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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.
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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...
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.
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.
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"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
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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.
Stupid like a fox!
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.