RFID Explained

SecurityFocus has a nice column summarizing the last year's worth of stories about RFID. Of course, you, diligent Slashdot reader, have read about many of these already. But for your slacker friends that need an RFID education in one easy-to-digest article, here you go.

Comments

missing something?

[thrillbert]

Are there some SCO news I'm missing somewhere? I can't believe I've refreshed this story 3 times and there isn't a single post... I really feel as if I'm missing out on some big news somewhere else...

---
All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates. -Woody Allen

Re:missing something?

[Amon Re]

Don't jinx us....

Re:missing something?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks fine to me. For more intro to RFID check out this series from WDN from last year - http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/holdingcourt/ It asks the question Should concerns about privacy be allowed to impede RFID's progress? and provides some useful answers.

There's a war going on,

[Anonymous Coward]

and the only way to defend ourselves is with an electromagnetic pulse, our only defense against sentinel tags.

Re:There's a war going on,

[Anonymous Coward]

May a giant cat puke on your colon

Re:There's a war going on,

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mother has a protruding navel.

Re:There's a war going on,

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 fucking hilarious for one of the most original trolls

heh heh heh...has to be the funniest thing I've read all day

Re:There's a war going on,

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Wait... that's no navel!!

Interesting technology

[Meat Blaster]

I guess I don't see why we aren't using it already. This could drop inventory costs to a quarter of what they were before -- no more all-nighters trying to discover what's in stock and what isn't.

Isn't Wal-Mart adopting it?

Re:Interesting technology

[Carbonite]

This could drop inventory costs to a quarter of what they were before -- no more all-nighters trying to discover what's in stock and what isn't.

I'm betting that manual inventories would still be required periodically. It might only happen once a year instead of every quarter, but there would still have to be some proof for the accountants. This would be especially true in the first few years of the system, when the bugs are still being worked out.

Re:Interesting technology

[joggle]

Isn't Wal-Mart adopting it?

RTFA!! The guy almost blames Wal-Mart for the widespread adoption of the technology in consumer products.

Re:Interesting technology

[elwinc]

Here's a quote from the article, which, to me, indicates why we should all be against ubiquitous RFIDs:

Right now, you can buy a hammer, a pair of jeans, or a razor blade with anonymity. With RFID tags, that may be a thing of the past. Some manufacturers are planning to tag just the packaging, but others will also tag their products. There is no law requiring a label indicating that an RFID chip is in a product. Once you buy your RFID-tagged jeans at The Gap with RFID-tagged money, walk out of the store wearing RFID-tagged shoes, and get into your car with its RFID-tagged tires, you could be tracked anywhere you travel. Bar codes are usually scanned at the store, but not after purchase. But RFID transponders are, in many cases, forever part of the product, and designed to respond when they receive a signal. Imagine everything you own is "numbered, identified, catalogued, and tracked." Anonymity and privacy? Gone in a hailstorm of invisible communication, betrayed by your very property.

Spelling it out, this means institutions that choose to can automatically and cheaply start assembling a history of which RFID tags go where, and when. Still not scared? Next step: when the cops come to pick you up as a "material witness" they can easily scan your clothing and compare it to the RFID histories. Is everyone going to feel just as free to complain about the moron-in-chief, worship unpopular religions, and excercise their legal right to dissent against the powers-that-be if such technology becomes widespread?

Re:Interesting technology

[Drakin]

Cost is the only thing that's really holding the adoptation of these down.

Wal-Mart is adoptng it, their top 100 suppiers (as stated in the article) will be increasingly pressured to use them.

Although, Wal-mart has a fairly relyable system for keeping track of instocks (comparitively... human error tends to throw things out of wack somewhat, that and theft.), this will hopefully make it a lot easier to find justwhere the product is in the stockrooms.

Re:Interesting technology

[aggieben]

This is just completely irrational: Right now, you can buy a hammer, a pair of jeans, or a razor blade with anonymity.

Umm...not unless you buy with cash

Once you buy your RFID-tagged jeans at The Gap with RFID-tagged money, walk out of the store wearing RFID-tagged shoes, and get into your car with its RFID-tagged tires, you could be tracked anywhere you travel. Bar codes are usually scanned at the store, but not after purchase. But RFID transponders are, in many cases, forever part of the product, and designed to respond when they receive a signal. Imagine everything you own is "numbered, identified, catalogued, and tracked." Anonymity and privacy? Gone in a hailstorm of invisible communication, betrayed by your very property.
There's a simple solution: the tags will be removed from the products you buy at the store, much like current devices are. First, the store has incentive to re-use the tags. Yes, they may be cheap and get cheaper, but if they're reusable then most companies are going to want to reuse them. Secondly, if you had been reading anything else in the thread or simply been using your head, you would realize that even if the tags were to stay on the products, they couldn't be scanned from anywhere. The scanning range is only a few feet. Also, who's to say that there will be any connection between the id stored in the tag and your name? Companies would have no reason to keep track, and they're the only ones who could get that information. Also, for most products (e.g., non-electronic) destroying the tag would be somewhat trivial (put your Gap jeans in the microwave for a while, then see if they can invade your few feet of personal space).

Instead of spreading FUD, try promoting proper use and regulation of a new technology that could be very beneficial in a lot of areas.

Re:Interesting technology

[Eccles]

Right now, you can buy a hammer, a pair of jeans, or a razor blade with anonymity. With RFID tags, that may be a thing of the past. Some manufacturers are planning to tag just the packaging, but others will also tag their products.

So pay cash, and there's no name associated with the purchase, and thus the RFIDs.

Re:Interesting technology

[b29651]

Personally i have found that companies hire others to snoop in other stores to see what advantage a competitor has so yes i can picture them standing outside a competitors store analyzing the shoppers bags as they exit.My answer and response to this is to encourage all of my older friends to stand in line and insist on the removal of the tags before leaving the store cause older people seem to appreciate privacy and technology isnt as important to them.Can you imagine the employees having to explain these aren't bad to 80 year old ladies that think a robber can see what they have bought and is going to try to steal from them.

Re:Interesting technology

[TheCrazyFinn]

Except the tags could be in the cash.

Europe is already considering this.

Oh, and to the guy suggesting that stores will remove the tags, umm, no, they will be in the closthing and products, not on it.

Re:Interesting technology

[MatthewB79]

While the arguments against abuse of the technology are obvious, the benefits to the consumer are not so obvious.

Have you ever gone to BestBuy and purchased a new piece of software, opened it at home and realized that you just bought a box with a manual and nothing else? Good luck explaining to the manager that someone must have opened the box and taken the jewel case before you purchased it. With RFID you would be protected from this situation by checking the contents of the box automatically at the register.
How about turning your car in for an oil change at the local Park-'n'-Lube, getting home and (without opening the hood of your car) using your ACME USB RFID scanner to verify that the oil filter was actually changed and the mechanic didn't just put the old one back on.

The usefullness of this technology is too great to just ban it outright.

Re:Interesting technology

[uberdave]

Um... The RFID devices are already being built into the products, not into the tags, but into the products themselves. Also, microwaving an RFID tag embedded in an article of clothing is a fire hazzard. Oh, and what do you do when the embedded RFID device is built into something that would be destroyed by microwaves, say an MP3 player?

Granted, RFID tagged items would be a boon to inventory systems. But it does create an potentially undesirable electronic trail (manufacturer->vendor->credit/debit card->person)

Re:Interesting technology

[st0rmshad0w]

"so yes i can picture them standing outside a competitors store analyzing the shoppers bags as they exit"

This is exactly why the store would remove them in the first place. Would you really want to use a security device on your wares if that very device could be used by your competition against you?

Re:Interesting technology

[jrsimmons]

I'm sorry, but I just have to refute this comment. It makes no sense whatsoever. I ranted a bit, but all these crazy posts about "hailstorms of invisible communication" drive me crazy.

First, as for the comment about complaining about the moron-in-chief,
or any authority figure for that matter--It's an RFID tag, not a digital
voice recorder. This is so far off base as to make the whole comment a troll.

Second, as for the concern about visiting places of dissenting views, how is
it you think the gov't, or anyone else, is going to track you there unless
the place of dissent 1.)installs readers, 2.)tracks by some identifying
characteristic, and the least plausible 3.)provides that information to the gov't
themselves? I mean seriously, these tags have an activation range of a few feet
AT MOST. How is Big Brother going to watch you walking into you're local 2600
meeting at someone's house unless they install a reader and report you?

Third, the author of the original article uses the same red herring argument.
Assuming our tires are marked with RFID tags, as well as our jeans and our money.
Are the states going to place rfid readers (not tags mind you, readers that require
power) in the streets of our cities and interstates connecting our nation? And
do so such that every 4 square foot is covered, just to know you drove down to the
EZ Mart to grab a Slushie? And each company who uses tags and readers is going
to make all their data available to all the other companies so that everyone knows
what everyone is buying and where they bought it, right? Of course not! W*M
no more wants Target to know their customer's buying patterns than you want Big Bro
to know yours. It's called corporate security, and they won't go for that. Look
for RFID tags that only respond to certain signals such that only the retailer
that sold the item can power the device and require a response. It makes much
more sense and will be demanded by the security-minded retailers (like W*M).

And lastly for RFID tags in money--Who really cares? How does that do anything to
your private security? Keep in mind people, these things are writable devices.
They may become that way at some point, but what we're talking about now are simple
transponders that get a request and reply with data BURNED INTO THEM. They don't
keep a record of "joe recieved me in change at w*m, spent me at ez mart, gave me to
mark, mark spent me at...". That's now what they are for. They simply say "I'm here.
I'm device number XXXXXXXX. I've been alive for yyyy days."

And for any functionality, you need to be within feet. No satellites. No monitors on the
side of the road. No central database in the country seat tracking all these tags all
over the place. Just companies streamlining the supply chains and guarding their
data like the pot of gold it is, from everyone else, including Big Bro, the competitor
down the street, and you and me.

Re:Interesting technology

[Phwoar]

Wouldn't it bother you knowing that when you walk down the street, anybody walking near you could know how much money you had in your pockets, how many credit cards and which companies they are with, what make of mobile phone you have, what underwear you have on, what personal cd player you are carrying, what type of laptop you have in your case, whether you have a PDA in your bag??

Or that somebody could come upto your home, maybe scan your burglar alarm to find out what type it is and check up on the 'net to see if it can be easily disabled? Somebody could scan through your window (or wall?) and see what type of computer, tv, vcr, dvd player you have? see what type of clothes you have in your cupboards? what dvds/cds in your collections?

Theives are always 5 steps ahead of companies, wherever you look. Who's to say this won't be a theives dream? Am I going to have to be scared to walk to streets with anything costing more than afew dollars in my bag?

Re:Interesting technology

[Asprin]

How? It's a short-range technology.

Re:Interesting technology

[MatthewB79]

I'm not trying to discount the dangers of abuse of RFID. Anyone who values privacy and security should be aware of the potential dangers. If some guy on the bus decides he going to snatch my CD player, it's not as if having an RFID tag in it was going to be a huge factor in tempting him.

somebody could come upto your home, maybe scan your burglar alarm to find out what type it is and check up on the 'net to see if it can be easily disabled? Somebody could scan through your window (or wall?) and see what type of computer, tv, vcr, dvd player you have? see what type of clothes you have in your cupboards? what dvds/cds in your collections?

This is interesting to me because I thought about this myself. The sticker on my window tells a burglar exactly what security system I use and who administers it.
Additionally, it has been said many times that the range of the RFID transmitter unit is not more than 3-5 feet. It's not like the drug-addict burglars are going to be picky and choosy over what model and brand name DVD player I have. "Oh wow, my RFID scan-o-matic says this guys got a brand new Mac G5, we better stop here and pick this thing up before we head to the next place!" Why can't my home security system be programmed with the contents of my living room and automatically set off an alarm if any of those tags leave the premises? We might see a shift in the way we look at home security. Instead of just trying to keep people out, there can be ways of keep our valuables in.

Re:Interesting technology

[JoeBuck]

If a tag costs 5 cents and is 1/3 millimeter across, removing it from the product and inserting it into another product is going to cost a lot more than 5 cents (if a $6/hour worker requires 30 seconds to remove the tag and put it in another product, that's a nickel right there).

Re:Interesting technology

[Cpt_Kirks]

How? It's a short-range technology.

More POWER:

"Attention Wal-Mart Employees and Customers, we are now going to perform the hourly RF inventory. You have 30 seconds to put on your aluminum foil hats..."

Re:Interesting technology

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just completely irrational: Right now, you can buy a hammer, a pair of jeans, or a razor blade with anonymity.

Umm...not unless you buy with cash

Why do you think that's such a big exception?

Re:Interesting technology

[elwinc]

My original message was modded down for being redundant, but most of your objections could have been answered by reading the original article. There's a simple solution: the tags will be removed from the products you buy at the store, much like current devices are.
If you read the article you'd see be aware that Michelin, for example, plans to embed tags in every tire, and to associate the tags with your VIN. As the article says: "Do you really want your car's tires broadcasting your every move?" Again, if you read the article, you'd be aware that "The European Central Bank may embed RFID chips in the euro note." Get tagged cash from an ATM, and the bank knows which bills you're carrying. Spend it on a hammer, and there's enough RFID trail to identify who bought the hammer. If you were to read the article before flaming, you'd see it's not completely irrational at all.

Also, who's to say that there will be any connection between the id stored in the tag and your name?
there may not be a connection immediately. It may be made later (the same way HTML cookie information is collated). Like when you hand over your ticket and step on an airplane, or when your EZpass equipped car goes through a tollbooth. The data can be collected now, and the individual identified later. Like when the police come to your door to pick you up as a material witness.

Companies would have no reason to keep track, and they're the only ones who could get that information.
That's showing a distinct lack of imagination. Companies have a ton of incentive to keep track. For example, think of all the great marketing information you can gather. For example, maybe Gap sweatshirt buyers hang out at the mall food court. Good place to advertise specials. What brands of clothing show up at a baseball game, or a chick flick, or the tool dept. at Sears? This information is valuable, and as it becomes cheaper to collect, companies will want to.

Instead of spreading FUD, try promoting proper use and regulation of a new technology that could be very beneficial in a lot of areas.
I'd love to see your suggestions for regulations controlling the use of RFID information. And I'd love to see a bill about it introduced in Congress before it becomes a problem. But as we know from the spam situation, Congress usually waits for something to become a big problem before it's willing to limit the freedom of marketers.

I also think you should withdraw that comment about FUD. Everything I wrote follows from intentions or potential intentions announced by companies or other institutions and described in the original article.

Re:Interesting technology

[andreMA]

Perhaps you lack the imagination to envision sinister uses of these. I wish I did. I'll give a couple of examples that might help you.

(1) Visiting places of dissent: There is no need for the cooperation of the organizers of the meeting. The FBI simply does a secret break-in (as allowed under the PATRIOT act) and installs a reader and equipment to record the RFID numbers seen. They retrieve it later, and then track (from the tag manufacturer down) those numbers to the individuals that appeared (not certain, the product could have been a gift, or loaned, etc) to be at the meeting. Using cash might avoid this, but do you recall how you paid for those shoes six months ago?

(2) RFID tags in money: if this comes to pass, I don't imagine that a law requiring a bank to record the identity and currency serial numbers of all people making cash withdrawals - either by teller or ATM. Say I withdraw $100 in 20's, then loan that to a friend who (unknown to me) uses it to buy crack. The police bust the dealer, track the bills, convince a nitwit judge (plenty of those around, it seems...) that that constitutes "probable cause" to issue a search warrant. Perhaps you're fond of your door being broken down at 3AM, but I am not.

Note that neither of the above uses require the deployment of a large network of receivers covering "every 4 square feet"

I'm also doubtful that the police (FBI, whoever) would be using commercial-grade RFID receivers, which are designed in part to be inexpensive for merchants. I strongly suspect that better-engineered (more expensive) receivers and directional antennae would greatly increase the range of the receivers well beyond the two feet cited. That's with present-day technology, as well. If there is a demand from law enforcement for a cheap longer (eg, 50 feet) range receiver, I don't think it would take that long to develop that... and with it the ability to inventory an entire houseful of RFID-tagged products from the outside.

Re:Interesting technology

[Drakin]

Short range, yes... but it's not hard to say... equip the storage room racks with the receavers and tie the information into the network. Or have a hand held device that sets off the tags and you can read off what's in the vacinity.

You just have to wire things properly to gather the data.

Re:Interesting technology

[yakovlev]

No, they can't prove that "Joe" was at the KKK(choose your undesirable group) rally. What they can prove is:

A.) Device 1234567... (a pair of blue jeans) was purchased with Joe's credit card on whatever date.

B.) The blue jeans passed through the toll booth between his house and the KKK rally at 3pm on Tuesday. He was carrying, among other things, the rfid tag from a bolt of white cloth (Device 2345678...) and a $20 bill (Device 3456789...).

C.) Joe's blue jeans and his $20 bill entered the Wal-mart 20 minutes from the KKK rally (Wal-mart tracks goods entering and goods exiting, to prevent theft) at 6pm on Wednesday. The blue jeans and a piece of lumber (Device 4567890...) purchased with the aforementioned $20 bill left at 7:30pm.

D.) Joe's blue jeans and the bolt of white cloth passed back through the toll booth at 1pm the following Monday.

None of this PROVES Joe was at the KKK rally, but circumstatial evidence adds up rapidly. Much more information than that above would be possible if rfid tags are in most consumer products. Some of this data would (hopefully) take a warrant to get. It's even better if it isn't available in the first place.

This isn't to say I'm against rfid tags. I just think they need to be used wisely. Putting them in an inconspicuous place in the packaging (or disabling them at the store) is the best way to do that.

Re:Interesting technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Aggieben,
Instead of speading stupidity, try researching the technology first! These tags are not much different than the security tags that already come packed inside almost every pilferable object that is sold in retail outlets. Hammers at walmart have the same tags which were one relegated to just expensive electronic items.

But don't worry, you don't have a need for privacy as long as you do nothing wrong.

Re:Interesting technology

[jrsimmons]

You're still assuming that whoever placed the tag in the jeans, bolt of white cloth, etc, communicates their data with the monitor, in this scenario the gov't. That just won't happen. Big Bro will not walk (ftp, whatever) into w*m and dowload data on which tags have entered/exited the store. It's not going to happen.

And yes, disabling at the store will happen. It's already been specified.

Re:Interesting technology

[jrsimmons]

Ok, if you want to go into the consipiracy theory bit, then here we go... The FBI wouldn't use RFID because it's already deprecated technology. They would instead send in their Microsoft (ie, root of all evil) developed spy roaches equiped with the newest micro camera/audio recorder. These would communicate directly to the agents outside wearing their new invisibility cloaks watching the whole event (the roaches are just for hard evidence) with their X-ray glasses (the real ones, not those clunky things used in the airport).

And all this because a group of dissenters wants to cook up wild stories about black helicopters. What do you think?

Seriously, RFID as surveillance sucks. You still have to be within feet of the device. And anyone will be able to buy equipment to look for devices searching for a signal. Just not very practical for subterfuge. The gov't has much nicer toys.

Re:Interesting technology

[grolschie]

If some guy on the bus decides he going to snatch my CD player, it's not as if having an RFID tag in it was going to be a huge factor in tempting him.

And the fact that you will see his face won't discourage him, but an RFID tag would?

Surely the FBI won't bother investigating theft of small products with the RFID tags in them. But then again, I guess should he get busted with other items, it can be added to the list.

Re:Interesting technology

[MatthewB79]

I meant that if he were using some handheld RFID scanner device to discover the brand and model of CD player, he might be tempted to take it based on the perceived value.
This by comparison to visually identifying earphones and that there must be an audio device connected to them that he may want to steal.

Re:Interesting technology

[grolschie]

Understood. Kinda reminds me of the scanner/x-ray things at airports customs these days where they look through your bags in color detail from a computer screen. Now if that were a handheld device with intelligent image recognition....

Re:Interesting technology

[Tacky the Penguin]

RFID tags have been available for a while. We almost used it for some clients a few times.

There are two major differences between RFID tags and bar codes. The most obvious difference is the fact that you don't have to open the package to scan the item. The less obvious difference is the fact that each item will have a unique code. If you pick up two identical Coke cans, each has the same bar code. With RFID tags, each will be serialized.

If you buy a stereo or computer with an RFID tag, what are you going to do? Are you going to disable it, or are you going to record the numbers and supply them to the police when you get robbed? If they don't cooperate, get a scanner and start visiting pawn shops.

If they start putting RFID tags into your money, what are you going to do? I, personally, will put a "tinfoil hat" on my wallet. Realistically, I'll sew aluminum screen into it to act as a Faraday cage. That way, nobody will be able to read my cash.

Or, maybe I'll make a million bucks selling RFID tag proof wallets.

Meanwhile, the banks and businesses can read the serial numbers of all the currency that comes in. If they get robbed, the list of stolen serial numbers can be sent to the appropriate authorities. Then, any business with a scanner will automatically look for the stolen currency. They may lead to a few false arrests, but someone who has only one stolen bill can easily be questioned (Who gave that money to you?) and released. They will hang on to the person who has a wallet full of the tagged bills. Meanwhile, it'll make it a whole lot more difficult for would-be thieves.

Are your car keys tagged? Get a reader so that you can find them the next time your toddler drops them in the grass or under the refrigerator.

Is your wallet tagged? Remove the old tag and install your own. Don't give anyone the code unless your wallet is stolen. Meanwhile, you can use your portable scanner to look for it next time your honey borrows it and drops it somewhere.

Re:Interesting technology

[andreMA]

Because you begin the third paragraph with "Seriously", I take all prior as tongue-in-cheek as I hope it was intended. In that spirit, I respond... semi-seriously.

Ok, if you want to go into the consipiracy theory bit, then here we go... The FBI wouldn't use RFID because it's already deprecated technology. They would instead send in their Microsoft (ie, root of all evil) developed spy roaches equiped with the newest micro camera/audio recorder.

I suppose most any law-enforcement investigation can be broadly categorized as a conspiracy... people cooperating in secret. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though.

Did you miss the economic points in my last post? Assuming that such "roaches" were to exist (and are not a result of delerium tremens...) they'd likely be rather expensive little beasties. And subject to frequent crashing and viral infections/worms (... a roach with worms. not a pleasant thought...), if we accept your view* of Microsoft. Not a reliable or cost effective (hypothetical) technology at present, IMO.

Oh, and deprecated how? Details, please. A couple of posts ago you seemed rather enthusiastic about it as a new technology that people were foolish to be concerned about. I guess things move rather quickly nowadays...

These would communicate directly to the agents outside wearing their new invisibility cloaks.

A plain unmarked white van would suffice and be much cheaper. Hyperbole, my friend. In any case, if we take the usatoday.com article you cite as gospel, it's in develpment and might not pan out. I've read elsewhere about "active camouflage" and have doubts. How about shadows cast by the wearer, for example? While such might be useful on a confused battlefield, I've not seen any suggestion that it would be helpful in close-up surveillance under "calm" conditions.

(the roaches are just for hard evidence) with their X-ray [wired.com] glasses (the real ones, not those clunky things used in the airport).

No comment, except to point out that the glasses you imagine would likely be rather obtrusive given a reasonable projection of todays' publicly available technology. I might be wrong there; I didn't anticipate the F-117. Your wired.com link is to the "clunky" device that you, um, deprecated. Got a better one?

As to the capabilty (and range) of RFID and the transmitters required to trigger the tags, I speak from a glancing familiarity with HF and UHF receiver design (very glancing, from trying to be an informed consumer a number of years back). No magic, no area 51, no black helicopters. Simple economics: you get what you pay for. In RF (and microwave, I presume) receivers sensitivity and range depend on narrow bandpass and a number of other things that increase performance require parts of tighter tolerance, circuits or more complexity, and better quality control.

And all this because a group of dissenters wants to cook up wild stories about black helicopters. What do you think?

I think you're mistaken, and perhaps somewhat naive. I proposed two scenarios in which widespread deployment of uniquely identifying RFID tags created a potential for abuse, without requiring a dense and expensive infrastructure. I for one am not a member of any "dissident" group; I'm merely expressing personal concerns. Things like this give me pause and make me want close oversight and limits on law enforcement organizations.

*** SERIOUSLY ***

Seriously, RFID as surveillance sucks. You still have to be within feet of the device. And anyone will be able to buy equipment to look for devices searching for a signal. Just not very practical for subterfuge. The gov't has much nicer toys.

I'm sure they do. They'd like to keep them secret too, I imagine, for use in warfare if nothing else. Rather diffucult if they try people usin

Re:Interesting technology

[StikyPad]

Okay, you're flaming a guy for describing what is the most reasonable use of chips that were designed to be hidden. Granted, he adds a heavy dose of paranoia, but that doesn't negate the substance of the issue. The idea that these chips would be reused is nonsense. Unless they plan on training cashiers in 2M (Micro/Miniature) work, it's not feasible to remove these things manually in bulk. Not to mention storage between uses. Most people fumble loose change, and you expect them to have the dexterity to manipulate objects smaller than a period with bare hands? And, oh yeah, they were designed to be hidden. If you saw where they hide them, you could remove them yourself, which defeats the purpose. Inventory control is synonymous with theft prevention, meaning they don't want you to know where the chip is. Hell, if I were a manufacturer, I would embed them in buttons or the soles of the shoes, or a similar location which would require destruction of the object in order to remove the RFID. If you read the article, as you lambasted the poor sap to whom you replied for not doing, you would have noticed the part about cost efficiency. That's where he mentions that a cost of 5 cents per chip would make it economical to place it in any object valued at over a dollar. Why is this important? Because there are no plans for resuse.

Your second point is equally obtuse. UPCs 101 - The U in UPC stands for universal. Meaning no two objects have the same number. I don't mean that two bottles of Hienz 57 have different numbers, but the 57 sauce has a different number than A1. Understand? Good, then you will appreciate that RFID will probably work in a similar manner, where each product has a unique ID, or block of IDs which is, ahem, universal. In case you've missed where I'm going with this, anybody who bothers to scan the object, or has access to a readily available database would know the product ID. Coupled with the fact that your "one foot" radius can, with current technology, be stretched to 5-6 feet with a powerful transciever. It's not outside the realm of reason to believe that this range could be stretched to several hundred feet, or farther, in the future.

Did I mention that the chips were designed to be hidden? I can't believe somebody actually modded you up.

Re:Interesting technology

[andreMA]

They already "walked up" in regards to financial transactions above a certain size (it used to be $10K but I seem to recall it being lowered. Might be mistaken on that detail, though).

I am not confident that they won't "walk up" in other areas as well, especially in such individually harmless matters as "John Doe bought blue jeans at Wal-Mart #763 on 30-JUN-03" using Visa card ####-####-####-####. String all these "harmless" things together, though, and you have pretty tight surveilence on everyone.

Re:Interesting technology

[Anonymous Coward]

You fool, you are probably already 0wned. Aluminum foil doesn't work. You have to use TIN FOIL !!!!!!!!

Re:Interesting technology

[jrsimmons]

Ok, in a more serious post...You're points are all well taken, and yes, I was attempting (and probably failing) a bit of humor in my previous post. The articles ref'd were last second additions...Not meant to withstand rebuttle ( =

So, for some real opinions, here is why I like RFID tags and why they do not concern me from a security standpoint...

The article that kicked off this whole discussion discusses a relatively small subset of RFID products, namely those used is Supply Chain and Retail. Working in Retail myself, I am quite certain that those pushing RFID are first and foremost concerned about Supply Chain applications of this technology, which translates into savings for me, John Doe consumer. I like savings.

Let me now address a concern I see voiced often but I believe is unfounded. The concern is that certain retailers (I read one today ref'ing Wal-Mart) will gather customer data and sell that data, such as companies like Tivo have been accused (do they actually? I don't use the device, and haven't follow up) of doing. I can assure you that the major retailers will do no such thing. Information is gold to these companies, and selling information that would help their competitors market to their own customers would be a serious blunder.

And so back to some type of point. I think this discussion was in some fassion directed towards surveillance. So, here are my thoughts: RFID tags are cheap. They will become a simple commodity, with simple price and support determining where companies or even individuals choose to buy. Readers on the other hand, will not be cheap. Even now simple bar code readers are very expensive, considering the technology used. And a reader needs power. So, from a surveillance perspective, the reader would be very expensive, because it would have to be self-powered (can't be running extension cords to those hidden readers), small enough to hide in the type of places that current surveillance devices are used, and much more powerful than the average reader.

Don't misunderstand me, everything you suggest is entirely possible. However, it is also already possible (short of the $$ tracking) with current, cheaper technology. Audio recorders and miniature cameras can transmit real-time data much more informative than simple id numbers. I don't see RFID tags improving on this type of surveillance. Perhaps this is where I am mistaken, but I assure you it is a technical mistake, not one of naievity. And for longer range surveillance, directional audio and satellite surveilance will suffice nicely. The right entity can very quickly match a voice to an ID (social security, foreign passport, what have you) very quickly.

The money question is a bit more interesting. I think my thoughts fall back to my belief that the types of uses you suggest just won't come to pass. While yes, the gov't can pass what laws they will, we the citizens do still possess the right to elect said gov't. And as for the nitwit judge, and the drug scandal you describe, that just doesn't concern me. The lawsuits that would come out of that type of scenario would quickly discourage further 'incidents'.

So, perhaps you are right, and I am simply too trusting. Perhaps I am right, and you are simply too distrusting. More probable is that it is somewhere in the middle (isn't it always?). But for what I can tell of this technology, it is evolving into something that will make economies much more efficient. Efficiency means lower costs, and that means I have to work less to save enough for my retirement and for my kids education. To me, that's worth the risk that may be inherent in any new communications technology, including this one.

Re:Interesting technology

[jrsimmons]

You're still assuming, though, that Wal-Mart is going to provide that data to anyone. They won't. They'll in fact disable the tags as they walk out the door. Wanna bet??? (=

Re:Interesting technology

[andreMA]

I think you said it best with:

So, perhaps you are right, and I am simply too trusting. Perhaps I am right, and you are simply too distrusting. More probable is that it is somewhere in the middle

That sums things up rather well. I prefer to err on the side of caution here, perhaps, while you see this as progress in terms of the valuable and legitamate applicatons of RFID.

I perhaps have a more jaundiced eye, however, when it comes to trusting the government to not "do the wrong thing". In any given application, unique identifiers may or may not be needed. I see very few potential applications that require the granularity of assigning unique idnetifiers (to cite a deliberately extreme exampe) to candybars. At the other end of the spectrum we have automobiles -- already adequately identified with VINs. Where, if anywhere, does RFID tagging at the individually-unique level of specificity fit in?

In clothing stores we already have bulky dye-tags that can "only be removed at the register" without damaging the item to the point of near-uselessness. I have no problem with this (unless the nitwit clerk forgets to remove it, and the nitwit customer (i confess...) doesn't notice until he gets home). If we are to have RFID tags in retail, PLEASE let the first application be in conjunction with the dye-tags so that I can be alerted to the error of the cashier BEFORE I get home... I'm skeptical about RFID tags as an anti-shoplifting measure for this reason -- if the minimum-wage cashier isn't able to reliably remove a dye-tag the size of a walnut, I should rely on them to deactivate (with a burst of microwaves or some such) the tag embedded invisibly somewhere in the waistband of the jeans I buy? **END RANT**

We disagree on the potential surveilance applications, obviously. My concern is largely that once we accept RFID tags as part of day-to-day life, can we ever be sure they are not being used to invade our privacy in regards to the types of books we read, the sorts of stores we patronize, the places we go and people we associate with? Paranoid? Possibly, although I prefer the term "cautious". To me, this potential danger outweighs the convenience and efficiency RFID might provide to retailers. Wholesalers using them to identify pallets in a warehouse? No problem, though I suspect that barcode would be more efficient.

I'd be a lot more comfortable with the whole idea if there were a law (with substantial penalties) that prohibited retailers from retaining any post-sale information that is not currently available to them absent RFID, and would require that tags be destroyed at the time of purchase. I certainly don't condone shiplifting, and favor any reasonable measures to reduce it! You and I both end up paying for such thefts, and I'm all in favor of the merchant having reduced losses that he doesn't need to pass on to his customers. I'm not willing to accept even the possibility of unwillingly providing data to anyone for any purpose after the sale is completed, though. I see that as my being used without my consent.

I still think that the short range of present tags can be overcome with a relatively small investment in receiver technology. In pondering the widespread deployment of RFID, we need to consider potential abuses, probable advancements in the technology, and take a hard look at the (marginal, in my opinion) benefits.

Franky, I don't trust the government any more. I won't list the reasons; you either know them and are concerned too, or don't believe they are genuine reason for worry. In either case, such a debate would be wildly off-topic here. If you know of a more suitable forum, I *would* be interested in debating such.

Feh, It's later than I think; time to sleep.

Re:Interesting technology

[Fat Cow]

I want the tags to stay in...because I want to do inventory on _my_ stuff. Imagine - you can auto-generate your shopping list rather than checking all the various places where your wife has stashed the food.

Re:Interesting technology

[jrsimmons]

One more comment and then I am done with this thread...

Ratail RFID will be deactivated at the register, very similar to the current devices. You mention what we call "gator" tags in fabric. These retain their activation for a long time. Don't forget, though, their smaller cousins, that are included in the wrapping of cd's, games, printer ink cartidges, etc. These are deactivated at the register automatically. If it is scanned, it is deactivated (with some exceptions, but there will be some new products soon that improve the hit rate significantly). RFID tags will work much the same way. If you scan it, you deactivate it. You rely on the hardware used by the retailer rather than the level of nitwitty-ness of the cashier. And this won't give them any more info on your buying patterns than they could gather now, though it will be easier. Ie, if you pay with cash (let's assume non-tagged, since that at the moment is speculation), they still don't know who you are. If you pay with anything else, they already can track the items and your patterns. Some do, such as those who have loyalty programs. The retailer I work with (I'm a vendor...a slightly different perspective) does not. They want to streamline their supply chain, and this will drive RFID to improve inventory management (ie, items get ordered when the system determines that the number of items on the shelf and those in the back are not sufficient for the next X days and needs to be replinished). Much more efficient than the current method, which relies on recorded sales and physical counting (ugh), etc, that can be distorted under various situations.

Hmmmm. Gov't trustworthiness. Perhaps that is best left alone. I can sum up my general belief and approach to such things, in that I believe corporations, businesses, gov't institutions, etc, are on the whole not trustworthy and cannot be relid upon to make the right choice on a given decision. However, individuals ARE on the whole trustworthy and CAN be relied upon, because I believe most people are good people.

Perhaps that IS naieve, but if so, I prefer my naievity.

Re:Interesting technology

[andreMA]

If done as you describe - deactivation at point of sale - I'd have little or no problem with RFID in retail. Like everyone else, I prefer to pay less and within the store or suppliers' warehouse it's quite possible that there would be savings - both direct in not having to conduct manual inventories (or at least not as often) and indirect, in being able to reduce stock on-hand and implement tighter just-in-time ordering.

There appear to already be uses that go beyond this, however:

Michelin, which manufactures 800,000 tires a day, is going to insert RFID tags into its tires . The tag will store a unique number for each tire, a number that will be associated with the car's VIN (Vehicle Identification Number)
...The Register, 27-June-03

It's applications like this that worry me.

Yes, stores currently track non-cash purchasing habits. I choose to allow my local supermarket to track my cash purchases as well by using a card for what you describe as a loyalty program. The key word there is choose. I allow them to do this in exchange for discounts on various items. I still have that choice if RFID tags are disabled at the point of sale. If stores were required by law to disable them as described, I'd have little to say about the subject.

Even if the tags on CDs had all the capabilities of RFID tags and were not deactivated at the cash register, I'd still have little problem with it because it's not an integral part of the product and I can easily see it and discard it when I get home.

I personally agree with your trustworthiness remarks, but the problem here is that we're not talking about inividually trustworthy people making these decisions. Were that the case, it would go a long way toward easing my concern.

I think we've beaten this dead horse pretty thoroughly. *looks around for the next horse*

Re:Interesting technology

[aggieben]

Okay, you're flaming a guy...

That wasn't a flame. This is.

chips that were designed to be hidden

Actually, they weren't. Rather, they were designed to ease inventory control.

Your second point is equally obtuse. UPCs 101 - The U in UPC stands for universal. Meaning no two objects have the same number.

Obtuse? Like suggesting that no two UPCs have the same number (not that it's relevant)?

Coupled with the fact that your "one foot" radius can, with current technology, be stretched to 5-6 feet with a powerful transciever. It's not outside the realm of reason to believe that this range could be stretched to several hundred feet, or farther, in the future.

First of all, nowhere did I saw "one foot". If you're going to quote me, at least get that right. Secondly, the tag, if they didn't remove it in the store, would be static. In case you don't see what I'm getting at: you can't take a tranceiver that has a fundamental physical limit on how much power it can accept and dish out and "stretch" it without modifying the hardware. Conclusion? FUD.

Also note that where FUD can't be beat, the consumer still has a little control: don't buy from stores that don't remove tags. Don't buy tires that have tags. If you really want to buy the tires, learn how to remove the tags.

I can't believe somebody actually modded you up.

I can't believe you had the guts to write something so stupid.

Re:Interesting technology

[yakovlev]

Like I said:

1.) The w*m data SHOULD require a warrant. This doesn't mean the police can't get it, it's just harder.

2.) I've heard mixed statements on whether or not they will disable rfid tags at the store. If rfid tags are disabled at the store, then there aren't any long-term privacy issues. This is what many privacy advocates are pushing for, and they don't feel that they've got assurrance that they will be disabled by all retailers yet.

Re:Interesting technology

[jrsimmons]

It will be. Just like the current EAS devices are disabled at the register.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The Register

[marc_gerges]

Interesting Register Story on the subject....

Re:The Register

[pogle]

And if you look closely, and RTFA, its the same one as Security Focus. From the author's name, right down to the '©SecurityFocus.com' at the bottom of the article.

Re:The Register

[marc_gerges]

Ugh.
Well, I guess that makes a point in reading the article before commenting.
On the other side, it might help loadbalancing the /.ing...

Re:The Register

[pogle]

"Well, I guess that makes a point in reading the article before commenting"

Well, really, we cant hold you responsible for something that 90% of the /. community doesn't bother with...

"On the other side, it might help loadbalancing the /.ing..."

True, never even considered that. The Reg won't thank you though ;)

It initially confused the crap out of me...I read it on the Reg a couple hours ago, and then reading this new article was initially sure I was losing my mind or something. Need more caffeine.

diligent readers

[Anonymous Coward]

But for your slacker friends that need an RFID education in one easy-to-digest article, here you go.

Oh, you mean the slacker friend who didn't spend his Friday afternoons reading frivilous websites, who managed to get that promotion instead of me. I'll forward him the link.

Slacker friends' education

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

But for your slacker friends that need an RFID education in one easy-to-digest article, here you go

Most of my slacker friends need an education period.

Re:Slacker friends' education

[jason0000042]

Well said. I'm sure that if I tried to explain RFID tags to anyone I know that isn't 'up' on them already, I would just get a puzzled look and a "Uuuah?" back in return.

Re:Slacker friends' education

[Anonymous Coward]

RosCo! You ain't friends with them slacker Duke boys is ya? Git em!

-Boss Hogg

Shielding RFID against security

[nhaze]

Anyone who has used an RFID-based security pass card knows that they are easily shielded. Placing your RFID-secured product in an discreetly shielded bag would render the product nonexistant from RFID-probing security. I hope store that use it to augment theft security don't get lazy and think its unbeatable.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[MosesJones]

True.. but if using smart shelves the store will know that the item has been removed from the shelf and now is no-longer in range of a scanner... this should cause an alert as that is not normal behaviour.

Most theft is internal so identifying patterns of behaviour could be an effective way of decreasing theft.

The RF elements are the hardest part of this as the power levels are so low, in the US its 4 watts max for the READER, and in Europe its .5 watts. When you consider that the passive tags use the power that the reader puts out you can imagine how sensitive to interference these things are.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[mekkab]

So those bags that ram and computer chips come in have a secondary use?

Another issue with RFIDs on the privacy department is range- SURE, my tired may be broadcasting their Id's, but if I'm in the countryside, what good does that do me? A satellite can't pick me up, so if I break down, neither can AAA (or insert Euro equivalent).

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[YomikoReadman]

So in other words, if i go into a WalMart, pick up a PC game, and take it to a register, say after a half-hour to 45 mins browsing the store, that the initial activity of me removing the game from the shelf is not normal?

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[frumiousbar]

That's why I drive with tin foil around my Michelin RFID tagged tires. I go through a lot of tin foil...

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Jahf]

If RFID were implemented ubiquitously throughout the store, then the game would still register on the various other scanners even in your cart unless you had put it in a shielded bag, which would not be normal.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[jonadab]

That's not the point. (If it were, we have GPS,
which will tell you where you are, and you can
call AAA on the cellphone and tell them.)

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[okvol]

Hey, I see a market here. Instead of sheilding, try masking. These should all use the same or close frequency. So, time for a jammer. Simple RF noise, or a pattern. How easy would it be to substitute one for another, say a $10 toy TV id for a $700 real TV. I've had real experience here. A car battery died, and I took it to Wal-Mart. The alarm went off on my entry with the old one. After five years in my car. Went off again when I left with it, and again at the Autozone where I originally bought it and was able to get a replacement. How to have fun - take a current tag carefully off an item, and drop it on someone's person. A messy pocketbook is a good place. Then they will get hassled by every store with security scanners. Now for the real question: how long before you see the first spam message for a device to mask RFID?

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[gurps_npc]

Ah but the first place they put the RFID's was IN THE TIN FOIL Woops, got to go, before the evil Linux Penguins come for me now that I have told their secret.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Vaughn Anderson]

True.. but if using smart shelves the store will know that the item has been removed from the shelf and now is no-longer in range of a scanner... this should cause an alert as that is not normal behaviour.

Based on the research of the RFID org that is fighting this (and I can't find the link now but I got if from a recent RFID posting on /.) The range of RFID tags can be up to 40 feet.

Technology always get's better and more efficient, not the otherway around, so I am going to safely assume that presently this range is greater, and if not now will be in the coming years.

With this assumption, every item in a walmart store could be triangulated and tracked in 3D space dynamically throughout the whole store all the time, and if a tag dies, the exact location and time will be known and the appropriate security camera will have the perpitrator on tape, even if not directly, indirectly as that person comes into view from a camera close by.

Shoplifting and disabling an RFID tag are 2 different things, but my assumption is that if you disable the tag before buying it (not just blocking the signal) then you may be damaging the store's property...

I'd say go to the store, get as many items as you can find with the tags, bring them to the register, find out they are tagged, make a big stink, talk to the manager and complain viciously, would be a better approach that just shielding the tags... that way they'd know we don't like the tags..

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Anonymous Coward]

I am working for a packaging company which is researching RFID tags on folding cartons. Printing the antenna directly on the paper with conductive ink and soldering the chip to the antenna on the package.

From our reasearch I can tell you this:
Placing a passive RFID tag in a static bag will prevent a passive tag from transmitting. (Shield your money)

Water and heat will destroy the antennas and chips, so if you wash and tumble dry your clothes it will destroy any RFID devices. RFID in clothing is a moot point unless you don't wash your clothes.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

The RFID scanners only work on a rather small radius... Carpeting the entire store with them sounds too troublesome to be worth it. if the bottom of a shopping cart is about two feet off the ground hanging scanners from the ceiling probably won't work, as they would be hitting people in the head. And you couldn't have a wide aisle covered without putting scanners on the floor or obstructing the aisle.

Tim

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Jahf]

But the premise in this thread was scanners on every shelf. I know when I'm in a Walmart I'm never more than 4 foot from a shelf with my cart and often is within 2 feet at any given time. The carpeting is already done at that point.

I agree, it's a big waste ... but why should the retailers care when they'll be passing the cost along to us anyway.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Svartalf]

Smart shelves? Not going to happen for a while yet.

The costs of the readers ($3k average price for a basic reader for a system with a useful range...) combined with the prices for the tags (Something on the order of $.50 per tag or thereabouts...) is going to render that idea moot for most stores selling most products.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Svartalf]

Based on the research of the RFID org that is fighting this (and I can't find the link now but I got if from a recent RFID posting on /.) The range of RFID tags can be up to 40 feet.

This strongly depends on the tag type. Even passive tags can have a range of 75 or so yards depending on the design of the tag (RF backscatter tags have an incredible range for a passive device...), frequency used, and the sensitivity and noise rejection characteristics of the reader's RF subsystems. Most of the tollway pass tags are passive or battery boosted passive (The battery doesn't power the unit per se, but lowers the response time of the tag dramatically because it's in a sleep state instead of powered off.). In the case of the tags they're talking about putting in merchandise, the range is typically only about 10 or so feet max, usually more along the lines of 3 or less feet- because the antennas on the tags are electrically speaking, crippling small and they're not operating on backscatter principles, but rather a beacon re-transmitting on a different frequency or on the same one when the power is turned off on the reader's end. Advances in tech can only bring you so far in this game. They can't radiate/recieve too much power because the antenna just won't do it for them. Upping the power on the reader will do only so much for you because you hit the wall on the range possible for the antenna on the tag itself. 40 feet's pretty amazing and I'd like to see a merchandise tag that actually can swing that with the measly 2.5 cm or less dipole or meander antennas these tags typically have on them.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Vaughn Anderson]

I'm not expert, but I do recall everyone saying a few years back that cellphones would only work so good because of antane deficiences.... then a few years later some people come up with a _smaller_ antanae system that works better than the current one... so I arguments regarding the limitations on these tags are practically moot.

If the industry wants a longer range passive RFID tag at 4 watts, someone will make it happen at some point in the future... Determining legislation on evidence of this nature only makes it more difficult to prove a danger if the current set of devices are limited, without taking into account technilogical advances that can never be predicted...

The last thing I want is my kids to have shoes that can be tracked by freaks with scanners. Even if it is 5 - 10 years away...

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Svartalf]

There's limits to what a "smaller" antenna system will do. What I said is a known fact- otherwise you'd have a mobile phone system that spanned the entire globe, etc. because you'd be able to boost the range on mobile phones to much more than the 1-2 miles it currently is. Believe me, if what you said was 100% the case, they'd have done up a mobile phone product with nearly 100% coverage because they could and people would pretty much fall all over themselves to have it.

RF just doesn't work the same way most people think it does.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Vaughn Anderson]

So you are trying to say because the mobile phone only reaches 1 -2 miles that you can't go almost _anywhere_ where there's lots of people and use your phone? Of course not... so why, just because the RFID tag's "current" limit is alot smaller, do you think RFIDs will not be trackable in the same area as cellphones? Because there isn't a cell system yet setup to track such small areas? Is that it?

Go back ten years, point to a cellphone that is anywhere near the size they are now and say that size has anything to do with power and ability. Things are getting smaller and more powerful. Could you really say to someone in the 80s, that in 20 years you could talk through a phone the size of your TV remote through a satellite in space, from anywhere on the planet?

Look at batteries, there's micro engines they have now that can run 300 times the power of a normal battery, tell me you could have predicted that. The battery industry has been claiming only certain abilities for years, probably just to keep sales up...

No one can say they understand enough physics to conclusively say "passive RFID tags will never reach a communication limit of 100 feet." simply because too many other things have been created where someone said "it couldn't be done cause of physics."

You can't see the future any better than I can, but all I have to do is look into the past, where everyone that has said "it can't be done" was wrong.

One thing I will concede, if RFID tags can't do 100 feet passively, then something else that does exactly what RFIDs do, will do it, it will just have a different name.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Svartalf]

All you have done is say that mobile units have gotten smaller.

You've not addressed the issue of range with regards to an RF device in any of your counterpoints. That's what we're actually talking about- nothing else.

Stop and think for a moment about all of what you're saying.

A better battery will not equate to a better coupling of the RF power from the transmitter stage to the antenna. It will only extend the standby and talk time of the mobile phone.

Smaller circuitry will not equate to a better coupling of the RF power from the transmitter stage to the antenna. It will allow you to make the phone smaller and very possibly use the battery better.

Only a better antenna will allow a better coupling of RF power from the transmitter to the antenna. This, combined with the coupling of ambient RF to the antenna dictate the effective range of an RF system. They came up with a somewhat smaller antenna to couple RF to in the case of mobile phones. The problem is, regulatory requirements limit how much RF they can emit- which is the effective bar on the range in the case of mobile phones (you can gain a couple of miles if you boosted the power by a factor of two, but then you start seeing dramatically diminishing returns because of the propagation characteristics of the frequencies they're using...). If you have a limit on RF power, either through coupling or by what regulations say you can emit, you have a very real and very definite limit on the range of the system. This is different than the very definite limits you will have with regards to RF systems in general. At some point, pouring more power does not equate to range- because the power doesn't propagate linearly, it propagates at the rate of an inverse square. At some point, it doesn't matter how sensitive the reciever is, it just can't pick the signal up at all- because the antenna just can't couple enough of the available power into the reciever's circuits for the same reasons as upping the power having it's limits.

You see, once you start talking about RF (and that is the key word here), you place yourself in a playground that has a very explicit set of rules. Physics, as it were, that has been established by a gentleman by the name of Maxwell and has been proven rigorously by literally millions of people throughout the years. No loopholes so long as you're talking about radio- none whatsoever.

With the antennas possible with these RFID tags, you're going to find that they're close to being up against a wall with regards to range. There's going to be an absolute limit to how much power you can couple into reflecting the RF signal back to the reader- and they're really close to it right now. Upping the reader's power won't do much good as the power the devices can possibly reflect back effectively is limited by the antenna, not anything else- making a "better" smaller antenna might help on the selectivity, but it's not enough to extend the range. Upping the sensitivity of the reciever, which would be the other way to extend the effective range, isn't going to help much either- there's limits to what can/can't be discriminated as a signal. While there's been improvements over the years in that arena, they've largely not improved range, but rather practical bandwidth of the signal.

RFID is limited by it's very nature- RF has very real and definite limits. You're going to have to come up with something outside of radio that has real range before you're going to have what you're claiming. Of course, you conceded that point to some extent.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[StikyPad]

Bet it handles like a Ferarri now too.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Lord_Dweomer]

" Anyone who has used an RFID-based security pass card knows that they are easily shielded. Placing your RFID-secured product in an discreetly shielded bag would render the product nonexistant from RFID-probing security."

I'm wondering if this would be a violation of the DMCA?

"Sir, we're suing you for protecting your privacy by preventing us from tracking you for 'security purposes'

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Tyreth]

I imagine there will be many ways to exploit this. Like many things it will have advantages and disadvantages. I read a good article once about security - saying that we shouldn't try as if we can make a perfectly secure environment. Instead, we should minimise the damage caused by a breach of security.

RFID's will be abused in many ways I imagine, I'm already thinking of a few ideas myself. It will just be another layer that makes one part of life easier and another harder/more complex.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Anonymous Coward]

True.. but if using smart shelves the store will know that the item has been removed from the shelf and now is no-longer in range of a scanner... this should cause an alert as that is not normal behaviour.

Are you kidding? That little alarm in the security office will be going off every 10 seconds. How long do you think it will take the average "security manager" to unplug that? It's awfully hard to read slashdot if you have to respond to some (probably false) alarm every 10 seconds.

Re:Shielding RFID against security

[Vaughn Anderson]

No loopholes so long as you're talking about radio- none whatsoever.

What if they were able to focus the beam (radio, or whatever form of radiation is allowed) using some kind of smart antanne, that could extend the communication range based on where the direction came from the reader unit.

I have no idea off hand how this could be done, but I have lots of creative ideas to start on making something that could accomplish this.

Also, I don't recall there being any legal limit to the size of the antenna, which means that a mile long antenna could be embbedded in clothing like a shirt, unlikely, but possible. This could certainly be done in winter coats.

The point I am making is that yes, with all your knowledge of the limitations, you still lack one this, the knowledge of what will be discovered tomorrow. Even though you seem to understand all the limitations of RFID, you aren't able to predict future enhancements to the system, regardless of the fact that they use radio or some other form of communication. What if quantum radio was used? Ever heard of it? It doesn't exist yet that I know of, but you can't say it won't tommorrow.

So the issue at hand is that there should not be any manner of embedded tracking device, regardless of the technical limitations it has, unless the product is

1. Labeled clearly that it has an RFID

2. The tag is easily removed after purchasing the item.

These 2 items address all future advancements past your own ability to understand present technology and any future technology that will inevitably come about.

There will be better power sources and they will communicate farther, there is no doubt about this. 100 years ago there was no communication like this at all, and even 10 years from now we can't imagine what will be available...

Slashdot posts not meant for the slashdot readers?

[Anubis333]

Am I the only one who doesn't feel the need to see more "You've read all this before, but here it is again, even more watered down, maybe you can send the link to a friend or someone else if you know anyone that doesn't read slashdot as well" posts?

Great

[john_smith_45678]

RFID RTFMs!

uh oh...

[Afbc0m]

*watches walmart become target of infinate number of home made EMP devices

On the other hand, this will prevent people from theft, and quite possibly lower costs, or raise stock value, either way, someone benifets

Re: uh oh...

[rot26]

What numbnuts modded THAT down??? That's freaking hilarious.

Explained???

[Black Parrot]

Read the f'ing what?

Small enough...?

[Gefiltefish]

Small enough to swallow without notice? Ashcroft must love these things!

Re:Small enough...?

[DarkBlackFox]

Yeah, that would only work for a few hours though, unless Ashcroft plans on tracking your shit.

Re:Small enough...?

[Gefiltefish]

Of course he'd want to track my shit, just in case I was eating Arab food -- implicating myself as an enemy combatant.

Re:It's about time!

[WTFmonkey]

Lighten up. I can't shop at Walmart because I still have all of my teeth, but the cost savings alone (retail inventory every 6 months is expensive in a big store) will make the ROI appealking to managers everywhere. I think that is worth the few extra pieces of paper in my mailbox every day, and the few extra telemarketers I'll have to hang up on.

Foolish man...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Of course, you, diligent Slashdot reader, have read about many of these already"

Read? No. Commented about? Yes!

Concerns

[cybermint]

While these chips sound very interesting at first, there are obvious privacy concerns. I'm not very comfortable knowing that someone with a portable transceiver could tell exactly how much cash I have in my wallet or what items I just purchased at the store. Criminals could also use this to determine what expensive items were hidden under the back seat of your car before they decide to break your window. The possibility of having RFIDs in my shoes is quite disturbing. I don't want to be tracked everywhere I go.

How susceptible are these tiny units to small EMP charges? If you drive by a high power radio tower, are the chips in your shoes going to start smoking? While this technology is interesting, I hope it goes no furthur than a replacement for barcodes.

Re:Concerns

[Grax]

If you microwave your money and blow out the rfid tags will it still be legal tender?

Re:Concerns

[MikeVx]

The possibility of having RFIDs in my shoes is quite disturbing. I don't want to be tracked everywhere I go.

Unless made extremely illegal (summary executions, anyone?) expect to see mail-order gadget catalogs selling home RFID tag locators. (Radar detectors seem to manage to still exist.) They will likely be fairly cheap as they do not need to actually decode the tag signal, just react to it with an indicator. A strength dial lets you scan a whole item quickly, and you can turn it down to find specific locations on items that test positive. For tags located in hard-to-deal-with spots, a small two-angle sound generator that can resonate at the frequencies that RFID components are likely to sensitive to, to shake the bits apart. For most things, however, a pin will probably be sufficient. At least for consumer goods, this will be an addressible problem, after all, there is money to be made in deactivation!

RFID explained

[Reality Master 101]

Allow me to explain RFID tags in one easy-to-understand sentence:

They are exactly like bar code tags, except they are scanned by electromagnetic sensors, rather than lasers.

Boom! That's it. Yes, the paranoia is totally and completely stupid.

Re:RFID explained

[realdpk]

You missed something. They are not exactly like bar code tags. Here you go:

They are like bar code tags, except that they are scanned by electromagnetic sensors through your clothing/belongings possibly without you knowing, and carry enough bit-depth to uniquely identify your specific item (serial number), rather than visible lasers at checkout counters, which can only identify the type of item it is, not exactly which specific item it is.

As you can see, it's a bit more complicated than you would have us believe.

Re:RFID explained

[Sancho]

Except that they can be scanned without your knowledge, say, someone outside the store with a portable scanner can get the inventory of your entire bag.

It's a privacy issue because the scanning penetrates further than barcodes do.

Re:RFID explained

[rot26]

They are exactly like bar code tags, except they are scanned by electromagnetic sensors, rather than lasers

Brilliant! Consise! Wow.

And a newspaper is EXACTLY like radio, except you recieve it with your eyes, instead of with a tunable RC network with optional FM demodulation.

Re:RFID explained

[bill_mcgonigle]

Boom! That's it. Yes, the paranoia is totally and completely stupid.

You're right - there's nothing to fear from RFID tags. What people have problems with are the evil deeds RFID tags could enable.

Again, people need not fear guns, they should fear homicidal maniacs. But like guns, RFID tags take the wrap because they're the enabling technology.

Re:RFID explained

[gclef]

Totally and completely? That depends. For straight inventory in a store, I can see lots of advantages (heck, I can see an advantage in a server room as well...instant inventory). But, having someone be able to tell exactly what kind of underwear I'm wearing just by coming near me with a reader would creep me out. (That will be possible with this system, since you can't "degauss" RFID tags the way you can with present theft-deterrent systems.) Admit it, you all know one freak who would find it really funny to walk up to complete strangers & say "wow...you never struck me as a Hanes type of guy."
Also, there have been proposals for other uses besides inventory, and some of those are not going to work. One example I've seen talked about was using them for employee ID tags. There have all sorts of issues (passive scanning for authorized badges on subways, office lobbies), and would be a very bad idea.

Re:RFID explained

[Carbonite]

Can RFID tage be deactivated? Once the product is purchased, is the tag still active or can the store "kill" it?

If the tags can't be deactivated I can see some privacy issues arising from unauthorized detection. What if Walmart were to hide a sensor outside the doors of a competitor's store, scanning and logging every product in their customers' bags?

If the tags can be deactivated, what's to stop shoplifters from acquiring this technology? We all know that any security is eventually broken.

Re:RFID explained

[Anonymous Coward]

They have many good potential uses (retail stores would never have to do inventory again, which, speaking from experience, is a nightmare.), but there is a GREAT chance of misuse. Unlike barcodes, RFID tags can be updated, and changed. A great example of this is the movie Minority Report, in which the stores know Tom Cruise's character by name, and know what he has purchased (and attempt to interest him in accesories.) What I see as the first, and immediate problem for consumers is returning products. Wal-Mart will know that they sold you a product and if you try to return the SAME product, only purchased from a different store (such as a gift that you are unsure where it came from), they could refuse to accept the return by stating it did not come from their store. Great for the Wal-Mart bottom line, bad for the consumer.

Re:RFID explained

[cK-Gunslinger]

Allow me to explain RFID tags in one easy-to-understand sentence: They are exactly like bar code tags, except they are scanned by electromagnetic sensors, rather than lasers. Boom! That's it. Yes, the paranoia is totally and completely stupid.

Right, but the distinction is between the laser and the electromagnetic sensors. Lasers have to "see" barcodes to scan them, RFID can be detected through layers of clothing, etc from several feet away. The idea of a purse snatcher stopping my wife, asking to see her wallet, and manually scanning each bill to see how much cash she's carrying doesn't scare me quite as much as the idea of the same person walking by wife with a sensor in his wristwatch, passing it by her purse, seeing how much she has, then turning around and clubbing her over the head.

The idea of giant barcodes on the hood of our vehicles being read by each traffic light doesn't scare me as much as the idea of each light picking up the unique ID of our RFID tags hidden on our car. You think those traffic light cameras area PITA, wait until each traffic light times how long it took you to get there from the previous traffic light, determines that you must have been speeding, and automatically sends you a ticket. Have a nice day.

A little paranoia is a healthy thing to have.

Re:RFID explained

[swillden]

Can RFID tage be deactivated? Once the product is purchased, is the tag still active or can the store "kill" it?

Yes it can be killed. In fact, stores have a good reason to do so, since that way they can tell the difference between an item that has been purchased and one that has been stolen. (Unless the thief has a device to deactivate tags, of course, but casual shoplifters wouldn't).

Re:RFID explained

[ramk13]

No the paranoia is a *little* more justified than you say it is...

Can you scan a barcode when the item is inside a box, bag, or even your wallet?
Can a barcode be squeezed into less than 1 mm^2 area that you can't see?
If you had a barcode on something you owned, wouldn't it be pretty hard for it to be scanned without you knowing?

The paranoia lies in the fact that you don't have control over being scanned, and you might not even know that you are being scanned. If you *read* the article, it brings up some very good points. If cash is tagged with RFID tags, then banks or stores could scan you and see how much money you have before you walk in. Or worse yet, a criminal could scan people as they walked by and find people carrying a lot of money. Or arguably even worse than that, the anonymity of cash purchasing could disappear. Every bill you spend could be tracked.

I know I sound overly paranoid, but those things are all actual possibilities.

Re:RFID explained

[Orii]

You've summarized the technical aspects, but left out others. The biggest difference between these and barcodes is that RFID tags are imbedded in products instead of merely being visible on the product packaging.

What you dismiss as paranoia is appropriate concern. RFID tags can be used to track objects and people for various (good or bad) purposes, and in situations where it would be impractical to use barcodes. Identifying abuses of the tags is the first step in controlling those abuses and, if they cannot be adequately controlled, in justifying the elimination of the tags.

Re:RFID explained

[douglas jeffries]

they could refuse to accept the return by stating it did not come from their store

that would still be bad for customer relations, and is very unlikely to happen. as it is now, they could require a receipt to make returns (and deny otherwise, with the same reason you suggested), but that would likely end up turning their customers away, and many stores generally accept such returns. i really dont think a store like walmart would try tracking like that, as they'd likely hurt themselves by accusing customers of lying when they may indeed have just purchased an item from another walmart.

Re:RFID explained

[ViXX0r]

The thing is, according to a link above, that RFID tags big enough to transmit over any distance greater than a few inches will have to be pretty big, and could likely be easily removed and discarded.

And if you're concerned about the rest of them, it was mentionned that an EMP should disable them... someone will no doubt be marketing such a purpose specific device as soon as these tags are widespread in consumer goods. Zap your new jeans and be done with it.

Re:RFID explained

[Anonymous Coward]

"But, having someone be able to tell exactly what kind of underwear I'm wearing just by coming near me with a reader would creep me out."

stop trying to hide the fact that you don't wear any underwear.

Re:RFID explained

[bpowell423]

actually, they wouldn't have to disable the tag to know if the item was stolen. just look up the serial number of the item. if 'select serialnumber from itemssold' comes back empty, it was stolen.

Re:RFID explained

[bpowell423]

of course, even if the RFID tag can't be updated or changed, it could still be used to track Tom Cruise, in this case. If the RFID tag simply returns a serial number, just look it up in the database. no need to store all that on the RFID tag.

Re:RFID explained

[swillden]

Only if they want to track individual items, which makes sense for some goods and doesn't for others. Plus, it means if they want to use this technology to scan goods on the way out, their scanner has to have access to the database. Simply deactivating the RFID is simpler and cheaper from their point of view, not to mention less likely to provoke customer paranoia. And I'm speaking from the point of view of a consultant who has worked with real-world retailers considering real-world RFID deployments.

Death of barcodes

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The same thing is happening today. I'm here to tell you that the bar code's days are numbered.

When DigitalConvergence 's CEO and entrepreneur extraordinaire J. Jovan Philyaw hears about this, he'll start making free RFID scanners (CueDogs?) before you know it.

Re:Death of barcodes

[griffjon]

Nah, they're too small for his biz model...

"The CueCat is a cheapo bar-code scanner that looks like a marital aid."
--Leander Kahney, Wired

Re:Death of barcodes

[Anonymous Coward]

RosCo! Them Duke boys is killin my bar-codes! Git em!

Mark of the beast?

[cleancut]

Yes...this always comes up anytime some story regarding chips underneath skin. But it doesn't sound too difficult to slip a RFID tag underneath a hand or forehead.

Sounds an awful lot like this.

Re:Mark of the beast?

[cleancut]

Excuse the sentence fragment from the parent. I'm currently suffering from caffine deprivation. ;-)

Re:Mark of the beast?

[rjamestaylor]

I'm all for an embedded RFID, as long as I don't have to worship someone to get it (you need to include verse 15, too):

• 14 Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the first beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the earth. He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived.
• 
  15 He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.
  16 He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead,
  17 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.
  18 This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.

Check out a great explanation of the beast and the number of the beast. Hint: it's a reference to Nero who was, was not, and will be.

Re:Mark of the beast?

[Anonymous Coward]

A more logical explanation is:

- The 7-headed, 10-horned wild beast is the successive world powers
- The 2-horned wild beast is the current world power, the Anglo-American one
- The image of the wild beast is the LoN/UN
- The scarlet colored wild beast is the LoN/UN with "the breath of life" given it by the current world power
- The number 6 signifies something that falls short of heavenly perfection(symbolized by "7")
- The number 3 is used for emphasis

Using this, we can figure that the number "666" is just imperfection, emphasized.

We can also figure that the UN is nothing more than a worthless figurehead until the Anglo-American world power gives it life.

Jesus said that his followers would be persecuted because they were "no part of this world" and that the world would love what was its own(i.e., not Jesus' followers). This lends credence to the "no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark" comment. Christians would lack the mark, and would be discriminated against.

Re:Mark of the beast?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "was, but is not, but will be" part is spoken as if it were during World War 2.

The LoN "was", but "is not." The UN "will be." It's all history now.

Re:Mark of the beast?

[Anonymous Coward]

More logical? While I don't like the UN very much I can't buy that John was referring to such a powerless organization; the EU has me more worried -- the founding treaty for the EU is called the "Treaty of Rome". That's more of a Restored Roman Empire than the toothless UN. John's context was Rome, not a world federation. I don't think you're on target.

Re:Mark of the beast?

[cleancut]

Well...Watchman Nee and Witness Lee's interpretation there is a bit "out there". Suggesting that the Antichrist's spirit was in Nero?

Furthermore, verse 15 doesn't say that everyone will be killed immediatly. IANAAGS (I Am Not An Ancient Greek Scholar :-), but based on the handful of other translations I briefly scanned, doesn't it also seem possible to be killed by, say starvation? If you need the mark of the beast (or an RFID tag on your arm or forehead) in order to purchase food, in an urban society you will eventually die.

The simple fact of the matter is, the overwhelming majority of biblical scholars (and Christians who are into that sort of thing) consider the book of Revelation to not be literal. Think about it. If you believe that the Bible is God's inspired word, and that God inspired someone living in Roman times (John) to write a "Revelation" of times far into the future through visions, then how could he describe the things he saw to people in Roman times but through allegory.

And if you're reading this and consider it off topic, consider the following. There is such a thing as a Christian Nerd (although I pale in comparison to several of my friends).

Futhermore, technology that sounds like the mark of the beast is certainly nerdy!

Re:Mark of the beast?

[Lt Razak]

do you get caffine from coffe?

the only thing we have to fear...

[*weasel]

the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

the famous line that could only be spoken by someone who lived in a world where he didn't have to fear the government tracking his every move and action through every consumer product with an RFID tag - silently amassing data about his most secret incestual bestial foot fetish to be used at a later date in a mcCarthy-ist purge of incestual bestial foot fetishists.

of course roosevelt was the walrus. i could be the walrus, and i'd still have to be afraid of an incestual bestial foot fetishist purge.

Re:the only thing we have to fear...

[freedommatters]

the only thing we have to fear is life itself

Not just for tagging consumers' chlotes.

[Anonymous Coward]

These RF tags are perfect for tagging clothes, as the blurb pointed out. But an even more sinister use than tagging clothes is tagging the people who wear the clothes. And I'm especially referring to a certain kind of person:

Slavery is alive and well in this country, and I'm not referring merely to rhetorical or political slavery, but actual slavery. Women from foreign countries, particularly southeast-Asian countries are flown to America and promised low-paying but normal jobs performing menial labor or housecleaning services, but when they arrive, they discover to their horror that the real purpose is to prostitute themselves for the financial benefit of their masters. These women (and even children) are trapped, since they don't speak English, don't have the money to fly home, and don't have the physical or mental stamina to escape their tormentors after so much abuse.

How is this relevant to RF tags? Think of how much easier it would be to kidnap people from airports if all you needed to do was wander around with a small device, picking up the signals from the tags embedded in clothing given to the erstwhile immigrants back in their home countries. No longer would there have to be complicated networks of international communication -- they'd just have to agree on a certain range of serial numbers (of which there are trillions, as the article points out), hand out "free" clothes to people boarding the plane at departure, and sit back while agents at the US airports haul in the "goods".

This never would've been possible if we'd stuck to normal barcodes -- it's simply impossible to read barcodes surreptitiously. And since criminals are always the first to adopt new technologies for these devious purposes, it's only a matter of time before it comes to an airport near you, Thirteenth Amendment be damned.

Re:Not just for tagging consumers' chlotes.

[nhaze]

I think it's "chodes"

Re:Not just for tagging consumers' chlotes.

[Anonymous Coward]

You say all of that as if it were a bad thing

Re:Not just for tagging consumers' chlotes.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not new and happens all over the world. Russian whores are put to work in western europe and passed around and sold like lamps. Even in the Netherlands this happens outside and inside of their redlight district. Most of these girls are drug addicts but some are russian women looking for work in a russian city then getting kidnapped.

I guess it could be worse... like it is in Cuba where horny perverts travel to enjoy the child sex rings run by communist party members.

Re:Not just for tagging consumers' chlotes.

[IthnkImParanoid]

That's just about the greatest FUD I've ever seen. What is your point? That we should not be using, or have even invented RF tages because they could be useful to slave traders?

And since criminals are always the first to adopt new technologies for these devious purposes

That statement made me laugh. What, criminals are the first to adopt new technologies for [slave trading]? How did this get mod points for 'Insightful'?

This never would've been possible if we'd stuck to normal barcodes

This meaning slave trading? Funny, you pointed out earlier in your post slave trading is a problem. They don't need to use barcodes.

What you said could be applied to any technological advance. The internet/email makes slave trading easier. I fail to see how pointing out a way to use RF tags to kidnap people adds anything to this discussion.

Re:Not just for tagging consumers' chlotes.

[scrytch]

Okay. You got your super-sensitive RFID receiver. Picking out one tag. At an airport. Keep in mind you can't even wait by the jetway anymore, you wait by the terminal exit. Which I guess will have ... a few tags wandering about?

Might just be easier to make the clothes distinctive, ya think? Besides, most of them believed the pitch, I'm guessing they walk quite willingly into the hands of their captors.

How about the slave labor of the prison system?

Re:Not just for tagging consumers' chlotes.

[Anonymous Coward]

What I want to know is how this idiot spouting obvious FUD got modded up as interesting. Don't fuck with my asian love slaves damnit!

Re:Not just for tagging consumers' chlotes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever

Simple Answer

[rabtech]

I think Congress should mandate that any product which contains an RFID tag must be clearly labelled as such, and the store must provide you the option of disabling the tag before leaving the store (perhaps a certain device you walk through or something?)

Products that have RFID tags only in the packaging could be exempt, since those tags don't stick with the product.

Re:Simple Answer

[Fian]

so do RFID tagged kids how to be tattooed with a warning? :)

EMP...

[Anonymous Coward]

what I want is a small device to emit an EMP that will disable the RFID tag in any products that I own.

Who is ready to design one and show how you built it on slashdot so we can all copy?

Not even that long

[Anonymous Coward]

The digestive juices ought to be enough to destroy the tag.

Re:Not even that long

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not strong enough to destroy corn... encapsulate the tag in the biomaterial of which the undigestable portion of corn is made.

MOD PARENT DOWN!

[Anonymous Coward]

no reason, really. i just think it would be funny to drive this dude's karma into the ground

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN!

[Anonymous Coward]

you reverse psychology arsehole

Big Brother? not necessarily.

[griffjon]

Everyone freaks out about RFIDs, but I remain in the camp that these could be really cool, as long as consumers (ok, geeks) figure out how to control them (by burning them out or just finding the darned things and removing them from unwanted places, like the back of a Yugo [1])

Ever lose your cell phone and have someone call it so you could find it? Imagin being able to do that with any random item? superglue a RFID onto it, and walk around with a semi-portable RFID scanner. OK, not as great due to the limited range of the things, but you could pretty easily determine if the keys were under the couch or not.

Now, the sucky thing will be if (when) manufacturers build RFIDs into places that you can't get to without destroying the item or voiding the warranty.

So, we need an opt-out method for RFIDs, which may be as simple as a way to find the lil' bastards and plier them flat, but beyond the scare, there's promise:

telnet homenetwork : fridgeport
Brr! it's cold in here [45F]! Can I have your username?
> JoeBachelor
And your password?
> gotb33r?
Welcome to your Refridgerator/Freezer system!
>cd fridge
>ls
Directory of /fridge:

Beer/
Beer/Shiner Bock (1)
Beer/MGD (5)

Condiments/
Condiments/ketchup package (13)
Condiments/mustard package (2.5)
Condiments/SoySauce package (1)
Condiments/Unidentifiable (5)
Condiments/mayonnaise (1) (warning: use-by-date 5 months expired!)

Vegetables/

Soda/
Coke (.5)
Mountain Dew (4)
non-caffeinated/
ActualFood/
lunchmeat_ham (1) (warning: use-by-date 1 week expired!)
cheese_cheddar (2) (warning: use-by-date is tommorow!)
End of directory. No healthy food available.
>man healthy
Sorry, you need to install the Mother or Health-Conscious-Girlfriend modules for these extensions
>make food
Unable to make food. Stop.
>exit.
Goodbye.

see?!!!!! see! this is my vision!

unrelated, I'm worried about /.s email garble today : Email
GriffJon@[ ]mail.com ['Hot' in gap]
hot in gap? what does that imply?

[1] That's a "Mall Rats" reference, for the rest of you.

Re:Big Brother? not necessarily.

[Mirage]

I'm totally with you on this. I'm seeing a house set up with scanners at each doorway, and occupants having RFID tags on them. Combine this with some X-10 and you could come up with some fairly cool apps. And as long as you control the system there shouldn't be any privacy concerns.

Re:Big Brother? not necessarily.

[griffjon]

Exactly! The problem will be who controls the system -- and with only 128 bits of information, good crypto won't be very available, so it'll be protection by the limited radius of detection for lots of stuff, and security-through-obscurity, with all its inherent weaknesses.

But nevertheless, lots of power for automation and data-enriching of boring everyday things.

Re:Big Brother? not necessarily.

[karnal]

Actually, back to the "lost keys under the couch", I'd very much like to stick RFID's on:

My TV remotes (especially the oft-unused VCR or DVD remote)... it always pisses me off when someone misplaces these and I really want to watch a tape or DVD.

My keys and work badge -- Why is it I always leave these in different places? Guess I'm lazy.

Anyways, it'd be neat to have a home that could tell you the location of an item in your "inventory", at least down to the room... of course, that would require you to have an RFID that you could "contact"... I saw someone posted the idea of having the sensors in the doorways, but I think it'd be more reliable to be able to have the house scan the whole room and VERIFY that the item is in said room.

Of course, I'd also settle for a "base station paging device" that I could stick penny-sized screamers on that would go off if I pushed the right button.... Lost your keys? Hit the "keys" button on the base station and off ya go!

Re:Big Brother? not necessarily.

[Anonymous Coward]

unrelated, I'm worried about /.s email garble today : Email
GriffJon@[ ]mail.com ['Hot' in gap]
hot in gap? what does that imply?

it means 'replace the gap for the word Hot' ie:

GriffJon@hotmail.com

woops ... sorry for that

Re:Big Brother? not necessarily.

[Anonymous Coward]

I once did this [ ] chick.. She liked to drink [ ] tea before she gave me [ ] sex. Is it getting [ ] in here or is it just me?

Re:Big Brother? not necessarily.

[overunderunderdone]

I have a relative who is one of the original developers of this type of RFID tag. They have (or had) a fridge at MIT which would automagically order certain items of food from Peapod whenever they got low. For instance it could be programmed to always maintain 2 Gallons of milk in the fridge. Whenever there was only one in the fridge for a certain amount of time (the length of time that milk would go bad) it would add the second to it's weekly peapod order.

More scarily they also had a demo of potential uses that showed it sharing it's data with the Smart TV in the next room so that the ads were targetted. For instance Pepsi could pay to place ads targetted at people that just threw out their last Coke.

Also as for the opt out method - The standard includes a "kill switch" that turns them off.

Re:Big Brother? not necessarily.

[mrex]

Everyone freaks out about RFIDs, but I remain in the camp that these could be really cool, as long as consumers (ok, geeks) figure out how to control them

What major technological innovation ever is that not true of? From fire to the machine gun to radio broadcasting, in the hands of geeks these would be great things.

Now, of the latest technologies of the past, lets say 100 years, how many can you argue are MORE in control of the geek or consumer than the government and large corporations? Have you turned on your car radio lately? Looked around the internet?

Cool empowering technology just doesn't end up the hands of Joe Blow. We must factor that into any evaluation.

Re:Big Brother? not necessarily.

[Atomizer]

I can just picture somebody losing the portable RFID reader. (Maybe your remote or keys can track down the RFID reader...) I think the idea of having a base staion is a good idea. Much harder to lose that way.

I used to have a key chain you could whistle for and it would, like go, "beep beep beep". Very handy.

Security paranoid?

[noitalever]

ok, so in the first part of this article the guy says

"When a transponder receives a certain radio query, it responds by transmitting its unique ID code, perhaps a 128-bit number, back to the transceiver. Most RFID tags don't have batteries (How could they? They're 1/3 of a millimeter!). Instead, they are powered by the radio signal that wakes them up and requests an answer."

Later he throws in this little paranoia bit about "Do you really want your car's tires broadcasting your every move?" What's that about? He knows they don't "broadcast" and that you'd have to be within several feet to monitor. You already have a frickin license plate on your car, so who cares? The good side of that is that you could prove that your tires were now living on someone else's car when they were stolen...

And in that line of thinking, how long will it take for commercial "scanners" to come around, so you can locate the chip and neutralize it? It just seems that people are freaking out about security when in reality, people can already track everywhere you go anyway. How many people out there use cash exclusively? No one I know. I can't WAIT for the day when I just walk out the door with a cart full of stuff and it's automatically taken out of my checking account. that would well be worth someone being able to count how many hammers I buy in a month.

Re:Security paranoid?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't WAIT for the day when I just walk out the door with a cart full of stuff and it's automatically taken out of my checking account.

I can't wait for that day either. I hope you and everybody else on whatever fucked-up planet you live on are happy.

Re:Security paranoid?

[Scrameustache]

Later he throws in this little paranoia bit about "Do you really want your car's tires broadcasting your every move?" What's that about? He knows they don't "broadcast" and that you'd have to be within several feet to monitor. You already have a frickin license plate on your car, so who cares?

Trancievers in every street light...
London would be the first city to implement it.

how long will it take for commercial "scanners" to come around, so you can locate the chip and neutralize it?

How long will it take for DMCA-like laws that make that practice illegal?

I can't WAIT for the day when I just walk out the door with a cart full of stuff and it's automatically taken out of my checking account. that would well be worth someone being able to count how many hammers I buy in a month.

Yes, and I can't wait for organised crime to automatically skim a lil' bit off the top of all our checking accounts as we walk past 'em.
Not much, just a few bucks per person, walk around in a crowd and you'd make a few thousand dollars in minutes...

Re:Security paranoid?

[Kombat]

Trancievers in every street light.

Extremely high-powered tranceivers? Remember - these tags are passive. You need to be within a few inches (or extremely powerful) to read a signal much farther than that. And of course, there's interference.

How long will it take for DMCA-like laws that make that practice illegal?

Is it presently illegal to remove barcodes from products you purchase? No? Then what makes you think laws could/would be enacted to make an analogous act illegal?

Yes, and I can't wait for organised crime to automatically skim a lil' bit off the top of all our checking accounts as we walk past 'em. Not much, just a few bucks per person, walk around in a crowd and you'd make a few thousand dollars in minutes.

Are you familiar with the concept of an instant-debit tag? I'm not sure what it would be called in your neck of the woods, but up here in Canada, Esso (a gas retailer) gives away these little, black, 1.5 inch wands that attach to your keychain and are linked to your credit card. They're called the "Speedpass." When I pull into an Esso station to order gas, I simply wave this wand over top of the reader at the pump, then grab the nozzle and start fueling. When I'm done, I grab my receipt and drive away. Alternatively, I can go into the attached convenience store, throw some items on the counter, the clerk scans them, then wave my keys in front of another reader, grab my purchases, and walk away. The gas/purchases are automatically billed to my credit card. No buttons, no signatures, just wave, beep, and go.

These devices are very widespread up here. Now, according to your level of paranoia, I should be fearful of walking in large crowds, in case someone is walking around with a reader, waves it by my pocket, and charges me $1500. That hasn't happened. In fact, I've never heard of such a theft occurring to ANYONE, and like I said, these "Speedpasses" are everywhere. It would certainly be fruitful for someone to undertake such an endeavor.

So I don't need to offer theories and logic to counter your ridiculous, paranoid fear: I can simply refer to EXISTING REALITY. These devices are out there NOW, and the abuse you fear is not happening. Your fears are unfounded. They offer convenience and speed, with zero incidence of fraud, to date.

Re:Security paranoid?

[marnanel]

Yes, and I can't wait for organised crime to automatically skim a lil' bit off the top of all our checking accounts as we walk past 'em.

How's RFID going to let that happen? The most it can let someone do is know what goods you're carrying. If a store knew what you're carrying, they could debit your account (assuming you'd already given them the account details and authorisation), but that has nothing to do with RFID.

Re:Security paranoid?

[Scooby Snacks]

They're called the "Speedpass."

Yes, Exxon-Mobil does them here in the US.

These devices are very widespread up here. Now, according to your level of paranoia, I should be fearful of walking in large crowds, in case someone is walking around with a reader, waves it by my pocket, and charges me $1500. That hasn't happened.

Of course not. The tag doesn't store your credit card info, it stores a unique identifier which is linked to you and your credit card info in Exxon-Mobil's (Esso's) database, so the unique identifier would be pretty worthless to a would-be thief. Unless they can make their own RFID chip... then they could get free gas and stick you with the bill, at least until you got a different SpeedPass wand from the oil company. (Don't laugh; I don't doubt that something like this is that far off, based on the fact that mag-stripe programmers aren't entirely uncommon.)

Re:Security paranoid?

[Scrameustache]

Extremely high-powered tranceivers? Remember - these tags are passive. You need to be within a few inches (or extremely powerful) to read a signal much farther than that. And of course, there's interference.


In the streetlight, embedded in the asphalt, whatever...

Is it presently illegal to remove barcodes from products you purchase? No? Then what makes you think laws could/would be enacted to make an analogous act illegal?


WTF? Too...many...logic holes...sarcasm generator...overloading...

The same freaking way that it was once legal to buy all the opium you wanted. Laws change, jeez.

The reason that there is no law making it illegal to remove the barcode once you're out of the store is because the barcode has no use once you are out of the store. If you had bothered to read the damn article you would have understood my comment instead of trolling me with this.

like I said, these "Speedpasses" are everywhere.

huh-uh...I don't have one, no one in my family/friends/aquaitances has one.

I was talking about ubiquitous use here, not -one- compnay offering it as a service used by a minority of its costummers.

and charges me $1500

I specifically mentionned skimming small amounts from many people...you are sounding more and more like a troll.

So I don't need to offer theories and logic to counter your ridiculous, paranoid fear

Indeed!
Your reply contained no logic, I'm surprised you point this out yourself.

Re:Security paranoid?

[Scrameustache]

How's RFID going to let that happen? The most it can let someone do is know what goods you're carrying. If a store knew what you're carrying, they could debit your account (assuming you'd already given them the account details and authorisation), but that has nothing to do with RFID.

And how do they identify your account? Magic, or RFID from your wallet?

And if you want, you can substitute "organised crime" with "RIAA"...

1. Place speakers playing RIAA owned music in public space.
   
2. Charge everyone withing earshot with automated RFID billing.
   
3. PROFIT!

There ya go...

Re:Security paranoid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just how many hammers do you buy in a month? That's what worries me.

Re:Security paranoid?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>you'd have to be within several feet to monitor

Put a directional antenna on the reader device, and you can extend that quite a bit. The antenna would focus the transmitted power on the RFID tag you're trying to wake up, and would also isolate the answering signal from all the noise in the area.

Some of the RFID implementations work up at microwave frequencies, where highly directional antennas are small and cheap.

The downside is that a reader device has to fight an inverse fourth power law (inverse square going out times inverse square coming back, same as radar). A small battery-powered jammer could be devastating.

Re:Security paranoid?

[marnanel]

And how do they identify your account? Magic, or RFID from your wallet?

I suppose there are two ways this could be implemented: like knowing a bank account number, or like knowing a credit card number. If someone knows your bank account number, they can't get money out of it without a prior arrangement between you, the bank and the merchant. If they know your credit card number, they can. If the people implementing things such as RFID customer identification have any common sense (and it's true that assuming that about anyone is often a big if) it should be implemented more like a bank account number than a credit card number.

Re:Security paranoid?

[Tyreth]

Ultimately you miss the problem. Currently scanners can only scan a few inches/feet.

It won't always be like that. Some day we may find out how to make small RFID's able to emit a signal without a battery/with a small battery. We may likely find new ways to scan RFID's over a much longer range.

Now it's not a problem, but in the future it could very well be. Stick a frog in cold water and boil it slowly, and the frog will die. Stick it in hot water and it will leap right out.

Am I expected to place my ..

[burgburgburg]

shoes, pants, tires, body in shields whenever I leave my house? After the doctors spent all that time convincing me to take off the tin foil suit, you're telling me to put it back on?

Re:Am I expected to place my ..

[Surak]

You took it off?! You listened to *them*?! Put it back on *now* it's not too late to save yourself!!

Re:Am I expected to place my ..

[gurps_npc]

You do realize that tin foil causes cancer... It collects all that energy that the power lines put out and focuses it into your body. :)

Security Director at Unisys UK Speaks

[Hellvetica]

Be sure to read this interesting reply to this story by a security director at Unisys UK.

learning by RF-ID in Linux...

[MosesJones]

For anyone who is interested in looking more at this area and has a Linux box....

For more info and then Download it here

If you want to build an RF-ID lab you need some cash to get tags and readers but this would help with the theory.

RFID tags used to find stolen musical instruments

[rpiquepa]

You'll find the summary of this Business 2.0's story on Smart Mobs. And on my blog, you can find two other stories about RFIDs, Bye-Bye Bar Codes? and The Eerie Possibilities of RFID Tags.

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[jimkski]

I think one of the responders (Stefan Sokolowski) to the article did a good job of shedding a little more light on some of these concerns:

As a real security professional (i.e. one that does not go around screaming that the sky is falling) and as someone who has worked with RFID for the military and for civilian uses (mainly Post Offices) for over six years, I find your article makes a number of glaring omissions that would allow any sensible human being to make a rational judgement about this technology.

Omissions:

1) Range verses size. Very basic issue. The smaller it is, the closer you have to be to it to pick up the signal. For a small passive tag we are talking inches (3-4 feet max). In order to track something from 200 yards (maximum range currently in use), you need an active tag (i.e. with a battery) and it has to be the size of a beer mat. I think you would notice it in your jeans. The signal generator in this case is also a non-trivial device. It is the size on a lamp-post and weights in excuss of 30Kg. Hardly PDA attachment material.

2)Storage area on the device is tiny. For the small passive devices you are referring to the storage area is less than 1Kilobyte. Not much space for your medical records here.

3)The logic associated with the tyre scenario. The association of the vehicle number and the tyre would not be stored on the tag. There is no space, and Read/Write tags are much more expensive (and larger). Easy to overwrite also. So for your big brother is watching scenario, you would need to replace every lamp-post on every highway with a signal generator, have assess to the database that cross-references your vehicle ID with the tag ids, and be able to monitor all of the signal generators in real-time to see what was happening.

And all this just to find out where you are. Are you really that important? I think ringing your mobile would be easier.

There is also a problem with reading many tags at once. The current limit is around 200 tags per second for the best sensor. The tag will respond and continue to respond at regular intervals (sub-second usually but dependant on set-up). Because they are all talking at once on the same frequency, the sensor cannot distinguish and ignore tags in real-time. It may recieve many responses from the same tag, and there is no way to tell the tag to shut up. So imagine the situation across a busy highway.

sums it up for most /. readers

[Anonymous Coward]

RFID tags are evil, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmkay?

Ironic

[wiggys]

Doesn't anyone think it rather ironic that the year Big Brother's powers to watch us changed dramatically was...

[Drum roll]

1984.

Re:Ironic

[brlewis]

Um, how exactly did bar codes change Big Brother's powers dramatically? Only for bar codes was 1984 a significant year, not for RFIDs.

You are obviously single

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't WAIT for the day when I just walk out the door with a cart full of stuff and it's automatically taken out of my checking account.

The thought of my wife doing that scares the living shit out of me.

Re:You are obviously single

[noitalever]

Good luck with that.
I don't let my wife out of the house, so it won't change anything on my end.
8-)

Nope they aren't

[MosesJones]

1D barcodes store only a reference number that can be used to indicate WHAT TYPE the product is.

And EPC stored on a tag tells you exactly WHICH product it is, and from that you can map its whole supply chain if it is all connected.

If you'd said 2D and 3D barcodes you'd have been more accurate, but those still can only be read one at a time.

RF-ID tags can be read thousands at a time and identifiy exactly which items you are dealing with. It is definately different but not by definition something to be paranoid about.

Re:It's about time!

[rot26]

Lighten up. I can't shop at Walmart because I still have all of my teeth, but the cost savings alone (retail inventory every 6 months is expensive in a big store) will make the ROI appealking to managers everywhere.

I can feel the prices dropping now. I also can't wait until Walmart starts putting MY employers out of business, in addition tothe thousands of other small-scale employers that they've already nuked.

The paranoia is completely justified

[burgburgburg]

You'd notice if someone bar code scanned your shoes, tires, pants, money, body. You're able to remove the bar codes from the items you purchase after you pay for them.

You can be RFID tracked anytime, anywhere, without your knowledge. Your location/possessions can be itemized/tracked/databased. Sounds like reasonable grounds for paranoia to me. Excuse me while I put back on my tin foil suit.

Why complain? Make money!

[dspyder]

I don't know why all you slashdotters are complaining about this. RFID is powerful technology that corporations want to purchase. The ROI is super-quick and super-obvious to even the dumbest CFO.

MAKE MONEY!

Read up about this stuff. Learn the upsides, and the downsides. Build some useful software around this (more than just inventory and asset tracking). Apply for jobs at these companies! Quit bitching, and take advantage of the situation.

--D

Hehe

[zapfie]

Of course, you, diligent Slashdot reader, have read about many of these already.

Oh man.. thanks Taco. I needed a good laugh. Pfft.. he actually thinks we read the articles.. hehe!

Re:Hehe

[deadsaijinx*]

The Editors don't read the site and the patrons don't read the Links. It's a beautiful system of equivalent ignorance.

Re:It's about time!

[Drakin]

Cost savings? Where are there going to be cost savings?

The companies producing the goods won't just swallow the increased price, and while not every store will with the chips, it's cheaper to put it in your entire product run, then do some with, some without.

Heck, in the end this won't save even wal-mart any money. They've got a reasonable inventory control system... just thier buyers are frigging morons who over purchase and ship piles of crap to the stores that have no market for the item, and don't ship them the items that sell like hotcakes.

Privacy

[msheppard]

From the article:

your privacy is at stake.

Am I the only one sick of "privacy" being used as an argument? It reminds me of "won't someone think of the children." The Constitution/Declaration of Independance do not stipulate privacy.

I'm beginning to think that privacy is costing us too much. If we had access to a plethora of medical information, perhaps we could do some data mining and identify some patterns that would benifit us more than we can imagine.

I'm trying to remember WHY I want all this privacy, why it's so impoartant my purchases be private, who is it I'm afraid of them knowing that I bought a copy of "swank" magazine. I guess if I was a politcian I wouldn't want people to know some things, but I'm just a pretty average citizen, I don't need someone else protecting my privacy.

Maybe an employer would do a backround check and find something - but if they won't hire me becuase of some obscure piece of information, maybe I don't want to work there. Perhaps I'm the kind of person who doesn't really have something like that to hide... it seems the only people concerned about privacy are trying to hide something. Now I'm beginning to ramble...

M@

Re:Privacy

[jason0000042]

If we had access to a plethora of medical information, perhaps we could do some data mining and identify some patterns that would benifit us more than we can imagine.

Good point. There are plenty of good uses for having loads of information about everything. But there are loads of bad uses too. The question is this: can we trust everyone who would have access to this information to use it in a beneficial, or at least non-harmful, way?

Call me a pessimist but with the big dubbya hanging around I'm less than convinced that providing more tools to mr. ashcroft is a Good Idea.

Re:Privacy

[darthtuttle]

What happens when someone gets a list of everyone who's had an abortion and posts it somewhere so that others can go and shoot them all, or (this is less of an issue now, but would have been) a list of people taking AZT, so the gay bashers can go beat them up.

The ability to access and share information to help the world would be great, it if wasn't for selfish people who will use that information to their own advantage and the disadvantage of the people who the information is about.

Or how about the government monitoring everyone who reads 'Leaving the 21st Century' (not the book about music), 'The Anarchists Cookbook', '2600' or any number of other books.

Here's the thing about privacy, it's yours to give up. You are or will be a responsible adult who can make desicions about how your personal information is distributed and used. You can publish all the facts if you like.

You do need someone to protect your privacy, because you can't get it back once the cat is out of the bag, therefore you need to make the responsible choice about it's use. You can't do that if it's not protected, the desicion is made for you.

What happens when someone who takes Catherine McKinnon's thinking a little to far and decides to shoot people who look at porn (I don't think Catherine would ever do or suguest that).

We all have things to hide. Sure, we would all like to work somewhere were we are wanted for what we can do and not who we are, but the reality of the situation is some of us need to have jobs and we can't pick and choose. In Florida your employer could fire you for the fact that you look at porn in the privacy of your own home. Some companies have fired everyone in the company who was gay or lesbian. Even with protected status clauses often times you get fired for one reason, but they wanted you gone for another. Privacy protects that.

People say your information wants to be free, but I'm still waiting for them to free their credit card numbers and enough bank details to give me access to them.

Re:Privacy

[mark_lybarger]

'We want Information...Information...Information.'
'Who are you?'
'The new Number Two.'
'Who is Number One?'
'You are Number Six.'
'I am not a number - I am a free Man!'

as much as the constitution doesn't explictly define a right to privacy, it doesn't either require one to diseminate their own information. thus, it allows privacy. it also restricts unreasonable searches and seizures on your property which does provide a level of privacy.

you don't seem to mind others profiting from your personal information and the collective information as a whole. that's fine, give out our personal information. there are those of us who would prefer to not have our personal information, likes, dislikes, purchasing habits, etc used to further the marketing and sales efforts which will ultimately fatten the pocket of a few CxO's.

it seems the only people concerned about privacy are trying to hide something

it's odd that exercising certain rights raise suspicion, while exercising other rights are perfectly normal. we have a right to vote, and doing so is quasi-normal. but... if a police office comes to your house and askes to come inside (just to talk), and you tell him to go get a freaking warrant, you're viewed as having something to hide. merely for exercising your rights.

Re:Privacy

[IthnkImParanoid]

I partially agree, but to play devil's advocate:

It's about power, and how knowledge is power. Politicians (as you mentioned), CEO's, and other powerful high profile people will tend to protect their privacy while seeking to violate ours. They can project any image of themselves they want so long as their privacy is intact, and anyone who challenges their authority automatically gets whatever skeletons they have in their closet dragged out into the public eye.

The situation is exacerbated by our tendency to develop our definitions of normal by, at least in part, observing high-profile people. Even if buying swank is statistically normal, you can bet it would damage your reputation if it a newspaper wrote an article about it. Even if we all agreed it's normal and you're not a pervert, you would be known for buying swank instead of whatever you wanted to be known for.

It's not at all important that we keep such things private. It's probably even better we all admit to surfing for porn and getting high at parties. However, it's even more important to keep from having a double standard of privacy.

Re:Privacy

[pmz]

If we had access to a plethora of medical information, perhaps we could do some data mining and identify some patterns that would benifit us more than we can imagine.

Access to aggregate information can accomplish nearly the same thing without identifying individual people in the process.

I'm trying to remember WHY I want all this privacy...

Okay, citing recent news, what if you were an "evil" sodomizer in Texas, who happened to get "evil sodomizer" stamped on his permanent criminal record, potentially harming him for life in the midst of a bigoted and unfair society?

Everyone has different reasons for desiring privacy. Most of those reasons are very subjective in light of religion, culture, and politics. Is there any logical reason why sodomy should be illegal? Absolutely not. What about if you are a Southern Baptist? Or a member of the KKK? What if a person with access to a national database finds you immoral, based on their own bias, and injects incriminating data into your profile? What if you are among the millions of people whose lifestyle doesn't match assumptions built into an arbitrary database schema?

Databases, by themselves, are benign. Databases in the context of human administration and consumption are terribly dangerous.

I guess if I was a politcian I wouldn't want people to know some things, but I'm just a pretty average citizen, I don't need someone else protecting my privacy.

This really answers your own question. There should be no barriers for average citizens to become politicians, if they choose. Representation by the people for the people, or something like that. Simply, privacy is necessary for democracy.

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa there... Though the Constitution does not specify a "right to privacy", the supreme court has determined that from various amendments, a right to privacy is inferred. Specifically the third, fourth, and fifth amendments. By the supreme court saying this, if I recall, from some right to privacy in buying contraceptives case, it makes it law. (That is part of their job and all, interpreting the law)

Anyway, though you don't seem to care about privacy because you aren't "trying to hide something", your apathy is a dangerous way of thinking.

Bit by bit, as parts of our privacy disappear we slowly also lose bits of freedom. It doesn't have to apply to illegal things people try to hide, but everyday things. Say you're a convicted felon, have done jail time, but are trying to turn over a new leaf. You've already lost your ability to move to a new town and start new; almost all companies do background checks. Companies are not supposed to discriminate based on records, but tell me: two equal candidates are applying for a job, one has auto-theft on his record, who gets hired? Granted, that freedom was given up for safety concerns, as are most, but our freedoms have been reduced by such.

Lets take things to a hypothetical future. What if RFIDs are used to an extreme? When you walk into a store, sales people can check and see who you are, cross referencing your clothing RFID's with a sales database and know everything you buy. Whats so bad about that? Well say you're looking for a job and apply at that store. Of course its illegal to discriminate based on anything but ability to do a job, but all-of-a-sudden that company knows some details of your private life. What if your purchases imply you're gay? Extreme right or left wing? Super-religious, or not? They can now do some very selective discrimination with out even giving you an interview. I know, I know, companies can discriminate with or without RFID's, but I think the question should be, why should they have a right to this sort of stuff without your permission?

It gets very dangerous giving up privacies and freedoms carelessly. A lot of freedoms are gone with good reason (no stealing, speeding, etc.). Some, I don't believe are necessary (courts allowing RIAA to demand data from an ISP without a subpoena). Once given up, its far harder to recover rights if you've made a mistake.

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

As a fairly regular pot smoker, I definitely don't want the government tracking my financial transactions. A lot of the things we take for granted would become horrible if laws were completely and totally enforceable.

Re:Privacy

[X_Bones]

Would you like to advertise the fact that you pick your nose? Or that you masturbate, or read Mein Kampf, or possess a large collection of medieval weaponry and wearing a black trenchcoat in your spare time? I know people that do each of these things, yet for obvious reasons none of them would wish for these facts to become widely known.
There's a whole lot of things that people do which others have no need to know whatsoever. If it has no effect on my work habits and does not lead to performing illegal behavior in public, then nobody else at all needs to be concerned with it. Privacy protects those of us who want to be left alone from everyone else who thinks it's their business what I do behind closed doors.

Re:Privacy

[msheppard]

Replying to my own post in effort to reply to all those who replied to it as well.

First: I am VERY impressed with the decorum exersized in the replies so far! There are some VERY good arguments made.

There seems to be a common thread of "What if they could find out you were gay," and I'd like to suggest that maybe if it were easy to tell if someone was gay (not so much a matter of public record, but just easy to tell) then we'd realize how totally NORMAL this is and the biggotry might be greatly dimished.

I think this kind of idea was planted in my head when I read the book by Halperin called The Truth Machine in which he makes some predictions on what would happen if we had a perfect lie detector. People couldn't lie, and would have no reason to lie or protect someone else's ability to lie.

I apologize if I've made too big a jump from privacy and the "Ability to Lie." Sometimes I think that's what people consider privacy though.

Again, thanks for so many great rebuttles!

M@

Re:Privacy

[EvilBudMan]

--Perhaps I'm the kind of person who doesn't really have something like that to hide... it seems the only people concerned about privacy are trying to hide something.--

Do you think mistakes cannot be made with your database info? Or that it can be missused? Cops getting caught harrassing former girlfriends or trying to pick up new ones with DMV info comes to mind.

Re:Privacy

[gwbuhl]

Any one manage to cheeck out William Gibson's op/ed in the New York Times? An excellent read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/25/opinion/25GIBS .h tml

Something Gibson suggests in his piece is an idea of informational tranparency. The idea that eventually, people will be access any information they seek. I've always though that eventually we'll have privicy through omniscience, not obscurity. When all information is easily available, few people will actually care about your information.

Re:Privacy

[Tony-A]

Perhaps I'm the kind of person who doesn't really have something like that to hide... it seems the only people concerned about privacy are trying to hide something.

Would it bother you if everybody was always watching everything you do, all the time with no sign of relenting in sight? Does a stranger reading a newspaper over your shoulder bother you?

The problem with privacy is that if you wait until you need it, it's too late. To have privacy when you want or need it, you have to take steps to ensure it beforehand. Otherwise, just wanting a bit of privacy incites the "Enquiring minds want to know".

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a good juicy flame to let loose with, but I think I'll shelve it and just share my anecdote, and why I feel there are good reasons to have "something to hide":

One of my parents died of a rare disease that is hereditary. I won't get into the gory details but, long story short, it is always fatal. The gene for it is dominant, so a person only needs to receive it from one parent for it to manifest itself. So I have a 50/50 chance of developing it later in life. Until recently, there was no way to know if a person is positive for it unless/until they start showing symptoms. But now DNA testing can give a positive/negative result with a simple blood draw.

I'm kinda chicken to take that test. I'm concerned that if I come up positive, and that fact gets leaked into the health insurance system, I could have a pretty difficult time ever getting affordable health insurance again. Affordable meaning "within one's means to pay".

You could argue that I'm not being open and honest, but personally I feel I have a valid reason to keep a secret. It's not my fault who my parents were. I don't trust my insurance company. It was assigned to me by my employer. It's not like I can go choose another one. I'd bet that, on a whim, my family history could be used against me if it were public. But unfortunately I have to rely on insurance for my health. And if you haven't got your health, then you haven't got anything.

Anonymous Coward

a helpful review

[colmore]

i'm so unfamiliar with this i assumed the first two letters stood for "Read the F**king"

scary stuff

AAAAIIIEEEEE!

[funwithBSD]

The Mark of The Beast! 666! THE FALSE PROPHET!
THE END IS NEAR!!!
REPENT!!!!

Whew! I feel better now. I hav'nt had this big of an anxiety attack since I recovered from being an SDA.

Paranoia, how the hell could MSSQL track 270 Million people (USA only) and all their millon peices of tagged shit and keep it straight? (and you know that they will use MS products)
One good security hole and anyone who wants to won't exist or own anything.
Good thing no one uses RDBMS on OpenVMS anymore, it might work.

Re:AAAAIIIEEEEE!

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably don't realize it, but the second half or your post was far more frighteningly paranoic than the top half.

I've got a tin hat I can sell you, you need it more than I.

There ARE advantages

[toconn]

First, paranoia about RFID seems silly. First, most of this technology will be PASSIVE(cheap), as in, it has no battery. This means that someone wanting to read your tag will have to generate enough energy to charge up the tag as well as read it. Which means that nearly all these passive technologies have very low read ranges, and for the 13.56Mhz variety that is typically used because of anti-collision and other benefits.. we're talking 12 inches max, given the current FCC limits. So I balk at any widespread "sniffing" of everything you've got on you.. Also, I'm not a privacy paranoia person anyway, so I don't get the big deal. I do know that RFID technology, and specifically walmart driving behind it is exactly what will bring in the waves of "Smart Appliances". Specifically things like: - Refridgerator knowing it's contents. This could be used for determining how long something has been in there, what you currently could make with the food you have. - Trash can that conversely keeps track of what you throw out, potentially building a shopping list of regular items - Washer and Drier knowing what's in them, and bitching at you when you put a brand new red sweater in with you whites. That's just a few things, and I'm sure the people around here are creative enough to do even more interesting things with them! I say bring the RFID on!!

Great quote

[macshune]

"So what changed in 1984? Who, or what, caused the change?

Wal-Mart."

adolescent use for RFID

[cellocgw]

Surprised nobody's suggested this yet:
Use a portable RFID scanner to determine with complete accuracy the style and measurements of certain undergarments worn by people in your vicinity. (Assuming all undergarments have been chipped by the manufacturer)

MS + RFID = New Slogan?

[Carbonite]

Microsoft: We know where you've gone today.

Re:MS + RFID = New Slogan?

[Anonymous Coward]

'tard

If AOL RFIDs their CDs,

[pecosdave]

will we have to begin microwaving them for reasons of security? We've been microwaving them for fun for years, but doing it for security reasons takes some of the fun out of it.

The other side

[costas]

I am on the other side of this argument: RFIDs are actually good for the consumer, and there is little financial incentive for retailers to do anyting too big brotherly with RFID data; here's my older /. post on the matter.

However, I've had yet another thought recently, one that I haven't heard in any RFID discussion; I am currently in Hong Kong, home of the wondrous Octopus Card an RFID-based smart debit card. Octopus is used for every transit system in the HK metro area, and is increasingly used by retailers to pay for small transactions. Now, actual use of the Octopus rocks: you don't have to take it out of your wallet/bag/briefcase, just swap the whole thing over the reader; you can get an Octopus chip implanted in things other than a card, e.g. the back cover of a Nokia phone, etc.

But one other feature is very cool: an Octopus is anonymous. Anonymous as in cash: you can buy an Octopus and charge it with cash and it does not get traced back to you. There's the potential of RFIDs to actually enhance your privacy by reducing the overhead of certain transactions, and that's pretty big in my book.

I guess it's kind of the same thing as GSM SIM cards: yes they can be used to trace you --both phone-record-wise and location-wise via E911 services-- but you can also go to a shop and pay cash for a cell and a pre-paid SIM and you're online anonymously. There are two sides to every coin...

Re:The other side

[rthille]

Octopus is only anonymous until you swipe the card in front of a camera with face recognition software. From that point, they've tied the RFID to the person, and they know it was you buying detergent and gasoline in large quanities, or maybe just porn...

Re:Yugo

[Anonymous Coward]

unwanted places, like the back of a Yugo

The quote is: "uncomfortable places, like the back of a Volkswagon"

Re:Goatse

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like you used RFID to brew some delicious frosty piss.

disabling RFIDs with mini-EMP?

[anonieuweling]

Could I use some sort of EMP to disable RFIDs? I mean: take my new jeans home, put them through a box of some sorts and voila: they're dead.

Re:disabling RFIDs with mini-EMP?

[pecosdave]

could work on stuff like jeans, tires and shoes, but are you going to EMP your new MP3 player? How about your new watch? Your PDA? Think of any other electronic device you might want to carry with you on the bus. Of course a notebook with Wi-Fi can track you by mac address (theoreticaly), and mobile phones already have GPS locators built in that the government can track you with. My Panasonic Duramax was on of the last phones made without it, and people (the phone company) are begining to call it dated.

Re:disabling RFIDs with mini-EMP?

[anonieuweling]

EMP was just an idea. Maybe there are other possibilities? I really dislike the idea of RFIDs crowding my posessions...

Re:disabling RFIDs with mini-EMP?

[pecosdave]

My thought is to get your own RFID reader/scanner and use it to pinpoint the location of the tag. Of course if it was dumped into the melted plastic while something was being molded or baked into the glass that would be somewhat difficult to remove. The tires for instance, if the RFID tags are actually between plys in the sidewall removal doesn't seem like such a good idea. EMP/microwave may be. My experience with manufactures is they're going to go out of their way to make it difficult to do things like this.

Re:disabling RFIDs with mini-EMP?

[Anonymous Coward]

mobile phones already have GPS locators built in that the government can track you with

Actually it's the phone company, so that when you call 911, your lat/lon are transmitted to the dispatch center. Providing random access to this information by the government would require a level of cooperation unheard of between phone companies and city hall. Trust me; I've tried.

Re:disabling RFIDs with mini-EMP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Though I don't have a degree in physics, an EMP should only work on devices that are running current through their circuits. So, if an RFID tag has it's own power supply or doesn't have one (somehow, i'm still not too clear on that part), all you have to do is poll the RFID and then do the EMP pulse while the RFID is responding. This assumed that the device that the RFID is implanted in is completely void of power (ie, batteries out, all capacitors are discharged, etc). Didn't you learn anyhing while watching The Matrix :-)

Re:disabling RFIDs with mini-EMP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the EMP would induce a very hefty current in the device, hopefully enough to burn out whatever semiconductors are in it.

So, yeah, a 1 kW microwave oven might do the trick very nicely.

BUT, what pisses me off is that the devices might not be at the 13.56MHz ISM frequency, but up in the 433MHz range. Which just happens to be allocated, in the USA, primarily to the Government Radiolocation Service and to the Amateur Radio Service on a secondary basis. These little RFID gizmos are going to make a racket, and the thought of my local Wal-Mart putting in a bunch of 4W transmitters on my favorite band is rather nauseating.

But, the rules do say that I'm supposed to use minimum power to effect communication. So, if I'm about to be blanketed by S-9 white noise so that Wal-Mart doesn't have its CDs ripped off, then I guess I'm going to have to crank up the 1500W linear, and make sure that the SWR on my array of 33-element Yagis is nice and low.... I wonder what the noise figure of the RFID transceivers is... Ya suppose it's got clamping diodes on the input to keep it alive after being hit with a 30kW ERP signal?

Bet you didn't know that the moon rose and set over Wal-Mart every day, did you?

So then what IS the point?

[mekkab]

Okay, pretend I just robbed a bank (or people robbed a bank who were associated with the RFIDs on the car I was driving), THEN went driving in the country side, THEN broke down.
(your faith in cellphones is disturbing! Or maybe you get better service than I do. ;)

So Johnny law is hot to get their hands on me, but RFIDs don't do them any good.

What they CAN do is build up over a long perioud of time a limited account of where I go- if my car passes through a Toll Booth, that is. However if I travel the backroads, the would have to trace my credit card purchases. But what if I use cash? They have RFIDs in the bills. But HOW fine grain can they trace that cash? Some random guy cashes his friday paycheck, then gives a waitress a $5 tip (Cheap bastid!), which she then uses to get into a punk rock show, which is then used to pay back a local heavy for a loan, which is then given to the Church collection plate, which is then used to pay me back for the supplies I got for the church picnic (assuming they'd even want to be associated with me)... So I've got this bill that can't really be traced to me, per se.

From the RFID "trace" that's left, there was some money cashed on a friday, spent next week three states away, and the guy who cashed it never left.

SO my conjecture is that Credit Cards and ATM withdrawls are a far more effective means of tracking someone's habits. I understand my example doesn't mean using RFIDs won't be effective, but I think the privacy concerns are a little out of proportion. I welcome any better examples.

Re:So then what IS the point?

[jonadab]

> pretend I just robbed a bank

If you robbed a bank, it's a _good_ thing if the police catch you.
Let's use a different example and say you're fleeing religious
persecution after the state declared your denomination illegal.

> THEN went driving in the country side, THEN broke down.

You wouldn't be able to get the car serviced probably, but you
could just walk away from the car.

Re:So then what IS the point?

[riptalon]

Once the government picks this up and runs with it there may well be RFID readers buried in the road at every intersection (just to identify people who run red lights obviously). Also your chain of people the $5 note passes through is very atypical. I would guess the most likely "lifecycle" for a note is to get withdrawn from an ATM and spent in a shop, restaurant etc. and then paid back into a bank by the shop. The higher the denomination of note the more likely it will be that it will not be given out as change to anyone else. But all this assumes that the RFID's in the note only get read every time they go in and out of a bank. In reality the first thing that will happen after RFID's are put in notes is that readers will be put in cash registers (to stop light fingered employees). So eventually I would expect all shops to read the ID's of all money they take in and give out in change.

Re:So then what IS the point?

[mekkab]

If you robbed a bank, it's a _good_ thing if the police catch you.


Yes, it is, and I'm maintaining that EVEN if they wanted to, RFIDs aren't enough to catch a criminal in that way- what they would be good for is long term surveillance. However I then bring up some (anectdotal) examples of how they are still lacking.

RFID Salesman?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been working on several RFID projects for 3 years now. We haven't yet been able to convince management to take one on. We can even get them to let of off the AIAG Code 3 of 9 standard to a better paper barcode symbology.

As for the RFID ROI being super-quick/obvious? um... I'm sorry I haven't learned the new math.

Here's the old math:
Existing Barcode printer (new):$5,000
Media per label (ribbon/paper): $.8
Scanners (as used by all customers): $1,200

RFID Tag: $.18-.12
Long range RFID Tag: $.15-.37
RFID Encoder: $11,000
RFID Scanner: $4,000
Number of customer scanners to replace: ~450
Number of in-house scanners to add/replace: ~30
Number of months dual system required: 6

Of course, the sales guys promise the moon and a couple of stars. We can even see real opportunity to reduce labor and misslabelling issues, but the cost.. ouch!

Mod Parent Up.

[AzrealAO]

This is the kind of information people need to read, to counter all the paranoid babbling, by people who are only reading negative articles about this stuff and don't really know how it works.

Quit modding this idiot up.

[AzrealAO]

The exact same post get's made to every RFID story, and it's completely paranoid rambling that is far more expensive and complex to actually get to work than simply kidnapping these people when they show up at their supposed place of employment.

Re:Yugo

[griffjon]

ah, apologies. I try to focus on clerks/chasing amy/dogma, and not the others, generally speaking.

I emailed the author of that article

[Gudlyf]

Maybe someone here can answer what I sent, since I'm not sure he'll reply:

Hi Scott. I just read your recent article on RFID tags, and I was wondering if you could help me out. While I understand that the potential of privacy loss with the use of RFID tags is certainly there, and while at first my knee-jerk reaction says, "Whoa! Hold on there!", I then take a step back and have to say, "so what?"

Here's my predicament. I once saw an article regarding RFID tags that was much like yours (regarding privacy loss, etc.), and forwarded it on to a friend, probably with a subject of "yikes!". My friend responded with a resounding, "So what? Why should I be afraid of them tracking that?" Honestly, I had no response, because I hadn't really thought it out before. In thinking more about it, really, why should I be concerned?

I'm a law abiding citizen, I pay my taxes and so-forth, so what kinds of things would a similar person be worried about? I don't care if I'm tracked where I go, as my destinations aren't questionable. I don't care who knows what I buy -- hey, if you want to know what kind of hemeroid cream I'm using, just ask, but why the heck would you *want* to know? So you can send me ads? Be my guest -- I filter spam and toss junk mail before I open it, but it's not so much that I start to panic when I read about RFID tags.

I guess I'd need an example that I could share with people so they could relate, since right now I'm sounding more like a conspiracy theorist. Are there any honest, little-paranoia-attached examples I could point out that might give someone like me pause?

Thanks for listening.

Re:I emailed the author of that article

[Anonymous Coward]

mmmm flamebait

Re:I emailed the author of that article

[Anonymous Coward]

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. US Constitution

It's your choice to willingly give your information but it's my right to keep my information private.

Read the Constitution.

Re:I emailed the author of that article

[Gudlyf]

I was wrong, he did reply:

Once the government gets hold of info about you, it never leaves. Ever. You could probably say the same thing about corporations as well. For me, I don't like the idea of the government or any corporation knowing much about me. Some knowledge is unavoidable. But I like my zone of privacy.

If you really don't mind being tracked every step, then why not allow me to film you every minute of the day for a month (bathroom barred, of course)? Or voluntarily wear a GPS device broadcasting your every location every minute? That doesn't creep you out?

What if you were an innocent Arab living in the US? Prior to 9/11, no biggie. But afterwards, we have our gov't tracking Arabs everywhere. What if the law was passed to require them to wear RFID tags in their clothes? Or cars?

What if the men convicted in TX for gay sex were ordered to wear RFID tags because they were sex offenders? The Supreme Court overturned that last week, but what if they hadn't? What about prior to the overturning?

What if you're having an affair? Would you want RFID tags subpoenaed in a divorce case?

What if you run a red light? Or speed? What if your car was busy detecting all that? What if you could no longer jaywalk because the RFID tag in your shoe would turn you in?

What if every time you walked past a storefront, the ad announced, "Hi Keith! Buy the new Britney Spears CD! You liked the others!" Or, "Hi Keith! Ass still hurting? Buy more hemorrhoid cream!" Or, "Hi Keith! Run out of condoms? Buy more!" See Minority Report? Not so far off.

My point is, you may think you're OK now. But things change. The gov't changes. Corporations change. Are you willing to assume that things will never change, and that you'll ALWAYS be considered by EVERYONE as a "law-abiding citizen"?

On top of that, think beyond yourself to all the other cases I hypothesized above. Even if I'm not tracked personally, I don't want the gov't or corp's tracking others.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter. I hope you found them useful.

And thanks for reading!

Scott

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[eric777]

I'll take your word for all of this - it sounds plausible.

But each of your points apply to today's technology.

Moore's law tells us range will increase, size and cost will decrease, storage will increase, etc. etc.

So the sky isn't falling today - but tomorrow - that's another story.

Anyone know of an anti-RFID page?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone should put up a page of RFID disaster scenarios.

How about this:
Wal-Mart is the nations largest gun dealer, so you know damn well THOSE are going to be tagged. So (FOR FUN) take the RFID out of one of their guns and drop it in someone's pocket or purse, then watch the hilarity ensue.

RFIDs scare the hell (as in "it's the apocolypse, and I'm moving to the freaking mountains") out of me. I hope RFIDs fail catastrophically because I do not want to be tracked like cattle -- I have more value as a human being than that. I also do not want to be burdened with having to find and disable all these things myself. How much are they going to drop the price of a bottle of shampoo anyway - 50 cents? a dime? Half the price? Sorry, my freedom is worth more than that - I'd rather pay extra for non-tagged shampoo.

I also like the fact that I have to interact with a checkout person to buy things - for the sake of Jesus Christ, we are isolated from each other enough already. I don't even use the self-serve lines at the grocery -- they are more trouble than they are worth, even for a small number of items.

What bothers me the most if the almost dronwlike approach they have taken towards implementing this. There's no negotiation, no 'we're looking into it' or 'we hope consumers will find it to be a useful option', but "we're doing it, get over it." It's like they've been brainwashed into serving some evil genius! I don't understand how they can look at this and **NOT** say "You know, the potential for evil is just not worth it."

Missed the biggest application

[dnoyeb]

RFID chips are used as passive anti-theft devices in automobiles. The RFID tag is embedded in the key. The antenna is in the ignition switch.

Restoring Anonymity

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing my microwave can't handle!

Why worry about RFID clothing?

[ChrisKnight]

Just microwave your clothed for 15 seconds before the first time you wear them. :)

-Chris

Always look on the positive side...

[DailyGrind]

Think of it this way... you will be able to go to a bar with your trusty wrist watch RFID scanner, go up to a pretty girl and be able to tell that yes indeed she is wearing a thong, one of those frilly kinds, no bra, her purse contain three condoms, ribbed, and a lubricant plus she has a Palm with bluetooth.... I could go on but it is hard to type with one hand....

Re:Always look on the positive side...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean: you will go to a bar and take home the girl with a frilly thong only to discover that it was actually the fat, greasy guy sitting to the left of you that was wearing frilly thong.

This is Wonderful news!

[whoppers]

I can now RFID my keys, wallet sunglasses, ballpoint pens and every other damned thing I lose from now on out and I should always be able to recover them. What happens if you or your dog eats an RFID tag? Are they microwaveable? Microwaves kill about everything else, oughta kill RFID.

Jamming?

[Pendersempai]

I'm no expert on RFID tags, but it seems that the signal they emit must be fairly faint if it is only a modified echo of the transmitted query. For passive tags, this means their emission can be no stronger (and in reality must be far weaker) than the strength of the query signal when it reached the tag. Transmitted through three dimensions, my college physics course tells me that these signals drop off proportionally to the inverse square of their distance -- and for RFID, whose query signal must be bounced back without additional power, the distance would have to be double that from interrogator to tag. And then we'd have to factor in the unavoidable inefficiency in the tag itself.

So the signal is going to be faint. Why can't we carry around a jammer? It wouldn't have to be very complicated to function quite elegantly -- it could passively monitor RFID query broadcasts and automatically reply with misleading noise. Since it can measure the signal strength of the query, it could use its own power source to magnify its response by, say, 20%. It seems that should be enough to drown the response from any tag in one's clothing, driver's license, or other effects. A switch could allow the user to disable it when he wants RFID signals to get through -- to have the cashier ring up his purchase, for example.

I can't imagine that the power requirement for extended usage would be that steep -- active (powered) RFID tags theoretically function for 10 years or longer. The circuitry, too, seems like it would be fairly trivial. I'd guess that they wouldn't be significantly more costly to produce than regular AA battery cases. Maybe they could even function for years on the juice of a button battery, and fit the form factor of a credit card.

So why doesn't CASPIAN or anyone else against RFID privacy violations mass-produce these things and sell them online for a couple bucks? I'd grab one just for the coolness factor, and I'm sure lots of privacy advocates would use them too. It'd certainly protect the privacy of anyone using one, and by making the collected data less reliable, even those without would indirectly benefit.

It wouldn't interfere with non-retail uses of RFID tags, since there is a specific spectrum range reserved for retail use -- something like 1.25-8.64mHz. And by introducing a degree of randomness into marketers' data, general trends (governed by the Central Limit Theorem) could still be deduced, whereas individual data points would be significantly less reliable. Hence, the data would be quite useful for tailoring goods to what most people want (a good thing) without allowing individual-level violation of privacy.

RFID tags are dumb?

[lynx_user_abroad]

Security professionals need to realize that RFID tags are dumb devices. They listen, and they respond. Currently, they don't care who sends the signal. Anything your companies' transceiver can detect, the bad guy's transceiver can detect. So don't be lulled into a false sense of security.

At one time, web pages were also "dumb", but then the technology improved, and now we have web pages which use cookies to track our movements, used embedded applets to create annoying advertisments in a manner designed to guarantee visibility, and so on.

But every computer will always act in the interests of it programmer, within the limits of the hardware and the skill of the programmer.

Today's RFID tags may just wait for a query and respond with (what is essentially a UPC) number. It's not hard to imagine what follows in the near future; Individual serial number?, expiration date?, number of times queried?, ever queried by a non-Walmart-approved scanner?, ever witness a response by a similarly-branded product's RFID tag?, how many?, what product?, competing brand? Tomorrow's devices will leverage their capabilities to ensure the most profitibility for their creators. We already have printers which won't accept generic ink cartridges and cell phones which demand brand-specific batteries, Imagine razors which won't take generic blades. Will Pepsi vending machines refuse to sell Coke products, or just keep them 5 degrees warmer?

Or perhaps more realistically, will we see a day when Warranty and Return-For-Refund will be dependent on the RFID tag remaining in-service? So, when you buy those RFID-equipped tires, you can either choose your warranty (and let the tire company track your driving habits) or disable the RFID tags for privacy reasons but be unable to enforce your 50,000 miles tread life guarantee. (And what happens if the manufacturer-defect-caused blowout takes the RFID tag with it?)

RFID

[minus_273]

Read the Fucking ID??

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[Keick]

The current limit is around 200 tags per second for the best sensor.

So imagine the situation across a busy highway.

Damn dude, where do you live. I would never leave the house if there were 200 tags a second flying down 460.

Yugo

[Anonymous Coward]

Volkswagon, actually.

Re:Yugo

[Anonymous Coward]

Volkswagen, actually

Wal-mart and Gilette are Already Trying It Out

[Anonymous Coward]

According to this, Gilette and Wal-Mart have been trying out RFID chips. Like it or not, these things are starting to take off.

Just Size

[DustMagnet]

There's a lot of BS about this size of these things. That last line of the article says, "The law of unintended consequences is about to encounter surveillance devices smaller than the period at the end of this sentence."

They tags may someday be that small (doubt it), but they will always need an antenna. Currently 1/2" is about the smallest realistic antenna. If you want to use radio waves, you're limited by physics (ok, you're always limited by physics).

Re:Just Size

[mrex]

They tags may someday be that small (doubt it), but they will always need an antenna. Currently 1/2" is about the smallest realistic antenna.

Nothing says the antenna has to be straight, though.

Think before you post, people. If radio transmitting devices smaller than half an inch were impossible, why would the military be investing very heavily in stuff like this?!?

Re:Just Size

[DustMagnet]

Antennas can be a lot of shapes, but that doesn't make them smaller.

I'm not going to argue with you. It's clear you don't know anything about antennas and would rather insult me than learn anything.

Re:Just Size

[mrex]

Antennas can be a lot of shapes, but that doesn't make them smaller.

So, a coiled antenna isn't smaller than a straight one? Odd.

I'm not going to argue with you. It's clear you don't know anything about antennas and would rather insult me than learn anything.

I needn't know the first thing about antennas to know that if the Army is pursuing 1/32" size RF-talking motes, that it is withing the realm of physical possibility for something 1/32" to transmit and receive RF. Read the link I posted.

I don't mean to insult you, I mean to insult your argument, as it is wrong, and wrong arguments deserve ridicule.

Re:Just Size

[DustMagnet]

You don't know the first thing about antennas and you tell me to "think before posting". "Think before posting" has nothing to do with my arguments. I wasn't even arguing something, just stating a fact. You seem to believe you can "think" up facts. You can't. Your super mini coil antenna doesn't exist.

There's nothing in your article about antenna size. Go back a reread some of the older RFID articles. Look at what they say about antennas. Make sure you read closely, because the marketing and PR people always talk about size without antennas, then the reporters change the wording slightly confusing the issue.

Bye.

Re:Just Size

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I've calmed down a little. Here's a better google link. It's about effective area. Basically an antenna can only receive power the hits it. If the antenna is too small, it will not receive enough power to run the chip or be able to send enough power to cut through the background noise. An antenna the size of a "period" would have such a short range it would be worthless.

Re:Just Size

[mrex]

You don't know the first thing about antennas and you tell me to "think before posting". "Think before posting" has nothing to do with my arguments. I wasn't even arguing something, just stating a fact.

No, you were stating incorrect factual information. Though not a matter of opinion, it was also not true.

You seem to believe you can "think" up facts. You can't. Your super mini coil antenna doesn't exist.

Since you seem unable to comprehend the written word, perhaps a picture will be better:

Figure 1:

--------------------

Figure 2:

| |~| |~| |~|
|_| |_| |_| |

Notice that, though both contain the same number of characters, one is signifigantly shorter than the other? Are you actually saying that figure 2 does not exist as an antenna?

You may refer to the May 2003 issue of Wired for a more in depth article on the development of motes, but they will not have half-inch long antennae dangling from them -- that would be stupid.

Can be easily controlled

[charmer]

While the possibility of privacy-invasion is very real with the use of RFID, the governments could mandate that the RFID tags could be used only in labels external to the goods, and labels that can be easily removed. So, the price tag on clothes could contain RFID tag, but it cannot be sewed into the hem, for example. Thus, they will be useful for Walmart for inventory control, and consumers could remove them as soon as they get buy those items.

--Charmer

Why, thank you michael.

[diligent Slashdot re]

First off, I want to thank *you* Michael, for taking the time to recognize me personally. I feel somehow less alone in the world. Now, to all my slacker friends who have a life and don't spend every waking hour at slashdot, as I do, you have a lot of catching up to do. Get reading!!

This could be good (TM)

[dominic.laporte]

Imagine cataloging your clothes and saying in front of the pc "honey what should i be wearing today ?"

This is great

[Anonymous Coward]

They should require all guns which are purchased to contain one of these thingies. Then we won't need metal detectors any more!

RFID tags to find my TV remote

[bear_phillips]

Don't RFID tags have a range of just a few feet. It would be cool to put tags on my remote, keys, cell phone etc, then just walk around the house with a scanner each time I lose something. Anyone know how much a home scanner and tags would cost?

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[Anonymous Coward]

2)Storage area on the device is tiny. For the small passive devices you are referring to the storage area is less than 1Kilobyte. Not much space for your medical records here.

Stupid stupid stupid. IF it has enough storage for a 128bit id, then it can cross-reverence to another dB to find you and your records

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[Anonymous Coward]

And I suppose you think none of these issues will be resolved in the future?

Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone here have any experience developing with RFIDs? I'd love to get my hands on a development kit, any recommendations out there?

Re:Privacy -- money example

[Vengeful weenie]

I agree. In the story, the example of placing the RFID inside of money is seen as a "threat to privacy." While I'm not sure I would want someone to be able to tell how much money I have in my pocket at any time, the "anonymity" of money is already a subjective thing. All US currency have serial numbers on them, and it would be rather trivial for a bank machine to record what range it had been loaded with, and which bills had been given out. "What do you have in your wallet -- Arr?"

TOP SECRET :Most modern cars have RFIDs!!

[Anonymous Coward]

TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars have tracking transponders!

Spy transmission chips embedded in tires that can be read REMOTELY while driving.

A secret initiative exists to track all funnel-points on interstates and US borders for car tire ID transponders (RFid chips embedded in the tire). But they can be scanned at very high speeds on highways too.

Yup. My brother works on them.

Your tires have a passive coil with 64 to 128 bit serial number emitter in them! (AIAG B-11 ADC v3.0) . A particular frequency energizes it enough so that a receiver can read its little ROM. A ROM which in essence is your GUID for your TIRE. Multiple tires do not confuse the readers. Its almost identical to all "FastPass" "SpeedPass" technologies you see on gasoline keychain dongles and commuter windshield sticker-chips. The US gov has secretly started using these chips to track people.

Its kind of like FBI sponsored and us fed law mandated chemical signature "Taggants" in fertilizer, Gasoline, Bullets, and Blackpowder. But these car tire transponder Ids are meant to actively track and trace movement of your car, rather than forensically tie the car to a source.

I am not making this up. RFIDs have been around a while and will be us gov mandatory soon for 9-11 agendas. Melt down a high end Firestone, or Bridgestone tire and go through the bits near the rim (sometimes at base of tread) and you will locate the transmitter (similar to 'grain of rice' pet ids and Mobile SpeedPass, but not as high tech as the tollbooth based units). Sokymat LOGI 160, and Sokymat LOGI 120 transponder buttons are just SOME of the transponders found in modern high end car tires. The AIAG B-11 Tire tracking standard is now implemented for all 3rd party transponder manufactures [covered below].

It is for QA and to prevent fraud and "car theft", but the US Customs service uses it in Canada to detect people who swap license plates on cars when doing a transport of contraband on a mule vehicle that normally has not logged enough hours across the border. The customs service and FBI do not yet talk about this, and are starting using it soon.

Photos of tiny "chips" before molded into tires:

http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:TAQIKjBI01g C: www.sokymat.com/sp/applications/tireid.html

(slashdot ruins links, so you will have to remove the ASCII space it insertess usually into the url above to get to the shocking info and photos on the enbedded LOGI 160 chips that the us gov scans when you cross mexican and canadian borders.)

You never heard of it either because nobody moderates on slashdot anymore and this is probably +0 still. It has also never appeared in print before and is very secret.

Californias Fastpass is being upgraded to scan ALL responding car tires in future years upcoming. I-75 may get them next in rural funnel points in Ohio.

http://www.tadiran-telematics.com/products6.html

but the fact is... YOU PROBABLY ALREADY HAVE A RADIO TRANSPONDER not counting your digital cell phone which is routinely silently pulsed in CA bay area each rush hour morning unless turned off (consult Wired Magazine Expose article). Those data point pulses are used by NSA on occasions.

The us FBI with NRO/NSA blessings, has requested us gov make this tire scanning information as secret as the information regarding all us inkjet printers sold in usa in the last 3 years using "yellow" GUID barcode under dark ink regions to serialize printouts to thwart counterfeiting of 20 dollar bills. (30 to 40 percent of ALL California counterfeiting is done using cheap Epson inkjet printers, most purchased with credit cards foolishly). Luckily court dockets divulge the existence of the Epson serial numbers on your printouts... but nobody except a handful of people know about this Tire scanning upgrade to big brother's arsenal.

YOU MUST BUY NEUTRALIZED OR FOREIGN TIRES!!!!! Soon such tires will become illegal to import or manufacture, just as Gasol

EEEEwwwwwww!

[Vengeful weenie]

(that's it :) )

Look ma' -- no mod!

Re:Security paranoid? IDIOT they are REMOTE probed

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot they are REMOTE probed!

many many feet away, using overhead antennaes mounted on highway overpasses as seem in links in this document below and the car tire GUID tied to YOUR CAR is readable at HIGH RATES OF SPEED. For even more accuracy, though not required, the fed gov fbi car tire rfid trackers on a few key highway funnel points are put on overpasses where car traffic slows the most at ruch hour, but close enough to true "city loop bypasses" to get interstate travellers.

you are a fool. They can be read over 50 feet away and at a very very high rate of speed.

TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars have tracking transponders!

Spy transmission chips embedded in tires that can be read REMOTELY while driving.

A secret initiative exists to track all funnel-points on interstates and US borders for car tire ID transponders (RFid chips embedded in the tire). But they can be scanned at very high speeds on highways too.

Yup. My brother works on them.

Your tires have a passive coil with 64 to 128 bit serial number emitter in them! (AIAG B-11 ADC v3.0) . A particular frequency energizes it enough so that a receiver can read its little ROM. A ROM which in essence is your GUID for your TIRE. Multiple tires do not confuse the readers. Its almost identical to all "FastPass" "SpeedPass" technologies you see on gasoline keychain dongles and commuter windshield sticker-chips. The US gov has secretly started using these chips to track people.

Its kind of like FBI sponsored and us fed law mandated chemical signature "Taggants" in fertilizer, Gasoline, Bullets, and Blackpowder. But these car tire transponder Ids are meant to actively track and trace movement of your car, rather than forensically tie the car to a source.

I am not making this up. RFIDs have been around a while and will be us gov mandatory soon for 9-11 agendas. Melt down a high end Firestone, or Bridgestone tire and go through the bits near the rim (sometimes at base of tread) and you will locate the transmitter (similar to 'grain of rice' pet ids and Mobile SpeedPass, but not as high tech as the tollbooth based units). Sokymat LOGI 160, and Sokymat LOGI 120 transponder buttons are just SOME of the transponders found in modern high end car tires. The AIAG B-11 Tire tracking standard is now implemented for all 3rd party transponder manufactures [covered below].

It is for QA and to prevent fraud and "car theft", but the US Customs service uses it in Canada to detect people who swap license plates on cars when doing a transport of contraband on a mule vehicle that normally has not logged enough hours across the border. The customs service and FBI do not yet talk about this, and are starting using it soon.

Photos of tiny "chips" before molded into tires:

http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:TAQIKjBI01g C: www.sokymat.com/sp/applications/tireid.html

(slashdot ruins links, so you will have to remove the ASCII space it insertess usually into the url above to get to the shocking info and photos on the enbedded LOGI 160 chips that the us gov scans when you cross mexican and canadian borders.)

You never heard of it either because nobody moderates on slashdot anymore and this is probably +0 still. It has also never appeared in print before and is very secret.

Californias Fastpass is being upgraded to scan ALL responding car tires in future years upcoming. I-75 may get them next in rural funnel points in Ohio.

http://www.tadiran-telematics.com/products6.html

but the fact is... YOU PROBABLY ALREADY HAVE A RADIO TRANSPONDER not counting your digital cell phone which is routinely silently pulsed in CA bay area each rush hour morning unless turned off (consult Wired Magazine Expose article). Those data point pulses are used by NSA on occasions.

The us FBI with NRO/NSA blessings, has requested us gov make this tire scanning information as secret as the information regarding all us inkjet printers sold in usa in

Primary keys

[marnanel]

2)Storage area on the device is tiny. For the small passive devices you are referring to the storage area is less than 1Kilobyte. Not much space for your medical records here.

Can we say "primary key"? It's odd that the author of the above comment missed this point, since even the article mentions that Michelin's tyre IDs are not vehicle identification numbers, but will be potentially associated with them. Same goes for the IDs on your jeans-- they may not contain your medical records, but they can still be an index into a table that points to arbitrary other information.

We already give up "privacy" at stores

[chia_monkey]

C'mon people...how many of you have the "frequent buyers" cards for different stores? The supermarkets with their club cards. They're tracking our purchases...they even TELL us they are tracking them "so we can send you updates on sales of items you regularly purchase". Yeah we get good deals every now and then (buy one get one free) but they do it for tracking.

And that's just one level of tracking. It also makes it more efficient for the stores to track inventory. Hm...wouldn't it be nice to go to the store and not see the empty section of toilet paper that you need?

I guess the issue here is if we choose to be tracked or not. I honestly don't care if they know I buy Dial soap. Could this lead to something bigger? Probably. I'm still trying to figure out what though.

Is History repeating itself?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Several major manufacturers and retailers expect RFID tags to aid in managing the supply chain, from manufacturing to shipping to stocking store shelves, ...Especially Wal-Mart."

NOT!
RFID is not going to help aid in the "order on demand" model. When bar codes were first introduced they said bar codes would do exactly the same thing! The truth is, a majority of companies only use bar codes to manually track inventory (at checkout out or with a hand-held inventory scanner). These supply chain companies could implement B2B technology with bar codes today but they don't! Replacing bar codes with RFID tags will not fulfill the requirement for B2B software which communicates between distributors and suppliers.

Computer, where is Captain Picard...

[DuckWing]

Some of what is described (RFID inplanted into a badge for example) comes right from Star Trek. Their comm badges are essentially also RFID tags keyed to a particular individual. In some ways the technology is interesting and helpful. In other ways, as mentioned in the article, it's downright creepy.

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[mrex]

As a real security professional (i.e. one that does not go around screaming that the sky is falling) and as someone who has worked with RFID for the military and for civilian uses (mainly Post Offices) for over six years, I find your article makes a number of glaring omissions that would allow any sensible human being to make a rational judgement about this technology.

You are a black pot, and to top it all off the kettle is orange.

Omissions: 1) Range verses size. Very basic issue. The smaller it is, the closer you have to be to it to pick up the signal. For a small passive tag we are talking inches (3-4 feet max). In order to track something from 200 yards (maximum range currently in use), you need an active tag (i.e. with a battery) and it has to be the size of a beer mat. I think you would notice it in your jeans. The signal generator in this case is also a non-trivial device. It is the size on a lamp-post and weights in excuss of 30Kg. Hardly PDA attachment material.

If your experience is as you claim it, I can only conclude that you are intentionally lying. There is no inherent, physics based limitation of "a few feet" to how far these tags can be read: to read the tags from further away, all one needs is a better receiver. Your statement assumes that a newer, better receiver will never be invented or brought to market. Doesn't the NSA do quite a bit of work already on picking up radio signals at a distance?!?

2)Storage area on the device is tiny. For the small passive devices you are referring to the storage area is less than 1Kilobyte. Not much space for your medical records here.

A KILOBYTE? Tell me, chum, how long is an IP address? A MAC Address? An IPv6 address? A 1 Kilobyte serial number is pretty damn big.

3)The logic associated with the tyre scenario. The association of the vehicle number and the tyre would not be stored on the tag. There is no space, and Read/Write tags are much more expensive (and larger). Easy to overwrite also. So for your big brother is watching scenario, you would need to replace every lamp-post on every highway with a signal generator, have assess to the database that cross-references your vehicle ID with the tag ids, and be able to monitor all of the signal generators in real-time to see what was happening.

OK...so...what's the problem? You don't think Big Brother has mastered the fine art of the database? Or a simple message passing network? It's not even as expensive as all that, as you wouldn't really need one for each lamp post, just one for each 'path'. One at the freeway entrance, one at each exit and the same for residential blocks - one at each end. Maybe, on freeways, a few here and there at mile markers and such.

It really seems intentional that you're overlooking the obvious -- that's not a typical trait of a "security professional".

...and another great way to use RFID

[Anonymous Coward]

Combine it with Nanotechnology. Embed them in guns. Combine the chip with a nano-sized electromechanical device that takes energy from the recoil of the gun each time it's fired and generates enough electrical energy for the RFID chip to transmits a signal. That way anybody within range will know which gun was fired, when and where! The small size of the chip may limit the power that can be put through it. If so, this would limit the range. For smaller chips it could even be as small as a few feet. On the other hand, it could be as much as several hundred yards. An array of monitoring stations would be required to compute the location at the time of firing. But only onestation would be required to record the signal and the date and time.

To start putting them in bullets, I suspect that you might have some high temperature hurdles to overcome. But if you could, you might even be able to record which bullet was fired with which gun!

Thus ends the revolution.

I'm sure others could think of other things to do with this technology, too.

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[mrex]

I just noticed that this wasn't the original poster, just someone reposting the reply from SecurityFocus by Unisys Security Director Stefan Sokolowski.

I withdraw my previous confusion as to why the person was being intentionally deceptive. It is now obvious.

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[MikeVx]

3)The logic associated with the tyre scenario. The association of the vehicle number and the tyre would not be stored on the tag. There is no space, and Read/Write tags are much more expensive (and larger). Easy to overwrite also. So for your big brother is watching scenario, you would need to replace every lamp-post on every highway with a signal generator, have assess to the database that cross-references your vehicle ID with the tag ids, and be able to monitor all of the signal generators in real-time to see what was happening.

Bury RFID readers in the various road-surface sensors (traffic lights, congestion and speed loops, etc.) as you replace them. Maximum sensor saturation of 20 or so tags per second when a massively multi-tired truck rolls over the sensor. Not the finest resolution, but if you are hunting for someone using the RFID tag in a tire, you can track them fairly closely in most cities with enough traffic to rate smart lights. If the data volume is too high for central parsing, just have enough intelligence in the readers to say "Alert on IDs xxxxx,yyyy and zzzzz."

And they all thought i was crazy ...

[felesii]

It looks like microwaving every piece of clothing i own has finally paid off...

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[Bagheera]

If your experience is as you claim it, I can only conclude that you are intentionally lying. There is no inherent, physics based limitation of "a few feet" to how far these tags can be read: to read the tags from further away, all one needs is a better receiver. Your statement assumes that a newer, better receiver will never be invented or brought to market. Doesn't the NSA do quite a bit of work already on picking up radio signals at a distance?!?

Actually there are "Physics based limitations" to these devices. They're RF devices and as such have to deal with the limitations of radio wavelengths. The amount of data they hold isn't the issue - the amount of RF energy going back and forth is.

The antennas on every RFID tag I've ever seen has been some kind of omni, since thier orientation to the reader is random. (rotating if it was in a tyre - we won't go into the moving ground plane issues) The reader can get quite a bit of benefit from using directional antennas (FastPass, anyone?), but they sacrifice broad coverage for improved range in a specific direction.

That's physics. He may have over-simplified, but he wasn't wrong or lieing. There's not enough space here to go over the practical limitations, but there ARE practical limitations. Some of them are almost certainly surmountable (number of reads per second, for example) but the RF energy issues aren't going to be "beaten" by some fancy new chip.

As for the NSA - yes, they have some very fancy systems for reading tiny signals at range. (as do the FCC, the military, and quite a few skilled amatures) They are highly directional and if they're not pointed in the right direction, they get nothing. You could read the rfid chip 400 feet in front of you, and completely MISS it's cousin 12 degrees to the left.

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[mrex]

Actually there are "Physics based limitations" to these devices. They're RF devices and as such have to deal with the limitations of radio wavelengths. The amount of data they hold isn't the issue - the amount of RF energy going back and forth is.

There are physics based limitations, but not of a few inches. Sorry, that's bogus. Again, all you need to read one of these from further away is: a) a targetted transmitter; and b) a sensitive receiver.

[Snip haughty-lingo nonsense that you contradict directly below]

As for the NSA - yes, they have some very fancy systems for reading tiny signals at range. (as do the FCC, the military, and quite a few skilled amatures) They are highly directional and if they're not pointed in the right direction, they get nothing. You could read the rfid chip 400 feet in front of you, and completely MISS it's cousin 12 degrees to the left.

So after all the BS, you finally admit what I theorized to begin with -- it is possible to read these things at a great distance. Thank you. I rest my case.

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[MatthewB79]

I'm glad you posted that because I was wondering if you could just protect yourself by "tag spamming". Purchase a whole bunch of tags (like 500 or so) and have them sewn into something always with you, such as a wallet. And you would never have to worry about Nike or the Gap or WalMart tracking you because they'd have absolutely no idea what clothing or products you actually have.
I'd love to see the look on the guys face when he scans someone and it reports that he has on his person a set of Bridgestone tires, 13 brands of CD players, 2 refrigerators and about 1000lbs worth of miscellaneous food and clothing items.

Active v Passive...

[MosesJones]

Active tags have a long range, Passive tags have a short range. Its Legislation that limits readers to 4watts in the US and 0.5 in Europe, not to mention other elements that make UHF RF-ID not feasible in Europe (channel hoping can't be done).

The tags that Walmart will use will be passive as they cost alot less.

Re:Active v Passive...

[Vaughn Anderson]

What is to say they won't make a passive tag that can be read by a reader at 4 watts from 100 feet by next year... many things have been declared impossible until they were done...

Re:Active v Passive...

[Svartalf]

Pure and simple physics, my friend.

The antenna on these sorts of tags is electrically very small except at millimeter wave frequencies (which would jack the prices on those tags WAAAY up). At the licensed and most usable frequencies, the noise floor for the signal would preclude any range past 10 or so feet because the antenna on the tag couldn't emit enough power to be heard by the reader at any further range.

Dumping a kilowatt into a rubber duckie antenna on a CB will only burn up the antenna and give you no more range than if you dumped 5 into it- the kilowatt is only useful if you've got something like a quarter-wave antenna. The same goes for an RFID tag.

Re:Active v Passive...

[Vaughn Anderson]

ok, great. What's to say the cost of production on a more advanced RFID won't happen in one year?

No matter what evidence is shown at this point in time to prove how limited these things are, does _not_ prove anything for RFID tags on the market for next year. Physics or not, someone will find a new material for the antanae, make cheap batteries, make a more accurate reciever, dramatically cut the price of production, etc... and then all the arguments for June 27th, 2003 are completely irrelevant.

A good example is cell-phones, tell me that a cellphone small enough to fit into a pair of sunglasses will never happen. Then tell me that passive RFID tags will never be able to communicate farther than 10 feet...

It's funny, the scientists with the most knowledge tend to be the most skeptical about what is possible...

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[Bagheera]

*chuckles* It's possible to do lots of things, but whether it's practical is the point. Don't confuse the ability to gather a discrete signal at long range with the ability to track a LOT of discrete signals all moving around at long range.

Remember, I said he was over-simplifying the issue.

As I said, there isn't enough space to go into it, and I don't feel like writing a paper on Radio. If the NSA (or anyone with a really gnarly antenna resonant on the righ freq) wants to read the RFID's of every object in my house from a mile away, they could. If they wanted to do it to my moving car dodging through traffic amungst a crapload of over rfid tagged cars, good bloody luck.

High gain antennas are big. You can't get around that. THAT is the point I was trying to get across. Long range requires high gain. Practically, the commercial systems WANT to limit their range because they don't want to get swamped with more signals than they can read. The longer the range, the more devices that will respond. The more that respond, the more their individual signals drown each other out, and the more trouble you have isolating the signal you want. Etc.

While rfid could be (read: is being) used for tracking people and things, it's not as long ranged as some people would have us believe. If the (insert nefarious organization here) wants to "watch me from a mile away" by my RFID tags, they could achieve the same affect by having a cute agent wander around in my general area. I'm more likely to notice the agent, but she'll be a LOT less obvious than a rack of high gain antennas mounted on the side of a truck and she'll have a better chance of not losing me in the background noise.

Pronunciation

[tenshioboe]

the biggest problem I see with the mainstream adoption of RFID tags is thus: how will you pronounce it in casual conversation? ARE-fid? RUFFed?
"radio frequency ID tags" or "radio frequency IDs" is just too long. that's inconvenience, and people avoid talking about something if it's inconvenient.

They're thinking about it...

[Svartalf]

Up until about 3-4 years ago, the costs of an effective tag was pretty astronomical compared to what it was being used for.

The RFID tags used for tollway passes, developed mainly by TI and Amtech cost something like 30 dollars or so to make. They've been trying to make the tech cheaper and have succeeded to a small extent, but the tags were not much more than the sensormatic things that they've been using to keep shoplifting down. The cheap tags weren't smart. The cheap tags didn't have any sizable range.

About 4 years ago, this story changed. Several tags have popped up that are relatively intelligent and can be glued onto conductive ink antennas or integrated into labels and other things. I know about one of these tag types since I worked for Amtech/Intermec as one of their Team Leads and Technologists for their product lines.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS:

Length: 10 mm (.39")
Height: 30 mm (1.18")
Width: 0.5 mm (0.02")

HARDWARE:

Operating Frequency: 2450 MHz
Memory Standard: Total 1024 bits
Optional: 96 bits reserved for factory/system parameters; locked at the factory
User Capacity: 928 usable read/write lockable bits
Mounting Surface: Cardboard boxes
Insert Material: Polyimide
Data Rate:
Read 8 bytes of data from a tab in less than 12 ms.
Write a single bit of data to a tag in less than 25 ms.
Antenna Type: Meander
Read Range: 65 cm (25.99 in.) with single antenna (on cardboard box)
Write range: approximately 70% of the effective read range.

It can be put onto other "insert" types including being directly placed on a self-destructing label for things like vehicle registration purposes or something akin to a Mobile SpeedPass (one of the projects I was working on at the time, in fact...). With this tag, you can read any number of them in a space as long as you have time to wait for each of them to respond in turn. Also keep in mind that the conductive ink antenna variety of tags out are even more range limited than this. They were estimating a cost per tag of about $.50 or so per tag in the thousands quantity on labels like in the specs statement when I was still working for them.

It all boils down to bottom line- and even now, the costs of these little tags are giving them pause because they can't be sure that the benefits for logistics and shoplift prevention are going to outweigh the costs of tagging everything.

x10 Get your RFID Jammer for free

[bugsmalli]

PROTECT YOUR SECURITY. Guaranteed to *JAM* all RFID. Get the *NEW* and *IMPROVED* RFID Jammer from X10. It will even jam our OWN SECURITY CAMERA!!! Our NEW special offer, buy one and get one *JAMMER* for FREE

*To provide exceptional service to all our customers, we put an RFID tag to monitor the RFID jammer.

Was RFID or the like explored by science fiction ?

[ioao]

Because it sounds like an ocean of possibilities.

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[mrex]

My point is the same: The ability to track an RFID signal is being pitched as an impossibility, something that cannot happen, in the garbs of scientific fact. In reality, we have only the promises of others, lack of current (known) motivation, and insufficiently deployed technology to constrain it.

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[grolschie]

2)Storage area on the device is tiny. For the small passive devices you are referring to the storage area is less than 1Kilobyte. Not much space for your medical records here.

All it needs to store is a unique ID. This ID can always be linked to your SSN, Passport, Driver License IRS numbers at the companies computer (perhaps they ask you for your info, or detect your driver license, etc). Perhaps in the future there would be one massive distributed database that all companies access.

It is when companies/governments share this data that it gets scary. Data mining, by scanning everything they can on your person, and then combining this data with data from other companies, they can make one huge store of info about anyone.

It went "beep beep beep"...

[Big Sean O]

... and then half of my keychain was gone. And I was like... huhh?

It was a really good keychain.

It was kind of... ... ...a bummer.

RFID explained

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the Fucking ID.

Re:Concerns - answered in follow up to article

[Bagheera]

Point taken. Though I suppose it depends on which end of the spectrum you're coming from. From the "They can track a specific target under certain conditions more easily and at longer range than they are saying" standpoint, we're on the same page. Science and technology agree.

At the extremes: "It can't be done at all, ever, no one can track anyone" is over-simplifying it and ignoring the reality, where there are tradeoffs between range and 'volume'. Saying "They can track anyone anywhere anytime at any range" is abject paranoia and beyond the scope of physics, let alone technology.

To mis-quote: "You can track some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you can't track all the people all the time."

Fair enough assessment?

RFtracker.com

[Anonymous Coward]

You can track the movements of anyone wearing an RFID tag here.

They'll some day be used in combo with ultrasonic

[Anonymous Coward]

... transdermal voice implanting for sheep.
The future's so bright ...

My column is on Slashdot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Subject: [DISCUSS] My column is on Slashdot!
From: Scott Granneman
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 12:41:22 -0500
Cc: StlWebDev List


http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/27/144624 5

My latest column on RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags is the subject of a Slashdot posting! Yippee!

The article can be read here
http://securityfocus.com/columnists/169
or here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/31461.html

Enjoy.

Scott
--
R. Scott Granneman
scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ~ www.granneman.com
Join GranneNotes! Information at www.granneman.com
Read my blog at http://radio.weblogs.com/0100530
"Now is the time for all good men to come to."
---Walt Kelly


follow this thread

MOD PARENT POST UP Re:RFID explained

[Anonymous Coward]

Allow me to explain RFID tags in one easy-to-understand sentence:

They are exactly like bar code tags, except they are scanned by electromagnetic sensors, rather than lasers.

Boom! That's it. Yes, the paranoia is totally and completely stupid.


Yes, exactly!

These devices are no different than the little plastic doohickies music stores put into CD's or the clip-on's department stores put onto clothing.

An RF signal hits the embedded tag and the sensors detect a change in the radiation pattern.

RFID is just this, but with a unique pattern based on the UPC.

Remember people, a UPC is a *product number*, not a serial number.

Possible v Probable...

[MosesJones]

Of course its possible given huge investment to change this in the medium term (5+ years) but not in the short term at a reasonable cost.

Remember right now passive tags around around 20c, they need to be 1c or 2c max otherwise the economy element doesn't work... if something costs 20c then you can't just put 10% on top of the price without people complaining.

Science is about knowing that almost everything is possible... and then determining what is most probable. The computer you are reading this on could explode NOW.... it didn't ? Well that is the difference between probable and possible.

Re:Possible v Probable...

[Vaughn Anderson]

Of course its possible given huge investment to change this in the medium term (5+ years) but not in the short term at a reasonable cost.

Yes, and this will happen. So considering that we can safely assume that this technology (the idea of a tracking device in every product, NOT RFID specifically) will get better, more effective, better range, then it should be law that -

1. All products be labeled clearly that it has an RFID (or similar device)

2. The tag is easily removed after purchasing the item.

Regardless of current technilogical or economical constraints on the system

Buy and Sell Anon

[Anonymous Coward]

Cash is the last truly anonymous way to buy and sell.

I can think of one other time tested method -- barter.

More RFID information

[hkarmark]

If you are interested in more information about the standards for implementations or who's doing what with the tech right now, check out: autoidcenter.org . They're the main group putting in place the standards that will be used. If you are interested in the privacy issues specifically look at how they intend to run the PML servers, (Physical Markup Language Servers, the boxes that will hold all the infomration associated with the tag #'s) the tags themselves only hold a number, it's the PML servers that say who bought what etc.