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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."
Microwave clothes before wearing.
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
That's nutty. Soon anyone who cares about privacy is going to have to EMP themselves before they can go anywhere...
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
Put your tracking enabled underwear in the microwave for 30 seconds and not only will they be toasty warm but you will be able to wear them anonymously. The problem comes when certain establishments mandate that you wear trackable underwear!
Lasers Controlled Games!
Now I've got a reason for advocating nudity....
If you find a Snickers wrapper on the ground you could read its RFID and track it back to the person who bought it and fine him for littering.
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
This is actually just what I've been wishing for. You know when you've misplaced something in your house (my favorite pencil, for a recent example from my own life, though "house" is maybe being charitable), and you spend hours tearing everything apart and then it turns out that it's just lying there somewhere in plain sight?
I always wish, both during and after such a quest, that I could have just whipped out a tricorder (or device of a similar form factor) and scanned for whatever I'm missing, and it would start beeping or blinking on the screen or whatever. It would save hours of time for all but the most type A people.
It would also be a boon on the golf course. And for finding your kids when they wander off at Disneyland. Really, all I can think about is good applications of this technology, so bring it on!
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Topless Bars and Horsetracks will likely be the first places to devise RFID shields, offering safe havens for their customers!
Anything you say will be held against you.
Coat yourself with hundreds of thousands of the little tags. A chaotic radio shout in reply to a sensing whisper should make the devices less than usefull. Bury these buggers in information.
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
...wearing my tinfoil suit, but who's laughing now?!?
RFID Tires
Imagine the possibilities... There's a video on that site for anyone willing to dig. I'd rather not slashdot it (28 megs). This technology was initially used to ship and track tires as a replacement to the old bar codes, but now, the boys in the tinfoil hats are detecting RFID activity on the freeways and border crossings...
Auto manufacturers are programming the VIN number into the tire at assembly. It is only a matter of time before this becomes a requirement.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Cost: $.50 per tag.
Range: 15 feet "optimally oriented in front of a reader in free space."
While the chips themselves are small (grain of pepper is mentioned), the antennas are 1/2" to 4" long.
Sure, this is interesting news (from a technology perspective), but I for one don't fear their use by big brother just yet.
I hope My New Tracking Enabled T-shirt Has a Wear Anonymously Checkbox!
I work in the packaging industry and have seen firsthand some of the RFID application processes on folder gluers. First of all, the defect rate hovers around 10%, which makes relying on this technology a dubious proposition.
I doubt that the practical size is approaching "half a grain of sand," which would make application a nightmare to try to control. And most importantly, RFID tags are like UPC barcodes: they're coded to a single frequency and product, not to each instance of the product! If an RFID tag is enabled on your North Face jacket and you walk in a store, they may be able to tell that you're wearing the jacket, but that doesn't tell them who you are.
So if I've helped reduce the paranoia level a little bit, I'll now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
of where all the missing socks go.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
RFID tags need to be printed on paper
Wrong.
For one, it depends on the type of device. The ones you see embossed on paper are essentially just antennae that resonate at a certain frequency. There are other versions that are MUCH more sophisticated, though, AND active to boot, and manufacturers ARE anticipating imbedding them in a lot of products permanently (if for no other reason than to save the stores the labor costs of removing them.)
Do you think the little mylar strips in US money are for COUNTERFEIT protection??? haha. Stack up a few 20's and it wouldn't be hard to spot them at all using the same technology (i.e. finding the resonant frequency of a passive radiator consisting of an array of mylar strips of known size stacked a known distance apart.)
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
Wow, so someone will know I'm wearing Timberland boots, Dockers pants, Oakley sunglasses, and an Izod shirt.
They won't know my name, address, phone number, age, social security number, sexual preference, number of pets, or marital status.
So what the hell's the big deal? Or are we all just being slash-paranoid?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Clothing tracks YOU!
Oh, wait a minute...
Why bother.
You know...I find it interesting when retailers are talking about a newer technology (that is better than barcoding) for tracking movement of inventory that your link to the mark of the beast should be made.
Principally because the exact same thing was (and is still) said about barcodes.
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.
Yeah. For pets, there's someone (the owner) who has a legitimate reason for wanting to know where the pet is at all times. For adult humans ... there is nobody who has a legitimate reason for wanting to know where I am at all times. Not my employer, not the government, not my family -- nobody.
...) Because that's what it will take to keep Orwell's vision from coming true.
... but if you can get people to think about it all at once, they realize what a Big Brother monstrosity our society can become, without our even noticing until it's too late.
My only real hope about the proto-Orwellian age in which we find ourselves living is that it will spark a massive backlash, and create a privacy movement comparable to the civil rights movement of the 50's and 60's, or the labor movement of the early part of the 20th c. Not just among the folks at the EFF and the ACLU, who come off as a bit fanatical to most folks, but something broad-based. (NB: I'm not calling the EFF and ACLU fanatical -- I support both organizations. But a lot of people think of them as "those nutjobs." I suspect that may be about to change
I think there may be early signs of this. People may say that it's okay for the government to infringe our privacy in one way to "fight terrorism," or the RIAA to do so in another to "fight piracy," or some huge business to do so in still another for "market research," or whatever
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It sounds like the RFID technology is similar a
famous Russian listening device.
This device was totally passive, but when hit with a specific RF frequency (via a very directional beam) it would reflect the beam back but modulated by the sound in the room. The Russians could demodulate the signal and get the audio back. They hid the device in a carved wooden Seal of the United States that they presented to the US Embassador to Russia who proudly hung it above his desk. The Russian were privy to all conversations that took place in his office.
After a while the American figured his room was bugged so they sent in technicians to find the bug. The Russians weren't stupid - they knew when technicians arrived and simply turned off the directional RF carrier beam. They would turn it back on when the technicians left. Finally the Americans got smarter and all left but one who hid in the office with RF listening gear. When the Russians turned the RF carrier on, he detected it and figured it out it was embedded in the Seal. It was quite a scandal.
Working for a rather large corporation that is working heavily with RFID technology, I can atest that this article is entirely FUD (and misinformed FUD at that).
RFID tags are not the size of "grains of sand" but rather the size of an oversized stamp. They are based on passive RF technology. When probed, they absorb a little of the energy and use it to respond. Outside an RFID scanners range, they are just circuits and have no function.
The price point the article quotes is also very wrong. Costs are much lower but still 2x - 3x what they need to be.
So what is this technology being developed for? To replace UPC labels! Instead of having to scan a bar code, you bombared an RFID with energy. An RFID is just as useless as a bar code in the absence of a scanner. The only difference it's a lot harder to mess up scanning an RFID than a bar code (not to mention that bar codes can degrade much easier than RFIDs).
This article was absolutely FUD. Just someone trying to cause a ruckus over nothing.
Don't wear clothes. When you're in court for indecent exposure, tell them that RFID tags have made current clothing violate your right to privacy/anonymity...
That, or you could advertise a protect using your body...
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?
RFID technology has been around for years. Have you purchased a CD or DVD in the last few years? Remember the check-out guy "beeping" it before you left? That's an RFID tag at work. In this instance, it's just a proximity tag that will alert the store if you (ahem) neglect to purchase the product. (The official term for this is "inventory shrinkage.")
Checkpoint Systems makes RF Electronic Article Surveilance (RF-EAS) tags (the US site is not responding, but the Japanese one is, showing the bulk tags.) And here's a company that sells machines to auto-insert the RF-EAS tag into DVD carriers.
An amazing amount of effort has gone into reducing the cost of the RFID anti-theft tags. They're typically screen printed, and usually are destroyed when you purchase the product. It's not cost effective to make it re-programmable, as the retailers are playing a statistical game - they're weighing the probability of someone stealing a returned (or defective) unit against the reprogrammable cost that burdens EVERY unit going out the door.
One step up from this application is the ubiquitous personnel badge that most of us drones are required to wear at the orifice. Here's one from TI (PDF datasheet.) This costs a little more, and is definitley capable of identifying who you are.
I hope the RFID tags can survive the ESD (Electrostatic Discharge) nightmare that is my clunky old dryer. It would be kind of humor to see this come to fruition, only to be wiped out en masse by clothes dryers.
Maybe I should call Maytag and see if they have some type of gauss gun add-on.
But if that's the case, you can't use the system to track the RFID chips after the sale is complete. You don't want the scanners telling you about the pants the customer bought last week, just the stuff he's buying now.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Wow, so someone will know I'm wearing Timberland boots, Dockers pants, Oakley sunglasses, and an Izod shirt.
You mean velcro closure Reeboks, sweatpants, prescription glasses, a Slashdot shirt, and a Members Only jacket.
They won't know my name, address, phone number, age, social security number, sexual preference, number of pets, or marital status.
Who cares, your parent's house, your parent's phone number, 16-40, who cares, who knows, 3 cats, and single.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
This Stanford seminar gave a good overview of the underlying technology.
most of whom don't understand how the microwave works
Including, apparently, the poster.
The microwave oven beam is directional only until it hits the "stirrer", a rotating paddle designed to spread the microwaves all over the interior of the oven (for even heating). Plenty will leak out the front if it isn't shielded.
The screen does a wonderful job at stopping the (microwave) radiation, since the holes are far smaller than the wavelength -- it "looks" like solid metal to the microwaves.
As for the energy -- there may be higher total wattage in the microwave beam, but per-photon the higher-frequency light waves have much higher energy. That higher frequency also means the wavelength is small enough to easily pass through the holes in the screen, so you can watch your dinner cooking, or the pretty light show from nuking an AOL CD.
-- Alastair