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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.)
One of the first products I can see coming out of this event is little EMP generators that allow you to detect, then blow the living daylight out of the RF circuitry in these things. Remember... any good transmitter is a good receiver, too... find the resonant frequency of this receiver, and you can pump enough energy into it to melt the traces.
Instant privacy.
So, are we going to start seeing people swap tires with each other? I'd read the article but it's already dead. Is swaping tires going to become illegal without re-registering them with the new vehicle? It'd be pretty cool to have whoever is tracking this see most vehicles in four different places at once.
Apparently, of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.
The manufacturer already knows which VIN goes to who. The bank knows the VIN of the car since it issues the loan. Your state government knows the VIN of your car when you register it. Your insurance company knows your VIN and everything about your car from it. Everytime you bring your car to the dealer they they note the work done by your VIN so the manufacturer can notice any major problems. So how is this going to take away from your privacy?
The best use I could think of for this would be for those drive-through beer and liquor stores. Every time a car drove through, you could record the ids' of its tires. Then, if the customer bought cigarettes, you could store the tire ids in a database of cigarette buyers. You could sell this database to health insurance companies for a fortune so they could bust people who made fraudulent claims about being a nonsmoker on their health insurance and deny them benefits.
Man, this is a terriffic idea.
If you car is "suddenly" equipt with five (don't forget the spare) transmitters that each broadcast a unique serial number in response to a promiscuously broadcasted request, 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 can know it is you (well, your car at least). So you have essentially been tagged like a spring buck.
Worse, but more interesting, a well equipt "ring" of duck-and-squat or similar con artists can now "interview" your car to see if you've got good rip-off potential.
Authorities can target and track you. Who needs racial profiling? The cop is asleep in his car when an alarm goes off to tell him someone meeting his favorite criteria is driving by. How about "that car is owned by a white person" listing getting your black roomate killed for borrowing your car?
Far worse than that, the piece in question is easily accessable.
If systems (toll booths etc?) start using this data for any purpose then I could "swap out" one of your tires and drive around "as you", possibly for days. When was the last time you *really* looked at your passenger side rear wheel? How about your spare?
In even legitimate cases ("Sure Clem, you can borrow my snow tires for the weekend...") of transfer you could become identity-entangled with who knows what...
Being made "trackable" is always a rights issue.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
The Ford Explorer tragedies were horrible. My friend's cousin was the fourth documented case in the state of Florida. If implementing technology like this can save one life, I say go for it!
Some points:
First, I've never heard of police cars being equipped with live OCR equipment. First you'd have to be able to single out the license plate text from that of the neighboring car, or a road sign, or even a piece of litter tumbling across your Line-of-Sight.
Second, the only reason to have such live OCR would be for aid in automating vehicle tracking. While the ACLU (or international counterparts) would be quick to try to plaster attention over this, people already consider it common.
Third, searches through public databases take time. It's not like they'll be able to identify you the moment their computer gets a lock on your identifying characteristic. Local caching would be prohibitively expensive for your average police department, no matter what the size of the city.
Fourth, there's really no range limit on how far away you could detect these things. Your effective range depends on the power being broadcasted at, and the sensitivity of your instruments. It being a digital signal makes the matter a heck of a lot easier.
Fifth, it might be possible to fry the RFID device by feeding it so much RF power that its circuitry melts. (I know I'd certainly try if I had tires or clothing that had these devices. I'd go park next to a high-power radio tower for a few hours.) There'd certainly be a market in devices capable of high-power directional transmissions. The devices are probably already illegal.
Sixth, the government is going to have a hell of a time passing laws prohibiting unlicensed transfer of RFID-enabled devices. And I can tell you that laws regulating the sales and transfers of something so common as tires (and, later, clothing, shoes, etc.).
Seventh, if you need an alibi, intentionally broadcast one of your RFIDs at, say, forty watts. (Talk about getting around a lot!) Or just send someone driving around with your RFID clothing, or driving around in your car.
Eighth, 1984 should have been titled 2005. People don't take it seriously because the things it predicted didn't happen by 1984.
What's this Submit thingy do?
I used to work for a software firm, who were based in a large building and with multiple tennants. To control access to our part of the building we were issued with contactless swipe cards. Which are a sort of crude, low power RFID system.
We thought they were purely for access control, but we were in for a surprise. The management had fitted special sensors at the toilet and cafe doors as well as at the drinks machines and smoking rooms. We had no idea management had done this, we just though new heating control thermometers were being fitted.
Once our bi-monthly productivity appraisals came round we were presented with a detailed breakdown of our movement round the building. I was asked why I made 12 visits to the coffee machine in one day (all drinks were free) and why I once spent more than 10 minutes in the toilet,
What management had done was turn the securty cards in to tracking devices. Basically if we went within 4 feet of these sensors, it was logged. We had always assumed that the cards had to be within 2 inches of a sensor to be recognised, not so aparently. This whole setup was implemented to try and achieve productivity gains, in fact it did the opposite. A lot of people spent more and more time on the toilet for some reason and other people developed a habit of forgetting their cards and having to get security to release the doors remotely.
The moral of the story is what started as a innocent security system, turned in to a tracking system which caused people serious stress. I know my employers are allowed to know what I do on their time, but having to justify my toilet habits is my idea of how such technology as RFID systems can be misused. Incidentally, the system was switched off after the unions got on the case.
If RFID tags where in everything, and the govt. had RFID readers everywhere, then I might be a little concerned. However, even if RFIDs where that pervasive, it would still be easy to become invisible to all those RFID scanners. Just microwave all your clothes. As small as ther are I cannot imagine an RFID tag being able to remain intact when hit with a large EM field. Tracking down and disabling RFIDs in your vehicle shouldn't be that difficult either.
People are saying who cares:
1) You have to be 2 feet from the tire.
2) You already have license plates
3) This just IDs the tire, not you
4) No one cares about you
Now I'm not a paranoid freak, but these are just stupid arguments as I'll demonstrate.
1) When you pull through the drive through at McD's and the Bank, you are less than 2 feet and sit there for quite some time. McD's might like to now that VIN #12345 always orders a BigMac, and by linking your VIN to you, they know what you like.
2) Yes, but license plates can not be read without direct line of site, by a computer, for little or no cost.
3) This ties the tires to the VIN of your car, which IDs you.
4) The government may not be trying to track me down, but companies would love to have a way to track their customers.
Let's all not get too paranoid, but at least think things through.
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