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

Article has wrong focus

[corebreech]

The danger isn't in criminals scanning your home to see what you have, but rather the government installing/having access to scanners in public places that will allow them to track your movements.

Obviously, these things aren't just going to be attached to foodstuffs. They'll be used in clothing and other personal effects that you'll carry with you at all times.

The article fails to mention this. Frankly, the article reads like the sort of propaganda piece the industry would put out.

Re:Article has wrong focus

[chill]

Thank you. Is refreshing to see that there are people out there who realize the fundimental problem with government doing ANYTHING is that it takes inneumerable signatures, and approvals before it goes forward. The whole process is more bloated than an MS product.

But once all those signatures ARE in place, all it takes is one bored tech to browse through the system. It happens all the time at the IRS -- bored employees checking the financial statements of celebrities, friends and enemies. Cops doing intensive background checks on their ex-girlfriends, etc.

Government initiative are like a massive boulder. A bitch to get moving, but once it is going almost impossible to stop.

Re:Article has wrong focus

[MunchMunch]

Chiiilll man.

I think the article sounds pretty skeptical to me. Title is "Claim: RFID Will Stop Terrorists"--already they're distancing themselves from that assertion. In fact, I'd say the article is pretty cut & dry in saying "RFID companies are trying to speciously use the issue of terrorism to push privacy-eroding RFID into nationwide use."

No Supprise.

[Irvu]

Having watched the SSSCA (now CBDTPA) run through the paces this makes perfect sense. If you have a bill that you want to sell, wrap it in the current craze so that anyone who passes it can claim that "they have worked on X" where X is the issue dujour.

The way the game is played.

hmmm.

[garcia]

With Ridge's approval for RFID, the food and drug companies and retailers hope to win over a wary public. They also may get legal protection under the Safety Act of 2002 -- a tort-reform law that offers blanket lawsuit protections to makers of antiterrorism devices, should those devices fail during a terrorist attack.

What major backlash is coming from the "weary public"? I have said this a billion times before. No one outside of our geek culture has any idea what this is. If it's not on Network TV's latest reality show, it's not real. I am too lazy to find my other posts about my attempted discussions with co-workers about their privacy being invaded with Patriot I and II and how they look at me as if I am speaking Greek. "You mean you do something other than watch Paradise Hotel?" (this isn't a slight exaggeration).

People have NO FUCKING clue what is going on in the world around them. I deal w/100's of people daily who freely give out their SSN to me to look up their records. I specifically ask if they know their student ID first (even though it's a unique identifier, it's not as bad as just throwing out your SSN everywhere) and people just utter, "uhhh, no, but I know my SSN!"

So if people are so willing to just give up their nationally unique identifier, you really think that they are paying attention to RFIDs? Go outside of your cube and ask any non-geek, "do you know what an RFID and how it impacts you personally?" or possibly, "do you know what the Patriot Act is?" I guarantee that they won't have a clue what an RFID is and they will say something like "do you also talk in letters?" and they will seriously believe that the Patriot Act is something having to do with the military giving missles to another country (if they are even THAT clueful).

Post your results here please, I am seriously interested if this is just a localized phenominon here where I live (my gf, her co-workers, my friends, and my co-workers are 100% clueless when it comes to anything privacy related), I would like to know what the rest of the non-geek world sees.

Re:hmmm.

[ScrewMaster]

This comes under the heading of the "so what did you expect" department. Other national populations may be different, but we are so complacent here in the "world's only remaining superpower" that we don't want to hear anything that might upset our delicate emotional applecarts. Forget anything that might take research and some actual thinking. To be honest, the whole flapdoodle over 9/11 just astonishes me. The average Israeli or Palestinian citizen wouldn't have been particularly bothered by the attack, at least not on a personal threat level. Collectively, neither of those two societies would have allowed their entire economies to tank over a single terrorist attack. We, on the other hand, completely overreacted, have allowed the government to pass numerous Draconian laws in the name of anti-terrorism, willingly kissed our privacy good bye (if we even saw it leave) and generally behaved like headless chickens. Frankly, I'm not real impressed with how we handled ourselves in the aftermath of September 11th.

The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.

I don't follow your logic

[corebreech]

So because the government isn't competent, we should allow them access to our whereabouts in real-time?

Isn't their being incompetent actually an argument for their not having access to this information?

Re:I design RFID stuff

[ewhac]

Right now, the trend/plan is to kill tags at the cash register when the item is purchased. You may have noticed that that is already being done to enable you to leave the store without setting off an alarm.

Uh huh, right.

Assuming the RFID has a globally unique serial number in addition to a UPC code, then all that has to happen at the register is for that serial number to be marked as, "purchased." Then when you walk out the door, the computer sees the serial number, looks it up in the database and sees that it's been purchased, and doesn't sound the alarm. A software-only solution that's much more "cost-effective" than designing the extra circuitry for a killable RFID.

It also has the added "benefit" of allowing the retailer to scan the cloud of RFID numbers coming off you as you enter the store (or even as you stroll past the entrance), thereby triggering special discounts or incentives ("We're having a special on shirts that match those pants you're wearing.").

In effect, what you're working on will afford unprecedented snooping powers to government agencies as well as corporate entities (who, unlike government agencies, don't even have to pretend to be accountable). And, of course, it will do absolutely nothing to improve public safety.

Schwab