RFID Will Stop Terrorists?

W33dz writes "Retailers and manufacturers around the world are enamored with the new radio frequency identification, or RFID, devices. The problem? What about when a thief or the police want to find out what you have in your house? Oddly enough, according to a Wired magazine article, the United States' largest food companies and retailers will try to win Dept of Homeland Security approval for radio identification devices by portraying the technology as an essential tool for keeping the nation's food supply safe from terrorists. This will give them blanket immunity from all law suits related to the product."

Comments

Ron Paul R-Texas: seeing the light

[paiute]

The Wired article links to Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who is opposed to the RFID idea. Republican opposed to the wishes of big business? Who is this guy? I looked at his web site and read his latest speech:
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec 2003/cr07 1003.htm

(sorry about the URL - seems a space gets put in between the 7 and the 1 in cr071003)

Anyway, who does this guy think he is, calling the Bush gang empire-building big-gummit perpetuatin' neoconservatives?

He better watch his back out of his rear-view mirror around the two shotguns and three rifles in his pickup truck rack, the terrorist-loving pinko.

Oh how wrong you are

[zapp]

RFID tags cannot be reporgrammed. and they do send out signals (on request from scanner).

RFID tags have a very small amount of READ ONLY memory on board, which is used to store their unique ID. Furthermore, the devices to not have the functionality to write to the memory, even if it was writable. So you can be sure no one will ever buy a RFID reporgrammer on Ebay, well... maybe they will, but you can be sure it's a hoax and they got ripped off.

Secondly, they DO send out the signal. barcodes need a clear direct line of site to a scanner to be recognized. RFID tags work in a much different manner. A scanner could be put in every light post in a city to monitor the RFID tags planted in tires, and track individual cars (or general traffic patterns). Worse, due to the nature of the technology a directional antanne could be used to read an RFID tag from large distances.

In conclusion, your comment is crap.

Answers

[zurab]

Most of what you describe is quite possible and feasible as well. Here are the answers:

So, you are saying that it would work like this. I go to the store, and buy a pair of shoes with a credit card. The RFID in the shoes is scanned in order to bring up a price to charge my card. So conceivably there could be a database somewhere that matches my financial info, including my name and address, etc, to an RFID tag in my shoes. Presuming the government could get access to a database like this, they could track people with some kind of device that could read the RFID tags from a distance. Thereby tracking my movements with my shoes.

They already have you beat on this one. Gov't can already access commercial databases without your consent when you purchase an airline ticket and get to the airport. This is a new color-coding system that they assign a color code to each passenger and to their "threat level".

With each step in this process I have detailed, things become more and more implausible. Retail store having database records of purchases, likely, I am willing to believe. Government getting access to database, not too likely but possible with warrants or something.

See above. If they do it to the airline industry, they can extend it to other industries as well. E.g. they can get your threat level before you enter a railroad station, public parade area, football game, concert, etc.

Government having device that can read the tags from a distance great enough to use it to effectively track your movements, probably next to impossible. I doubt these things are detectable at a range that would make tracking people practical. If you are willing to believe the government has the resources to put the trackers everywhere, on every streetcorner, without anyone knowing or getting upset, for budgetary if not privacy reasons, well...

They could equip FBI, local police, and maybe even security guards with such devices - I don't see a problem here. As far as privacy concerns - yes there are and will/would be a lot, but the attitude that you express doesn't help that. Even with the airline passengers color-coding system, where did these privacy concerns get? Almost nowhere with only one major admission that the gov't will not store your color-coded data for more than certain period of time.

Another obvious problem is what happens if I resell my shoes, or donate them to charity, or any number of other things that could cause inaccurate information in the database.

Charities that are accreditted as charitable organizations by the federal gov't could be required to report all RFID tags that they have received or transferred.

Will these types of devices draw us closer to licensing products to you and not selling them? Could it be illegal to sell an object equipped with RFID because it contains someone's IP, plus you'd probably be supporting terrorists? That's a far-fetched, yet interesting thought.

Finally, isn't it legal to observe people in public places? That is the very definition of public, a place where you cannot control being observed by others. The government might as well be looking at you if ten or twenty people you don't know personally are. I'm not saying that if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide, or some other silly thing. I just think expecting privacy in public is unrealistic.

This has already been answered by others. Gov't cannot invade your privacy by tracking your every move and recording it without a probable cause, at least according to the U.S. Constitution anyway. But who's paying attention to that silly thing nowadays?