I guess we were wrong!

RFID Tags for Digital Rights Management Posted by Zonk

Anyone who read Sunday's RFID Journal story and today's Wired story would realize they're about the exact same thing.

If you really did read the two stories, and your memory is this bad, maybe you should see a doctor?

From my understanding, corpse theft (or illegal corpse purchasing) often occurs on a piecemeal basis. In other words, one company or university might only need eyeballs while another focuses on the other organs such as the heart or brain. Would they put RFID tags in all these different parts?

Also, despite the really small size of the world's tiniest RFID tags, these tags can still be viewed with the naked eye. If I illegaly purchased a brain, and I had autopsy tools at my disposal, it would seem like a trivial task to remove the chip inside.

Wouldn't it be much more efficient to maintain a DNA database of donated bodies? This way if a fraternity gets caught with a pair of stolen eyeballs they can run a DNA test to see where it possibly originated.

Of course, I don't suggest they keep a DNA database on alive schoolchildren. Only when they're dead and unable to protest. :-)

Actually, the 800 pound gorilla is the Dep't of Defense, which is also requiring suppliers to move toward carton-level RFID in 2005 and item-level by 2007. DoD buys everything from toilets to tampons in huge quantities, and no one wants to be left off of their supplier list.

I don't mind a customs official reading my passport, but I most certainly don't want anyone else reading it. I guess I'll be packing aluminum foil in a few years.

Actually, the plan is to include RFID chips in the road itself ,and in the tire. Once mass-produced to the level required, such devices are extremely inexpensive.

The obvious short term advantage of reading the signs is that they are already deployed all around.

I know I read about one before, but can't find a reference fast for that. I did find a seal rfid tag reference though for containers, which I know isn't the same thing. perhaps the inside rfid uses the container shell as the antenna, to beat the farady cage deal.
shipping container seals and tracking
scroll down, little article in there on tracking using rfid and gps in tandem.