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RFID Industry Confidential Memos
An anonymous reader writes "Cryptome has learned www.autoidcenter.org (RFID flak) has made internal memos available for perusal at their site. Those RFID people sure have some interesting plans for the future. Who needs conspiracy theories, when you can hear it from the horses mouth? Weeeeee!"
And MAYBE they will take back democracy from those who have stolen it.
Some tags maybe built into the products that it would be impossible for us to remove them
So just dont buy anything you're not willing to throw in the microwave for 10 seconds.
--I don't want the world, I just want your half.
Other than some lingo, these memos (judging by the highlites) don't seem particularly bad. People are afraid of the health risks of RFID tags? Well, people are stupid. They're bombarded by radio waves every second of every day.
Some people will happily ignore reasonable explanations and cling desperately to their paranoid delusion. These people cannot be convinced otherwise. Rather they need to be brain-washed to get that stupid idea out of their head.
The "green tag" idea sounds like genius.
But an RFID conspiracy seems a little far to jump. The technology is in its infancy. It's not in everything, the opposite is true. But rest assured that an RFID Tag Canceler is in the works to milk money from the privacy obsessed.
I may get one myself...
I wonder if there's a patent.
-tom
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
... along with your AOL CD's. That should fry any hidden electronics hidden in the waistband. Toasty undies are just a nice side effect.
Just keep in mind that Ashcroft's Total Information Awareness stormtroopers will wonder what you have to hide.
Just shuddup and take your Soma, citizen. It's all in our, er, your best interests.
It should be opt-in, not opt-out. Problem solved.
-vp
We as consumers probably would have the best luck getting congress to require a RFID tag to be clearly marked or in some way removable, like most bar codes are now. I myself wouldn't have any problem with them while inside the store, but they should be disabled like the security tags are now when I check out.
I can see a lot of 'urban myths' popping up about this technology. It'll take rational (read non-paranoid crackpots) citizens contacting their congressmen or anything to get done tho.
I've been wondering if there would be HIPPA problems if this kind of technology ever is applied to healthcare.
The problem with microwaving clothing would be the shorts I have on right now, for example. They have a metal zipper. We all know what happens to AOL cd's when microwaved (if you don't know, try it. 5 seconds does wonders).
Be careful what you nuke.
----
Squirrel
The problem with opt-in is that nobody would ever opt-in. Even if you don't they will just say you did. Take all the opt-in spam I get. I never opted in for penis enlargement e-mail yet it says I did. Who are they to believe? The spammer said I opted in so I must've right? Yes, yes, I know, that's the point. Nobody would opt-in so the thing dies, but tell that to businesses. That's why opt-in will never be accepted by THEM.
Some people will happily ignore reasonable explanations and cling desperately to their paranoid delusion. These people cannot be convinced otherwise. Rather they need to be brain-washed to get that stupid idea out of their head.
That's why I fully place my trust in governments and corporations to tell me what's healthy and what's not.
After all, everyone knows that smoking is good for you. And there's no danger in mining uranium or genetically modified food or syphillis treatments or the drinking water, etc.
Yep, if a big organization says it's safe, that's good enough for me.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Assess consumer reaction if press develop scare stories and develop best messages to pacify.
This may have been modded "Funny" but it's actually quite informative. Of course us anti-corporatists have known this all along, but it's interesting to see these guys being so open and honest about their intent to "PACIFY" the "CONSUMERS". Look at any and all marketing today. It's all designed to pacify us in one way or another... to stun us, blind us, or numb our minds to what is really going on. The goal is to get us to be a bunch of nice passive cows, buying and believing everything we are fed.
When someone brings up a concern, or protests the action of a large corporation or government, the powers that be go into spin mode, "developing the best message to pacify" the people.
I'd love to see these Adolf Hitler try to run for president today. I imagine he'd hire these very same people to "construct a proactive framework to minimise negatives arising" and try to best pacify the pesky human rights folks...
Now, if you're actually upset about this, take 5 minutes and drop them an e-mail, or better yet, send them a letter (like, on real paper). Or call them. There's several feedback addresses and mailing addresses. That's what I'm going to do. Don't think "oh, 50 other people are writing, I don't need to", because those 50 other people are thinking the same thing.
Politicians don't read slashdot. Hundreds of +1, Insightful posts don't mean anything in the long run, but if a politician receives several hundred letters telling him why this is a bad idea, he might just give it a second thought. Heck, call your local news program if you want. If it's a slow day, (or if it's FOX News) I bet they might be interested...
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
any pretty useless for theft prevention, one of the publicly stated reasons for its use.
Considering that the slides are not complete without the presentation:
"For privacy, we can make the RFID chips annihilate themselves."
The word "auto-destruct" leads me to this interpretation... It doesn't make sense to talk about the "auto-destruction" of privacy but it makes perfect sense to talk about RIF chips destroying themselves.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Just require that manufacturers only use the RFID tags on things that can be removed from the product, such as an easily identified sticker or a common cardboard tag.
Let's see...who's got more lobbying money/access? Us (as individuals), or Walmart/Sears/Kmart/Target/Asda/Tesco?
Who do you think will win?
Now, the first worry that probably comes to mind is, "What if they assign unique identification numbers to each piece of clothing?"
Most of the devices I have read about have sufficient storage to uniquely identify every single item of clothing ever sold (which really doesn't require many bits at all). Current devices such as those we heard about with Benneton are not visible unless you either know where to look or have special equipment.
The devices seem to have a rane of 1-10m, and probably on the lower end of that for clothing items, but certainly that range will be improved with time.
While I trust that there would be sufficient public backlash to prevent this level of tracking and identification, we shouldn't feel comfortable even once we have stopped this precise level of unique identification.
Consider instead that each item of clothing you wear: shirt, slacks, briefs, and socks do not have an identifier unique across all items of clothing or even acorss all items of clothing of that type, but have only a unique identifier for the brand and 'model' (e.g. "Dockers Fall 2003 tan polo shirt") of the item.
It is still quite trivial to track you even in this case. Where in the past law enforcement agents might issue an alert for a man wearing "blue jeans, white t-shirt, orange cap", now they can issue an alert for a man wearing "slacks brand/model 3000023153, shirt brand/model 2000893912, cap brand/model 42330000251".
How many people do you suppose there are in an average large U.S. city wearing the same brand/model of 4-6 items of clothing? A lot fewer that we might think, I suspect. Probably few enough that it would be trivial to track all such individuals if necessary.
The more unique you dress, the more you stand out in a crowd (and not necessarily to the naked eye), the easier it is to track you.
There is no need to trust our privacy to legislation, although that would be a valuable step.
Simply encourage individuals opposed to these measures first to destroy these tags in their own clothing and to make a market for clothing without such tags.
Here in the US, it's illegal (I think) to do things like use a hidden camera to peek up your customer's skirts because there is a "reasonable expectaction of privacy". So where does that end? If I don't choose to advertise my waistsize, or brand of underwear, does I have a legal right not to have that infomation active "read" off me?
"I know what the capabilities of the RFID systems are these days and there's not currently anything that could do what the alarmists keep saying is possible"
According to this article the 500million tags that Gillette purchased "Alien Technology says its RFID tags can be read up to 15 feet away". And that is with the LEGAL readers the store is using. How far away can they be read with my illegal jiggawatt reader and directional antenna? How long will it take people to decode the 64-bit codes to determine which bits are brand/model/size/etc. and read the codes from great distances?
They do not plan on disabling the tags when you leave the store either since one of Wal-Mart's listed benefits for RFID tags is "hassle-free returns".
How long until I can point a directional antenna at your home and fire up my jiggawatt reader to determine if you have anything worth taking?
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
It's HIPAA not HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)
It's all the other tracking. We're talking about a potential record of everyplace a person goes. The government is clearly willing to abuse such information -- organizations like the FBI have abused just about every other piece of information they are given, and have never made any attempt at reform. And there's a resurgence of suppression and punishment of dissidents, including arrests and who knows what else.
I wonder if there is a way that we could safely use this, though. Off the top of my head, here's the laws I might propose:
First, all items with RFID tags must be prominently marked. I don't care if it's a "green tag" or whatever -- so long as there's no variety, and it's directly on the item (not on a label somewhere). Second, all RFID reading machines must be in plain site of any place that they can read, and must be prominently marked. Maybe a blinking green light too, or something -- make it a little obnoxious, and make the reader's intent very clear.
Violation should result in heavy fines, but more importantly, a revokation of the RFID license -- the license to tag things with RFID sensors, to use readers, and all of that. You should not be able to simply risk it with not labeling the items properly -- because in doing it you risk being shut out of the game entirely. And obviously creating these tags should be carefully monitored, as should be fairly easy to do, since RFIDs are all about monitoring -- unauthorized ID numbers should be easy to track. The readers, though, would be harder to track... I imagine it won't be too long before you could rig up your own reader if you wanted.
So... destruction of the RFID tag should also be fairly easy. All of these would be fairly reasonable, I think.
Of course, this doesn't keep the government from breaking these rules on its own. And any law the government makes against itself will be ignored and grossly violated, because that's what the Justice Department does. So maybe this wouldn't work.
There are battery powered RFID tags. And your "reflected" description is misleading. Know what a capacitor is? And RFID could store away energy from the cell phones of the people around you, or the countless other devices that use those frequncies. then it would just have to wait for the proper signal from a reader and release the stored energy in a large burst. It only needs to transmit a tiny amount of data. I don't think it would be too hard to make one that could do hald a watt for a thousandth of a second. but you wouldn't even need a half watt to go a mile under the right circumstances. Could do with far far less for distances of 100 feet or less.
People really are hammering on this meme that "it's unconcievable RFID's can transmit with any range"
It does seem to work in pacifying people. All kinds of chickenheads now trying to "debunk" the concept of RFID past a couple feet. It's pathetic because this continues after the RFID people came right and spoke at length about several disinformation campaigns that are being implemented.
2.4ghz (microwave) tags are actually quite rare; the RFID's I'm investigating now operate at 125 _kilohertz_, with next-gen models clocking in at 13.56mhz.
--Dan
www.doxpara.com
Like many others, you have manipulated the definition of power to suit your agenda. There are exactly two possible modes of human interaction: (1) voluntary association, and (2) force. Guess which one represents government, and which one represents the private sector.
Power is defined by the initiation of force. I'm sorry, but none of the examples you provide fall under the definition of power. You may not like the fact that your employer could fire you at a second's notice, but that doesn't change the fact that you and your employer entered a contract based on voluntary association, NOT FORCE.
So just dont buy anything you're not willing to throw in the microwave for 10 seconds.
I can assure you that soon they wil starting putting metal strings in clothes to render them 'damaged' if you try to expose them to microvaves ...
And if the practice becomes common thw US will pass a law forbidding the act of damaging RFID tags (To fight crimes and terrorism, you understand ...)
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Some tags maybe built into the products that it would be impossible for us to remove them. I think we need protection too.
NOTHING is impossible to remove or deactivate.
I guarentee that you will start seeing companies selling rfid detector wands to help you locate the bugger if you aren't clever enough to find it so you can simply remove or destroy it.
Clothing? nothing like a good hammer to fix an rfid's little red wagon... and you can go the paranoid route that has been mentioned ad-nauseum microwave everything.
I welcome rfid tags... as it will make real barcode scanners super dirt cheap... and I KNOW that stores are not going to switch over to them magically overnight... with many stores not using them over 10 years from now... hell there are stores that STILL do not use barcodes.
I just hope it's easier to adapt a rfid scanner to my palm-pilot/zaurus than a barcode scanner.. it will be more descreet, and I could theoretically have a running inventory of items in my cart... (while I scan/enter any items not in my database and share that database illegally on kazaa... To hell with yout IP! Muahahahahaha!!)
but I will be happily operational rfid tag free in my daily life... as I will get good at seeking them out and deactivating them myself.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
RFID is a tool. Tools can be used, tools can be abused. We can legislate controls that law abiding retailers will have to follow.
But each RFID tag is a disposable piece of electonics. To manufacture this product, a wide variety of chemicals (including powerful acids and so on) have to be used. By employing them in such a ubiquitious manner aren't we polluting the environment needlessly? I have to imagine if 50% of all products sold had RFID tags in them that we would add hundreds of tons of dangerous chemicals into the environment every year!
Perhaps the RFID tags should be obvious and recoverable so that they can be recycled! Maybe a deposit could be put on them so that the consumer can return them and get a few cents per unit back.
What happens when the put RFID tags in your credit cards and other ID.
I really do not care if a store knows that I was one of fifty people that came in wearing size 38 briefs. The big worry is when the can track me just about anywear I go. I would not even have to buy anything in a store for them to know I was there.
The commercial apps are really big. Lets say I go to Sears and look at fridges three or four times because I might need a new one. Sears will know it and start sending me fridge adds.
Don't worry about the products so much. Worry about your credit cards.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Why are these posts even considered interesting / insightful?
As broken as the DMCA is, it only discusses circumventing controled access to copyrighted works. Last time I checked you couldn't really copyright a bottle of laundry detergent. And another thing, the RFID tag couldn't possibly provide controlled access to anything it was attached to, it's embedded into the item, not surrounding it, so there's nothing to circumvent.
Destroying the tags would be a simple case of property rights. If you own it, you can destroy it, and although I would expect a bit of "you didn't really buy the tag, but you are leasing it forever" slipperyness here, that won't hold up in the courts for long.
Seems like the new "a Beowulf cluster of these" tagline is becoming "would be illegal under the DMCA"
What if they KNEW you would turn it out ??? =)
This could be a big problem for companies that want to have automated checkout. Ie - you carry an RFID credit card into the store, and just walk out with anything you want and you will be charged for it automatically. If you blasted the store from your car you could walk in, pick up a bunch of expensive items near the door which are likely to be zapped, and walk out before anybody realizes what has happened. If one or two items were charged just return them later.