Slashdot Mirror
RFID: The New Big Brother ?
Makarand writes "The possibility that we could be tracked not because we have a microchip implant but
merely because we wear clothes, eat and carry objects around is real
according to this article on C|net news.
A technology called RFID (radio frequency identification) consisting of miniscule microchips
the size of a single grain of sand that listen to a radio query and respond by
transmitting their unique ID can make this possible.
Most RFID tags use the power from the initial radio signal to transmit their response and hence can be placed anywhere imaginable.
Retailers are adoring this concept and soon
everything more expensive than a Snickers bar will sport RFID tags
making tracking possible through our own personal possessions.
The privacy threat comes when RFID tags remain active once you leave a store and currently the RFID
industry seems to be giving 'mixed' signals about whether the tags will be disabled
or left enabled by default."
No seriously-- is this more insightful than it is funny? Would this *actually* work? How many seconds?
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
I'm not much of a "holy roller" (or at all for that matter), but this one made me think:
"He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, freeman and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no-one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom, if anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person and it's number is 666." Rev 13:16-18
Except you have to know those distances EXACTLY for it to work. And guess what? You don't. What if the note gets folded, or even crumpled? or if I stack them not-entirely-straight, or if the strip is off centre (haven't seen the US ones yet) and I stack them different ways around?
Oh, and most countries have had metal in their notes for years now (and more than one colour too! and holograms! and see through windows! and textured ink!). It IS an anti-conterfeiting measure, and not a moment too soon, seeing as how the USD is by far the most easily copied major currency in the world.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Here's where the RFID in your sweater falls apart... Think about your family Christmas gathering, sweaters chaning hands all over the place, with nobody telling the central database what is happening.
If you're wearing an outfit bought for you by somebody else, then the computer will falsely identify you as that gift-giving friend or realitve. Too many false-positive IDs and this system gets considered useless.
Besides, we still use cash to buy things around here. I don't think we need to get paranoid until we see serious proposals to knock that off...
Do you think the little mylar strips in US money are for COUNTERFEIT protection
Do you think they're for TRACKING YOU? haha.
Lord. My brother used to work on the theft prevention systems they use at stores -- you know, the little magnetic strips on clothing and other goods that would set off the alarm if not deactivated first. This is not considerably different from RFID or the mylar strips in bills.
Do you have any idea how easy they are to defeat? Bend the strip and you change its resonant frequency. Put two strips up against one another. Wrap them in tinfoil. Any one of a half dozen other methods.
As usual, they only work against the idiots, which so happens to be 90% of your criminals.
And, of course, your rampant conspiracy theorists who don't actually have any bloody clue how reality works.
Before anyone panics there are several things to consider:
1. Unless the receiver can determine the distance to the RFID tag (and this is usually not the case), the tag's location cannot be determined with any greater accuracy that the distance to the nearest receiver. To "locate" a tag, there must be many expensive receivers no how many cheap tags there are. Remember, we live in three dimensions.
2. The range of passively powered tags is only a few meters, and they all tend to reply at the same time when a bunch are pinged, causing interference.
These difficulties can be solved, but not soon.
...in a totally consumer driven economy. Eventually when you walk by the "smart ad's" (like the ones in Minority Report) all the advertising companies have to do is scan your clothing, shoes, belt, etc.
From this one can find out not only what you like to buy, but how long you have had what you are wearing and how much you paid for it, possibly even where you bought it.
Include this with a retinal scan and a database of past product scans of the individual (not to mention other purchase profiles sold to advertisers by your supermarket/travel agent/etc.) and you start to build a fantastic database on the buying habits of the individual in question.
The "smart ad" accesses the database, crossreferences you and your buying habits.
Couple of instants later and *POOF* a personally tailored, computer generated ad pops up and starts calling your name using those trick directional ultrasonic sound generators...subliminals and throbbing music lulling you into a state of complete fiscal abandon...Showing you the way to the nearest store that will painlessly seperate you from the next sizable chunk of your no-longer-disposable income.
Sounds like a corporate driven police state where every purchase you make is tracked and logged to provide clues to allow companies to exploit your weaknesses for fine fragrances, goat porn, or cheap little southeast-asian made plastic trinkets.
Think I'll start making my own hemp clothes right now...gonna need some practice.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
I would imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to program a cheap microcontroller to give out thousands of random numbers every second.
In theory this could be defeated - if you only sent out thousands a second.
Suppose they read your ID for 5 seconds. Chances are they are going to get random numbers, plus a single number repeated 100 times. Guess which one is the real ID?
Or, suppose they get the real ID just once. And suppose you sent a million false IDs. They check their database, and they find that only one of the IDs is present - so that is the real one. Why is only one present? Well, there are 2^64 possible combinations, so if you send 10^6 values, there is a 10^6/2^64*(number of valid IDs) chance of you hitting a valid ID. Suppose there are a trillion IDs in existance (a pretty big number). Then the chance of hitting a valid ID is 0.005%. That is assuming the real RFID code is only sent once, and of course assuming the receiver can read the barrage of IDs. While I'm sure this would cost more, keep in mind that while the ID has to be very cheap, the receiver does not.
Also, note that the only people who are going to build receivers that do this are people who are INTERESTED in tracking you. Having a jamming device like this is going to advertise "I have something to hide" to anybody who looks at the logs. (Not that this SHOULD be the case, but the fact is that it will be - just like sending PGP'ed email while that isn't the norm.) You really want a jammer which either is undetectable, or which completely blocks the ID itself so that while it might set off an alarm, you remain anonymous. (Of course, if this were a real security checkpoint you could be detained or photographed.)
Back around the time of the Oklahoma bombing, there was talk of requiring taggants in all explosive, and that some had them, already. Of course Oklahoma would have required taggants in fertilizer, as well. I don't know if they were seriously proposing that.
But with the amount of fireworks and roadwork going on, wind dispersal and all, it seemed to me at the time that we'd rapidly get to the point where *every* environmental sample would include some background level of taggants. At that point, tracing explosives would become a statistical process, and certainty would be long gone.
IMHO, the problem with RFID in everything would be the sheer data volume. Assume each and every RFID had a unique number, and then imagine the size of the database to track all of that, not to mention the monitoring infrastructure. Then remember that they can't even track election results.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The answer may be simpler than that. Electrostatic Discharge, or ESD. A simple shock should fry these chips. Wald on a carpet, and touch any suspect item. POP! No RFID chip.
Of course, that relies on actually knowing where the RFID device is embedded in the clothing. If it really is the size of a grain of sand, how would you know? I vote for the brute force microwave (BFM) method.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
One of the requirements of the RFID technology is that you logically need a receiver within X distance of it, to determine within an area at least 2piX^2 where you are.
If we are worried "they" will know where we are, "they" will need a sensor wherever we are. A very unrealistic concept.
More likely will be sensors on toll booths on interstates, and things of that sort. Whereas using license plates from those cameras that are everywhere would still suffice to do that type of tracking.
All technology (hell, even nuclear technology) can be used for good and bad purposes. I can imagine many uses for RF tags that I would actually appreciate. For example, as I walk to my car, it automatically unlocks and starts the engine. Or, the front door of my home automatically unlocks for me as I grasp the doorknob. When I enter a room, the lights automatically adjust to my preferred lighting level. Provided the tag is embedded within my body, there's not much risk of it being stolen.
But as everyone here points out, there are many possible nefarious uses for such a device. And indeed, there are nefarious uses for any technology. I could use wall current to electrocute you, blind you with a laser, or carve an "anarchy" symbol into your forehead with the sharp edge of a broken silicon wafer (ok, that's a little facetious, but you get the point).
My question for everyone is, how much are we willing to limit our technological advancements because of possible risks?
Let me give another example that might sound silly. Scientists are, right now, dreaming up technology to move asteroids around. One day we might use this to bring them closer, and mine them for materials. We could also use it to push an incoming asteroid out of a collision course with Earth.
A sufficiently funded terrorist, however, could also use this technology to take the world hostage. Or, if he's having a bad day, he could endanger the survival of the human race by actually doing it, and flinging a huge rock toward Earth. Should we stop developing this asteroid-moving technology because of this risk?
When does scientific and technological advancement become irresponsible?
I consult for very large retailers... for all the privacy rants on /., when RFIDs become widespread, I bet you you will hear practically no complaints? Why? instant checkout.
That's what has grocers drooling over this (well, the super-automation of the supply chain and a tighter control on shrinkage too, but this is the killer app). Walk up to the register with your shopping cart, hand over your credit card and get back you receipt and a bunch of shopping bags. Wheel shopping cart to your car and pack your groceries there.
No loading-reloading at the cashier's, almost no lines, fewer employees at the store. Even a small error rate for the RFIDs will be acceptable just due to the payroll savings involved. And for the tinfoil-hat wearing crowd: for most goods sold at retail (not currency, or expensive stuff like high-end clothes, watches, etc) RFIDs are practically not different from bar-codes. So what's the problem there?
At worst (for you) it could know exactly who you are especially if you bought all those things in that chain store. At best it would still let them know your sex (unless you're a cross dresser), and can make a good guess of your age, lifestyle, weight and dimensions.
Now imagine a few scanners set strategically around the store and at the cash register and that you take a look around and then purchase another item of clothing with a credit card (assume you payed cash before).
Before you walked in they knew nothing about you. Now they know your name, your credit card number, the clothes you're wearing, how long you've been in the store, what part of the store you looked at most, what part you skipped, your approximate weight, lifestyle and age. And all you've done is buy a pair of socks!
Would any store go to the effort? Probably not until the technology improved, but I wouldn't put it past them. In fact, I can imagine that store cards of the future would employ similar technology so that the moment you walked in the door carrying the card they'd know who you were.
Believe it or not, in Israel, it still is legal for the time being to be Palestinian in a public place.
Ah, but I have been trolled. Pardon me.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
It gives me this nasty pit in my stomach.
No worries... it's supposed to.
I take drugs seriously.
Please put tinfoil hat back on bucko... you're starting to drool.
The mylar strips in US currency are not RFID tags or anything similar. They are an anti-counterfeiting measure.
As inexpensive printers got cheaper, many counterfeiters were bleaching $1 and $5 bills and printing phoney $20 and $100 bills on the paper. Most counterfeit money is detected by bank clerks who can feel the difference in paper quality.
The mylar strip (which is not present in $1 and $5 bills) makes it easy to spot bleached counterfeits.
The European Union addressed this problem by making each demonination of currency a different size.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
As another reply stated, this is the sort of crime one must witness.
What if you buy a candy bar for a friend and HE litters with the wrapper? What if your wrapper just happened to fly off of a garbage truck?
Man, people are just itching to make a criminal out of anybody...
Actually, I wouldn't want my grocer to disable the RFID tags on purchased food items. If I had my own RFID reader, it would make for a quite convenient way to update an inventory of what food I have on hand. This, in turn, would allow me to do many neat things:
- automatically generate shopping lists
- compare food inventory against a recipe database to see what meal options I have
- automatically track food expiration
- optimize food usage (ie. less waste) by planning meals a week in advance
Of course, this would also require tracking of inventory depletion. However, with recipe planning and perhaps a touchscreen interface, this would be pretty simple and would allow you to track your nutrition at the same time.
As a side-note, these things are nowhere near a threat to privacy:
1.) They are trivially easy to destroy
2.) Regardless of how small the chip is, you still need an antenna matching the wavelength of the RFID detector's transceiver. Simple physics guarantees that the antenna will be plainly visible or else highly inefficient and narrow-banded. (not much use if you're trying to power a chip with it). Sure, these limitations may be slowly overcome by advances in nanotech and ultra-low-power design, but it'll also make the chips more fragile.