Sun, Motorola Want Radio Tags In All Consumer Goods

NortonDC writes: "Now we know why Sun's Scott McNealy tells people to 'Get over it,' namely that his company is in the forefront of an effort to assault any hope of buying and using anything with privacy. This article from an MIT publication documents the collaborative effort by Sun, Motorola and others to tag all consumer items with transmitting radio tags that uniquely identify each individual item with a 96-bit ID, for less than a penny each." In fairness, there are a lot of fine and legitimate uses that I would have no problem seeing these used for, but the possibilities for tracking you closer than you'd like are obvious.

Comments

Hardware hacking

[orangesquid]

What if I take it apart, and swap tags out with another item? Or even *remove them entirely* ohmygosh! :)

Re:Hardware hacking

[jfunk]

Why do you want to "burn out" the tag? ("burn out" is a pretty dumb term, considering that you would just want to remove them. Any process the "burn out" will describe would be likely to damage you or your equipment.)

That serial number on the bottom of your equipment can be read at a greater distance. Do you scratch out serial numbers from the bottoms of equipment you buy?

Do you realise that they already know if you bought it if you sent in that warranty card?

Re:Hardware hacking

[norton_I]

That is exactly what you would want to do. The primary legitimate purposes of these devices are for inventory tracking from manufacture to purchase. At that point the tag should be burned out.

Chances are, you can do this the same way they handle the anti-theft "stickers" on CDs and such. They work by the same principle (inductive coupling) but have a simple RC circuit at the center of the spiral antenna. In a weak RF field, they couple to the field and give a detectable signal. when the store runs your CD over the eraser, it generates a moderate strength RF field that burns out the RC ciruit.

You could do the same with these tags, either at the store, or once you got it home (if the stores won't do it for you). Enough power down the antenna will burn out the circuit, and render it useless.

These types of tags really have the potential to streamline production and shipping, and are in general a Good Thing(tm). We just have to be careful how they are used. Almost exactly like every other technology in existence.

Re:Hardware hacking

[norton_I]

That whole mattress tag thing is a myth, and the RF tags would be the same situation. Mattress tags are not to be removed, except by the consumer. They contain information such as materials and safety warnings that need to be given to the consumer. It really isn't much different from the "nutrition facts" label on food products -- this is the same reason that when you buy a bag of candy bars, they say "not labeled for individual resale" -- they don't have the government mandated nutrition information on individual bars.

Likewise, you will be permitted to remove RF tags from products you own. Hopefully the government will prohibit placing them where it is hard to remove, but if not, they can be burned out with an RF field slightly stronger than used to read them.

Ick.

[AntiFreeze]

I see this causing the same sort of problems that the Pentium III chip had when it came out.

Likely, it will cause the same sort of solution: consumers will probably gain the ability to disable the tag. At least, that's what I hope will happen.

Just keep in mind, giving products unique IDs is something which has happened all the time in the past. Intel did it. Microsoft did it. Don't be surprised. On the other hand, these companies tend to not be able to get away with these ids once the public notices. I hope the same thing happens with these tags as with the others. If not, that would be the surprise.


---

Maybe I can find out...

[bcrowell]

...who keeps taking my pens at work.

The Assayer - free-information book reviews

Re:Maybe I can find out...

[bonzoesc]

Simple prevention: Gnaw on them. As Scott Adams said, "A few bite marks can be more effective than The Club at preventing theft." That's why nobody steals my 88 Festiva even though the doors are rarely locked and the key is in the car.

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate

They should put them on...

[stimpy]

babies and small children...damn things keep wandering off when I'm in the middle of a game of Quake. And does she get mad at them? Oh, no! For some strange reason she acts like it's my fault...

Re:Corperate Communism

[phaze3000]

It was _decentralized_ property ownership that made this country great, not centralized corperations. Centralized capitalism has the exact same problems as communism. Hell, just look at all the corperate welfare we have today. That's the great sucking sounds of centralization which killed the USSR.

Actually, many who would describe themsleves as Communists (myself included) would say that the USSR was an example of state-run capitalism, not Communism. The potential for even greater abuse when the entity controlling everything doesn't even have to pretend it's doing anything in anyones best interest, other than the shareholders, is seriously scary.

--

Limited range is not a limitation.

[q000921]

People say that with the limited range, this isn't going to be a problem. But the range is going to get bigger; there is no technical reason why it shouldn't. The main reason why the range is limited right now is because the scanners need to be fairly cheap for its current market. If you can spend $100000 per scanner as opposed to $1000 for a scanner, you can do a lot more. And lots of people will have an incentive to spend just that kind of money to track people.

If you carry a set of tags that respond to RF, you can bet that they will be used within a few years for tracking your every move through a store. You'll probably get incentives to carry special ones that are linked to your identity. If you don't, some services may not be available to you, and people will track you based on the random tags that came with your clothes anyway.

Of course, you will have the "right" not to use them, just like you can, in principle, make all your transactions in cash, not drive a car, and not have a telephone number. Well, actually, in the US, there are people who live that way: the homeless.

See, that's the problem with this kind of infrastructure: once society accepts it widely, you don't have a choice but to use it yourself.

world domination at it's best

[Eil]

Steve Halliday, vice president of technology at AIM, a trade association for manufacturers of tagging technology, says, "If I talk to companies and ask them if they want to replace the bar code with these tags, the answer can't be anything but yes. It's like giving them the opportunity to rule the world."

Ironic.

this would be really cool for inventory control

[StandardDeviant]

Especially if they meet a price point such that it is economical to use the tags in a throw-away manner. Imagine being able to poll the contents of a warehouse/transit container/etc. in real time and without worrying about a guy missing something with his handheld inventory scanner.

Another cool use would be at the grocery store. Fill your cart with tagged items, when you walk out (no lines or cashiers) the scanner tallies the total and sends you an itemized bill at the end of the month or charges your debit/credit card. Or the book store (same idea). "But... but... then the Man would know what I bought!" He already does. Database A (books sold to CC#) JOIN to Database B (CC# to customer information), SELECT as needed. Note that all of that already exists except that a human and a POS system facilitate the transaction instead of radio waves.

Heck, if they're really cheap, combine them with microsensors for things like soil nitrogen content, soil moisture, etc. and some triangulating receiver stations for dumped-out-of-the-back-of-a-plane microagriculture monitering stations. Or if they're really light combine them with a streamer and some triangulating stations to measure air currents inside of a tornado/storm (combine with thermometer and or barometer for information from inside the storm). The whole unique-id-to-position thing could be extremely handy for field measurements of all types, particularly if it is effectively zero marginal cost to the instrument.

--
"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".

Devices On the Market Already

[PatJensen]

There are devices already on the market that can do this and are quite cheap. Dallas Semiconductor makes pin sized ROMs that can contain serial numbers or product IDs used for warranty tracking, product tracking, authentication, whatever.

You can get more information and SDKs on how to program them at http://www.ibutton.com/ibuttons/memory.html.

While I think the radio element does leave an element of traceability, I can see them having a use for service records, warranty and inventory tracking for businesses, say renting out handheld radios to field staff or phones or whatever.

-Pat

Re:Maybe I can find out... Socks??

[Raindeer]

Yes, or where the other sock went. That is truly one of the greatest mysteries of the twentieth century.

Greetings,

Raindeer

What about theives?

[crlf]

What about digitally masterful theives? I don't want to allow some punk riding down the street to know exactly what I have in my house!.. If this were EVER to be made, then I'd be the first to push for a blocker technology that would stop anyone from ever being able to determine what I had. I'd make it into a keychain on top of that so that I'd be query-safe from anyone everywhere I went. Just a thought.

What about cancer? Or end of capitalism?

[SmoothOperator]

There are those out there who claim that cell phones cause brain/eye cancer.
Now imagine zillions of little chips emitting radiation. So if you're a Coca-Cola delivery guy, and handle many, many cases of Coke each and every day, you ain't having any kids... Sorry.

And then, we'll have script kiddies and hardware gurus making an electronic version of the dog whistle. They turn it on, and VOILA! each and every chip within 10 miles responds and gets fried. And Coca-Cola loses track of 100,000 items. So they produce more, and all other companies who's chips got fried produce more of their products. There is no demand, they lose money, America goes bankrupt and civilization collapses. Conclusion: Your privacy will be violated only for a little while: then we'll all go back to the Stone Age.

Don't get too paranoid

[AaronStJ]

Knowing slashdotters, the first thing that's gonna happen is everyone is gonna have a fit about consumer rights. Now they can track us wherever we go. Now they can tack away are basic privancy. Etc.

One thing that the article makes clear and the everyone should keep in mind is the range of these things is extremely limited. We're talking 1 cm, right now, maybe a couple of feet when the tech is perfected, and even then the devices don't continually broadcast, they only respond to speciall readers. So no, companies can't follow their produts to your home.

This said, the radio tags seem like a good idea to me. With devices like retail bcomes a lot cooler. The checkpoint devices will actually work correctly, for one. When you walk out of the store, a reader on the entrance will only sound an alert if you have a tag that is in inventory. No more false alarms. And checkout will be very easy. Instead of scanning every item by hand, a reader can quickly tally every item in your cart. Not to mentioneEvery cart could have a reader that keeps a running tally for you. No more overspending.

Things get better on the other side of the equation, too. Taking inventroy is very easy. Walk down the isles with a reciever, and it tallies everything. Put recievers in trucks and make sure your stock isn't dissappearing. The list of cool things that these can do go on and on.

This isn't a technology to be afraid of. Read the article. Be happy. These things are already working wonders is things like ski lift tickets and livestock managment. Don't let paranoia get in the way of some cool technology.

Re:Don't get too paranoid

[nomadic]

One thing that the article makes clear and the everyone should keep in mind is the range of these things is extremely limited. We're talking 1 cm, right now, maybe a couple of feet when the tech is perfected, and even then the devices don't continually broadcast, they only respond to speciall readers. So no, companies can't follow their produts to your home.

No fair using facts, I wanted to have a fit...
--

Here we go again

[JediTrainer]

This headline is flamebait. Anyone who reads about this technology knows that the radio tags are so small that they can only transmit a few inches. Basically the idea is to give the ability to bar-code something without having to locate the actual tag with the code on it. No fumbling around at the cash register, trying to get the product oriented just right so the device can read the code.

It's not like they're sticking a transponder in there which can be tracked by GPS. Sun's not going to watch your new computer go home with you in your car.

In addition, it won't give them more information about you than they already know about you, since most electronics hardware already has its serial number which is globally unique. This tag still won't give them the ability to trace the unit to you personally, unless the store you bought the unit from gives them access to their customer records (not very likely, IMO), including credit card info. I'm not sure about the legalities, but since Motorola is already able to tell that you own one of their Cell phones for example (which transmits its ESN for everyone to hear), then this really isn't anything new.

This message brought to you . . .

[pete-classic]

. . . by a unique hardware ID.

Namely my NICs MAC address. Unique hardware IDs are ultamately necessary for networking. The question is will all of their uses be fully disclosed and optional.

-Peter


"There is no number '1.'"

Time for that portable EMP unit ....

[taniwha]

just walk into the mall, fire it up, and let it rip (imagine the whine from the ghostbusters backpacks followed by a really loud crackle ...) .... oh you wanted kids? tough ....

Re:What about cancer? Or end of capitalism?

[ksheff]

From the article:

At the heart of this scenario is a little device called a "radio frequency identification tag" - a silicon chip that boots up and transmits a signal when exposed to the energy field of a nearby reader.

These things don't start transmitting until someone scans them. Even then, it's verly low power. I have something very similar that is the area of a credit card and about 2-3mm thick. It's used as an ID badge at work. They don't do anything until they are scanned by a reader and then they transmit a weak signal back w/ the card's serial number. This is compared to a database of what doors that card can open and if it matches, the door unlocks and I walk in.

I can certainly understand why some companies would want to this in order to get a handle on inventory control and shrink. It would be great for them. I don't like the tracking and marketing aspects of it at all. I don't like junk mail (real or virtual), whether it's random or targeted. (After the lawyers, can we kill all the people in Marketing? =)

Re:What about cancer? Or end of capitalism?

[b1t r0t]

There are those out there who claim that cell phones cause brain/eye cancer. Now imagine zillions of little chips emitting radiation.

Sigh, another karma whore who posted before reading the article. These things only transmit a signal when exposed to "the energy field of a nearby reader". Which means they're obviously RF-powered. No power signal, no radiation, no cancer. The FUD line is over there in Redmond, take a number.

And then, we'll have script kiddies and hardware gurus making an electronic version of the dog whistle. They turn it on, and VOILA! each and every chip within 10 miles responds and gets fried.

But I like that idea.

Re:I'll be the first to buy a tagged device from..

[caffeinated_bunsen]

Try removing the tag and carrying it with you for a while. Wander through some area that you know has plenty of readers, like a large store or mall. See what happens when they think you're driving your car through Radio Shock. One could have plenty of fun messing with removing and/or transplanting tags, as long as such activity doesn't become illegal "marketing circumvention."