Michelin to Include RFID Transmitter in Every Tire

An anonymous reader writes "According to the RFID Journal, Michelin (the tire manufacturer) has announced that it is planning on embedding RFID transmitters into every tire. The article states that 'the microchip stores the tire's unique ID, which can be associated with the vehicle identification number.' Let the privacy invasion begin!" If they're going to embed electronics in tires, I wish they'd start with tiny pressure gauges. (See also this story from a few days ago about the coming surge in RFID tags.)

Comments

who ordered this?

[frovingslosh]

funny, as a consumer who actually buys the tires, I don't remember ever asking for this.

Easy to disable

[MacAndrew]

Just use an icepick to perforate the chip. :)

This decision was mentioned a few days ago in the Times I think, and the intent to transmit tire pressures was specified. As for privacy problems, I think it's a little premature. Anyone close enough to scan your "tire chips" could just write down or photograph your license plate anyway (thouse red light cameras come pretty close), and soon enough with OCR traffic cameras will be able to record your passing. So anonymity in public is a fleeting thing anyway, and the Fourth Amendment won't stop it.

Also, it is easy enough to buy tires anonymously by using the green stuff.

To protect privacy, campaigning has to focus on the weak leak: The government. That the administration would even propose TIA reflects a serious problem already; privacy is the orphan right.

Re:uh... don't be dense

[Sycraft-fu]

A re-edit:

If you car is "suddenly" equiped with one or two liscence plates that each display a unique serial number by means of reflected visual light, well, that is "bad" from a privacy standpoint.

Now associate those numbers with your VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) which uniquely identifies your car.

Your VIN is already connected to things like your name, address, insurance carrier and so on.

So now you are driving down a street and any number of automated systems (OCR) can know it is you (well, your car at least). So you have essentially been tagged like a spring buck. .... Do I need to continue?

You car already HAS a unique identifier tacked on it, your liscence plate which is illegal to remove or alter. More, unlike RFID which requires a transmitter and close (very close in the scale and speed on whcih cars operate) proximity to operate, a liscence plate can simply be read with your eyes. It is tied to your registration, which is tied to your vin. With a liscence plate number and an onld analogue radio a cop can call up just about anything they need to know about the car in question.

Re:The Law, and they do!

[buysse]

If implementing technology like this can save one life, I say go for it!

Goddamn, but I really hope this is sarcasm.

bar code? something smells.

[twitter]

The tire makers are just trying to comply with the law! The TREAD (Transportation, Recall, Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation) Act requires tire makers to track all of their tires in case they need to recall them.

Recalls are not driving this. It would be cheaper to do this another way and unique IDs are not needed for recalls.

Does anyone think it's cheaper to "invest" in all new equipment than it is to use established bar codes? Tell me why the company can't paint a nice little white bar coded serial number on the side of the tire? Everyone's got barcode readers and they would be more practical. How is a tire shop going to check the serial number of a single tire, when every tire in range answers?

RFIDs are only useful for others who have nothing to do with tire recalls. Does anyone really expect to be told that their tires are recalled? Most recalls are silent, you either find out about them on your own from paid advertisements or you don't. While it would be very nice for Michalin to contact me if my particular lot of tires is bum, I don't see what that has to do with someone being able to ID my car from a distance. If tire lot is all you need, why the unique number? Won't unique serial numbers actually impeed lot recognition? When tires are sold at a shop all the information the company needs to meet the stated goal is collected. After that, no one else needs to know who you are.

What it means to me...

[BrokenHalo]

...is that as I am going to need new tyres for my car, I will probably think twice before buying Michelins.

Though I suspect that given the distances I drive here in Australia, it's unlikely to ever be a problem.

After all, they can't even maintain mobile phone coverage without a fairly hefty power input.

General Comments

[mandrews]

After reading the entire discussion, there are some excellent comments but quite a bit of outright speculation. A few facts (mostly from the story):

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.

It's auto manufactures who are responsible for tracking tires for recall. Michelin appears to be offering these tires to them (not the general consumer) for recall purposes. The suggestion about JiffyLube checking your tires for recall when you change your oil is, I think, what Michelin wants the car manufactures to do when you go to your dealer for service.

Michelin hopes manufacturers will pay a little more for tires with RFID transponders, because it makes the tires easier to track.

Michelin says the transponders cost "several dollars" today, but the price will drop if they are manufactured in mass volumes ... It's not clear yet whether automakers will be willing to pay the additional cost.

Michelin tires already tend to be more expensive. They don't want to make it worse unless the manufactures will pay for it.

The microchip stores the tire's unique ID, which can be associated with the vehicle identification number. The chip can also store information about when and where the tire was made, its maximum inflation pressure, size and so on.

This same information can be gathered from other parts of the car. Michelin is trying to make things easier for the car dealers.

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.

As has already been pointed out, these things are passive devices. You pump a signal at them with a hand-held reader and it uses that energy to transmit. One of the points in the article is how much work is took to get a 24 inch read range. The only way you can use them to recover your stolen tires/wheels is to find them yourself and use the RFID as proof of ownership. As for tracking your children, you would need detectors spaced four feet apart in every road of your state.

I've seen a picture of one of these tires in some other article. Michelin is so proud of solving the technical challenges, they are putting stickers on the side of the tires. Two years from now, if you want to know if its in your tire, look for the sticker. After all, the "technicians" changing your oil need to be able to tell if they can use the new-fangled tire reader on your tires or not.

Re:uh... don't be dense

[1u3hr]

They would have no reason for giving their database to 'the Man' so he could spy on you and see how often you travel from A to B.

Because "the man" asked them to. As flight schools had "no reason" to hand over their lists of students, as ISPs had "no reason" to hand over their customer info... Once the information exists, and law enforcement wants it, it can just ask for it, in these days with any or no excuse.

Re:uh... don't be dense

[syukton]

no reason? No reason other than the limitless budget of the United States of America. They can write a cheque with more ones and zeroes than you'll find in your average intel CPU...Everything has a price; I think -you- are the one that needs to not be dense.

I have a friend who used to be a telemarketer, and he used to tell me all kinds of fun stuff about their lists of phone numbers they'd have to call. They'd get lists of people who just had children born to them from the hospitals, so they can be called up and offered parenting magazine subscriptions. They'd get reports from police stations about illegal possession of firearms and then these people would be targeted for sales of "guns and ammo." If the hospitals and the police are already willing to sell their lists, what makes you think that something as "reputable" as a TIRE MANUFACTURER won't sell theirs? heh.

Furthermore, although it is true that everything can be used for both good and bad, the greater likelihood is that it will be used for something bad or oppressive. The DMCA is a great example of what people initially thought would be a "good" law, but it turns out it prevents people from posting ads from newspapers on black friday and all other kinds of inane bullshit that the DMCA shouldn't even apply to.

If you give those "in control" a way to more-efficiently or more-effectively "control" the ones they're "in control" of, they're going to use this new technology or method exhaustively "for the greater good" even if it walks all over our rights, because it holds the illusion of making their job easy or making a human system flawless. A human system by its nature will never be flawless, because it is human, but that doesn't mean that those "in power" or "in control" aren't lusting after a "perfect solution" which will put them in the position to watch everybody and make sure they behave.

The more you take things like this lightly, the more you're letting your guard down. You need to believe that the only person that will protect you and your rights is yourself, and you need to believe that everybody else out there has wants and desires FOR or OF you which are completely counter to your own. Only by encountering all friends as enemies can you ensure that your personal privacy and security will be preserved.

Question everything.

Re:Look what happened to me

[Michael Woodhams]

And of course complex software systems like this never have bugs, and couldn't possibly lock somebody in a room overnight because the system doesn't belive they can be near the only door.

Garage

[AlgUSF]

What would be cool is if your driveway could have a sensor in it that reads the RFID on your tire and automatically open the garage door for you. No more worrying who has the remote.