Slashdot Mirror
Gillette Pulls RFID Tags In UK Amid Protests
akb writes "Indymedia UK is reporting that after protests against the trial of RFID tags by Gillette at a Tesco store in Cambridge, increasing press coverage, a boycott, and the growing mobilisation of campaigners against the intrusive use of the technology, Gillette have withdrawn their trial. RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags are small tags containing a microchip which can be 'read' by radio sensors over short distances (for background see SchNEWS Feature / 2 part Guardian Article)."
We keep hearing about the bad uses for RFID technology, but do people know of any good uses that don't invade on our privacy?
RFID tags have the potential problem of a thief scanning my house to see what I have inside.
Why are people so upset with RFIDs? The only possible reason I can see is that they are afraid of being tracked all the way home with them. That is a simple matter of removing the tag when you leave the store.
Using RFIDs will save billions of dollars a year. Those savings will translate to lower prices for you. What can possibly be wrong about that?
I think this is just another case of Luddites without anything better to do.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
What an Englishman does in the privacy of his own Castle, is his own concern.
Gillette is going to know where you shave in the morning?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
--
Rate Naked People at Fuck Meter! (not work-safe)
I thought it was still a she
'someone undergo an operation I haven't heard of?
Another technology to give me the feeling that...
The Big Brother is Watching.
Yeah... if you think Luddite ultra-right-wing militia men are paranoid right now, wait until RFID becomes widespread. UPC codes will become a relic of the past in their conspiracy theories.
Back then a riot was a far more civalised afair. A crowd could assemble to riot, but before the authorities could move in and start busting heads, they had to have the local sheriff come to the riot amd actually read them the riot act. This gave the crowd the option of dispersing peacefully without charge, or staying where they were and getting into a fight with the sheriff and his men.
Far better than todays arrangment, where riot police in full body army can gas a crowd, or shoot into an assembly with rubber bullets, without fair warning or even reason.
Did anyone else read the headline to mean that people were protesting Gillete pulling RFID tags?
Conductive ink on bendable material including printable, disposable antennas seem to be right around the corner. Here's a pdf from Rochester with all the chemistry that goes into making the substrates. And an article from Business 2.0 on Plastic transistors (Google cache) and how they will change UPS tracking and WalMart's forever.
The most interesting aspect for me is that these sensors (or even on-chip flash) will be powered and read in the presence of an RF field, like how most RFID tags work. We might one day have tons of passive sensors 'waiting' to be read with an active energy source.
Arnie for Governor, Actors Speak Louder Than Words
I work for a contractor of FedEx. FedEx owns or rents hundreds of buildings around town, and all of them are protected in some manner or another. Most of the properties are linked up via an electronic access control system which makes use of RFID-enabled cards. The cards are called "proximity cards," or "proxy cards" for short.
The system consists of two components, a proxy card and a card reader. The readers are mounted at the doors of many FedEx buildings, and the proxy card itself is worn or held by employees. Each employee has a unique proxy card. The cards are manufactured by a GE subsidiary, Casi-Rusco.
It's an amazing system. When you walk near the door of a FedEx building, you simply wave your proxy card near (..within the "proximity" of..) the reader. The reader, which emits a signal, activates the RFID chip within your proxy card, and your card sends back its unique ID which in turn is tied to your employee/vendor code. Instantly - within a fraction of a second - the database is checked to determine whether or not you're allowed to open that door. If so, the door unlocks momentarily; if not, it remains locked.
As much as I hate "consumer-grade" RFID, it really is incredibly powerful (and, I imagine, rather convenient) in terms of access control.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
I can just see the next evolution in this will be to add rfid tags to the change they give you to track where you spend it.
You can just see it can't you, after a couple of months every bank note will be as infested with these damn tags as a dog with fleas.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
What if they put an RFID on a box of condoms? I mean, isn't it embarassing enough to try to buy some anyway? (Not that I've ever had the need to buy condoms.)
Or what about hemorrhoid cream? Or a million products for which it's bad enough that one has to buy them from a convenience store in front of a cashier?
Yeah, yeah. I know what's next for me: "Hello, Mr. Tin Hat, this is Mr. Corner..."
This RFID thing is a dead horse. Shoot it and get over it. Until large companies start getting the idea that most people prefer control over their privacy, these sorts of technology will be regulated to the military and the police.
And boy, will they embrace it bigtime.
And looking at the other side of the coin, how long before somebody creates a RFID zapper gun?
*cough* Tesla *cough*
Just my two cents.
I dont get this:
Because RFID tags contain intellectual property in the form of a computer chip, deactivating the tag would count as circumventing an intellectual property control measure, and so would be illegal under the IP Enforcement Directive.
Isn't that like saying that breaking a CD in half is illegal because it also disables the copy protection?
from Rafsec's web http://www.rafsec.com/products/pallet_set.htm
"Because Rafsec is a multi-protocol, multi-frequency supplier of RFID transponders, the Wooden Pallet Transponder can be used with any RFID technology, from low-cost read-only to higher-cost encrypted read-write memory."
Say yes to RFIDs, but only if they are disabled after initial use. Passing the doors of the store could tell the RFID to stop responding.
So Tesco decide to run a pilot in probably the most technologically-aware city in England, and are surpised when people protest?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
RFID's are so demonized it's comical.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The new "stored value" cards used in Taipei's public transport are using RFID. These are used for access to the subway system and by some of the bus companies.
Amazingly convinient; just wave your wallet next to the sensor and you can pass through. Don't need to bother about getting the actual card out; so they get points for cool technology value.
Made out of durable plastic the cards can be "recharged" when they run out of value saving on waste.
Oh, and you buy them by tossing some coins into a machine (no need for a DNA sample)
Still can't use them to buy soda or anything else..
Who sells these tags?
I read somewhere on the net these tags sell for around $.25 each for 1 billion or $0.05 for 10 billion. This is a huge market.
Any knows any leading companies that sells these? I might consider buying their stocks.
"Those savings will translate to lower prices for you."
Are you really that naive?
As a businessman, when you lower your cost base you *don't* cut your prices unless you have some cutthroat[1] competition who is already kicking your arse on price.
[1] Pun intended.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
My local Boots (UK wide Chemists) has pulled most brands of blades from their shelving because of theft.
... hmm does anyone see the obvious glitch in their new security protocol?
At 6 for a pack of 4 or 5 blades you can see why they are trying to introduce tracking. In the meantime, if I want to purchase I have to go across to the perfumery counter (on the other side of the store) and ask for the item.
Then I wander down to the checkout with them.
--- This meme is memory intensive
Eh. It's just a shower. If they wanted to kill us, why not just shoot us when we got off the train?
It certainly is convenient for companies (and pickpockets) to be able to extract money from your purse without any interaction with you.
Personally, I'd rather deal with the inconvenience of being informed of and having to authorize any and all payments before they occur. Call me paranoid if you will...
Is the "Value" actually stored on the card, or is it just stored in a database linked to the ID that is stored on the card?
If it is just an RFID I would suspect it was the latter. Therefore no pickpocketer can extract money from the card just by scanning you.
I suppose someone could scan you as you walked past and then create a new card with the same ID, but all that would get them would be a few train rides and not any actual money.
How many bits are these RFIDs anyway and how easy would it be to fake one?
"Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
You are paranoid.
I totally agree with this idea!!!
;).
See it like this, if it was to work it would work like this. When you go to product X which has a tag on it, there is a sign to tell you. You take the product in the knowledge you will be photographed. You are photographed, you pay for the product, the tag is disabled (by whatever device) and your picture is deleted.
What the hell is wrong with that??!?! If you aren't going to steal the product who cares if your picture is on some database for 30mins while you shop. Personally I'd like to see this scheme, if it means that some twat with a knife will think twice before trying to steal a load of razors or whatever I welcome it.
It's only anal people that can't handle the fact that someone wants to take a picture of them for security purposes, If your not going to steal the damn thing you shouldn't care. Lets face the fact you're on someone else's property therefore they have the right to survalliance and to enfore security where needed. Razor blades are one of the biggest problems as far as criminals are concerned and anything to reduce theft is good.
So people you know who you are stop being so up your own ass and help the supermarkets reduce crime and potential risks to yourself. If a crim isn't in a supermarket theres no way they can cause you personally a problem.
I understand the issues of leaving tags on or storing pictures of people for longer than needed, which is why I believe this scheme will be excellent as long as photos get deleted upon purchase and that the tags are disabled after leaving the store. Anyone who thinks theres something wrong with that has issues, serious issues (probably self-image and insecurity isses
rant over
I spent ages trying to think of sig, but never did
Oops... I just swallowed my gillette razor!
- "They misunderestimated me."
I live in Cambridge. I picked up a packet of razors. Now I have radiation burns and smallpox, a man follows me with a camera all day and people stop me in the street and their children say 'look mummy, there's that nasty Osama Bin Hussein.' My dog has died, my wife has left me and I have had to grow beard. Who do I sue ? WHO DO I SUE ??!
"in March, Benetton was also forced to announce it was not about to insert 15m RFID tags into its Sisley clothing range after an avalanche of consumer complaints"
I think I might notice a 15 metre chip on my T-Shirt...
Correct me if I'm wrong (somebody will), but I'm pretty sure the same thing's just about to go live on the London Underground. I'm sure plenty of people have seen the yellow circles on the turnstiles - they're there to talk to these cards as far as I know.
but we are scared the shops will be unreasonable with the information they can now harvest.
d pdoc.nsf
You are photographed, you pay for the product, the tag is disabled (by whatever device) and your picture is deleted.
1. Not all RFID trials promise to the public to disable the tag at the checkout. So we all need to continue these protests to make sure that happens.
2. Under the data protection act I can request copies of images taken of me by CCTV systems. So when do you delete the image?
http://www.dataprotection[DOT]gov.uk/dpr/
(CCTV checklist link, view the last point on the second page of the document)
(Actually it is 'request access to images' not 'copies' but that may ammount to the same thing in practice.)
It's interesting to see people in England rejecting these things so quickly and so thoroughly. It leaves one to wonder how we will react to them if they are given a trial in the United States.
After all, part of the mythos of our national character is that we are rugged individualists who only want to be left alone, but we regularly put up with the knowlege that various private and government agencies develop and deploy some of the most sophisticated intrusive security technologies in the world (e.g., public security cameras, biometrics, face recognition, gait recognition, cellular phone location, productivity logging etc, etc, ad nauseum...) and with that often in the pursuit of genuinely base motives.
This raises a question: 'Which of our faces will we in the U.S. turn towards a technology that, for a brief interval at least, simply does away with the privacy inherent in the inability of anyone anywhere to know precisely where you are?'
In one of the messages above, someone asked if there were any good uses for the technology and I think I can see the technology revolutionizing point-of-sale technologies for credit/debit card use; possibly reproducing the scenario in the speculative IBM commercial where someone shops in a supermarket by stuffing items in his coat and walking out of the place, only to be stopped by a security guard who reminds him to take the receipt for his purchases.
Basically, if a system knows you are carrying x items of y value that belong to the store until you walk them past a point where their cost is deducted from your account, you can eliminate cashiers. Of course, what those girls who operate supermarket cash registers do with themselves after you do is anyone's guess.
One more interesting thing is that these are electronic devices that have to send a signal in order to function: they have *got* be vulnerable to something.
Perhaps part of your transaction in your point-of-sale system of the future could be frying the tags one the items to mark them as sold which would also take care of the paranoia problem.
Before anyone mentions it: buying, selling or possessing any of the Russian or Taiwanese tag-zappers that would soon hit the market would be punishable by fine, imprisonment or both.
Have a good one...
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
I just read an article which states the European Central Bank are quietly planning on introducing RFID in all european bank notes by 2005. Bang goes the anonimity afforded by cash transactions.
... Gillette pull RFID tags in UK after several cutting remarks.
Thank you, thank you. I'm here to Monday.
My brother's godfather works in packaging design, and for a while, one of their most interesting long term projects has been developing a transponder that cost only a couple cents. The theory is that you simply dump all the stuff in your cart, drive through the detector thing at the checkout, and voila, all articles are billed, and don't need to held over some kind of scanner.
Of course, since his company sells groceries, they don't care to track your purchases to your home. What they want is something so cheap, you can stick it onto a milk box without upping its price by more than 0.02?. Their current favourite is a low-range transponder, meaning that if something within a couple meters sends an electromagnetic wave at it, it causes some kind of identifiable echo, say its barcode. Their is no read-write (too expensive), and to access it over long range takes one heck of a lot of power. Also, these tags are meant to be placed in plain sight and thus easily removable once out of the store. I was always rather interested by the whole idea, and I can't help but think that with a bit of regulation in the right places, the dangers of RFIDs could rather easily be avoided. After all, while our computers don't send our ssh private key to people, we do usually answer a ping.
Divide et impera!
So where will your "freedom of choice" stand when all the shops have adopted this system ? Make no mistake: this is actually what RFID chips providers are puhing for.
Oh, and I could also talk about how genetically engineered food is being forced down our throats as well, but that would be another can of worms (slightly OT by the way).
"Freedom of choice" is there as long as it is compatible with the lobbies' points of view. It IS a basic requirement in an ideal free market, but the main (corporate) actors of the current "free market" are trying to avoid it at all costs. Never take it for granted : we have to fight for it everyday.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
This is the "don't remove tag from mattress law" all over again! RETAILERS may not tamper with the chip, in the same way they can't remove the "made in China by slave labour" tags or sew on fake "Levi's" labels. CONSUMERS can do what the hell they want with the devices once they have purchased the goods. Sheesh!
Give it a couple of years and it'll be like Minority Report. /me goes phones the local pusher for an eye transplant.
I spent ages trying to think of sig, but never did
Why run the trial in idiot city, find it is successful and rollout nationwide only to be surprised by the hostile response then?
Much better to trial among those who are likely to be hostile don't you think?
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
'UK Consumers have close shave as Gilette cuts short their RFID experiment'
If you broadcast whitenoise on all wavelengths on a short radius, you can effectively jam the thing, I would think. You should be able to carry a decent battery to overcome RFID transmissions with a good jamming.
This is my sig.
... of a RFID device with overpowered, omnidirectional antennae, capable of reseting all RFID tags in a store to "Durex Extra Strength Condoms:$999.99:DATE(NOW):CASHIER(CURRENT)" with the press of a button!
Hate me!
The cards for the Paris subway transport system are also that convenient -- just wave them over the sensor as you walk through --, but I don't think they use RFID, and though the cards are registered at your name, the signal doesn't carry that, so it's impossible to track your movements.
So, why use RFID in that context?
Oh that's right RFIDs! That's all an RFID can do, in fact, it can't even do what you just said. You put two RFIDs close together and they interfere with one another. So, for example, the FUD that has been going around about all the RFIDs in my socks, shirt, pants, jocks and hat being all "they" need to track me.. well putting them all together on my body will make them interfere, causing none of them to be readable. Oh I hear ya. Why not just put a timing circuit in them that waits an arbitary amount of time until it responds. On that's right, because it's an unpowered device and it can't store current for any amount of time, let alone an arbitary amount of time.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There are still other reasons to boycott Gillette, of course.
No, he said "Call me paranoid" so it should be "You are Paranoid."
To signify that I own all the stuff that I buy, so should somebody mistakenly walk off with my stuff I can find it again?
I'd really like one for the car, and the vcr, and the laptop...
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Whose reason? I'll give you one: a mandatory RFID device in every single weapon manufactured on the planet. Would that be good or bad? I can't answer that right now...
So you're perfectly willing to register into a hotel with a newish sexual interest or wife of 20 yrs and have them register your condom brand and her Pill, string lingerie (maroon, my favorite!)? Let alone having your mom find about that tube of K-Y Jelly...
BTW, I found it interesting how many times you referred to "anal" in your comment - a fixation, perhaps?...
--v
all they did was stop them at that store, from the article
Tesco is also testing RFID tags in its DVD range at the Extra store in Sandhurst, Berkshire, in a trial that has received funding from the Home Office. Under its Chipping of Goods initiative, the government is backing eight such trials in a theft-busting context. Asda has just completed a similar tagging trial - in this case on CDs at two of its stores in Nottingham.
and iam sure it will spread to their 800+ stores, small victory
Man, I agree with his general point of view (that RFIDS are harmless), but this is a blatant troll.
It's one thing to feed the trolls, don't mod them up too.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Actually they are already live (going under the name of Oyster). Presently you can only get them online here.
I read that they're going to be available from the ticket windows etc... in about a months time.
I lay awake last night wondering where the sun had gone, then it dawned on me.
Advertisers probably wouldn't pass up a chance to exploit this little infringement of privacy. I see the billboards of the future reading your personal infestation of RFID's and spamming you with similar / linked products.
Could be interesting to see what the billboard would display for someone carrying a pack of diarrhea tables.
ARE YOU SUFFERING FROM THE SHITS?
TRY OUR NEW ANTI-BACTERIAL TOLIET CLEANER NOW!
This sounds insecure to me, all that a bad guy would have to do is sniff peoples' RFID number as they went through doors. Then, program his own RFID gizmo to send the same number. Like used to happen in parking lots with car security systems.
What you really want is cryptographic processing capability in the access token, it would be a lot safer to check before opening that the token could successfully sign the door's challenge.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
It's already illegal in the UK to disable or interfere with the operation of any wireless device with a unique ID. This is the by-product of a recent overbroad law designed to eliminate mobile phone cloning.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
As alarming as many of the recent seemingly "invasive" technologies are, the response to consumer anger from some of the organizations which employ those technologies has been a bit comforting. Before we have seen the termination of serial numbers on Pentium 3 CPU's, the removal of DRM in TurboTax software and even Microsoft allowing OEM's to omit product activation with WindowsXP.
All of these were the result of massive consumer backlash and lack of benefits for the producer. With Gillette's action added to this, it seems that Palladium/TCPA/etc. might not be in for a very warm reception, and possibly a very quick withdrawal. And it seems that some corporations care more about consumer feelings than it seems at first.
The London cards are called Oysters.
The Hong Kong cards are called Octopus.
Do all RFID / Smartcard developers have seafood obsessions???
Aye, it's all a bit fishy all right. Ask them to explain, and they either clam up, or spin you a load of old tentacles.
A couple of weeks ago I bought some Gillette Mach 3 non-Turbo blades at the WalMart in Leavenworth, KS. Mindful of this sites coverage, I looked around. Besides the camara pointed at the Mach3 display, there was a plastic, 2 1/2 foot PVC pipe sticking out of a crude hole through the drop ceiling. This was right over the Gillette Mach 3 display. Antenna for RFID system? And, a couple of feet farther, an 802.11 access point was affixed to a structural column, up by the ceiling. Network connection for RFID system? Examining the packaging at home, I noticed the magnetic door-alarm strip was notably absent from the razor packaging, presumably replaced by a too-small-to-be-obvious RFID tag. Thanks for the heads-up, slashdot.
It's a trust issue. We don't trust them to not use the data we give them and they gather against us and in ways we don't like.
RFID, like any other tech, is generally designed to be useful. I actually like the idea of no checker, it saves me time and so long as I can still pay in cash and have a checker if I want, I'm happy. The checkers are replaced by fewer support personell, some of them are kept and the rest are put on either shelf duty or are fired, who can then in theory go and get a better edumication and help to build better systems such as space exploration vehicles or something of the like.
The problem is that corperations are notoriously cheap and they'll do anything to cut costs, including genoside, slavery, extortion, election rigging, forcing workers in different countries to compete for who works for the lowest wages, etc.
Do I want a bunch of criminals in wallmart knowing what I buy, where I live, etc? No. Any information they have is power over me and I don't trust them any more than I trust a mass murderer living next door.
So, if they can earn my trust by not being cheap and BSing us about this, then mabye I wouldn't be up in arms. Although we all know where all this grand automation is going to land us if corperations have their way; the poor house. The IT technician that gets replaced by a foreign worker now works as a bagger at cub foods, who is replaced by a machine. They then goto starbucks, where the people there are replaced by machines that make coffie, they then goto work at burger king, where a fully automated system is setup to make everything. When robots become viable, they'll be stocking shelves for us. Where will all those jobs go and where will the money go? All the jobs go away, the systems are designed to support thousands of people but nobody has any money because there's no work to be had, and the work there is to be had pays so lousy that you can barely make a living.
These people won't just die, they'll protest, violently and otherwise. They'll break into stores, people's houses, buy and steal weaponry and kill and plunder to get what they need. If the goverment does things like increase the vote percentage to get federal funding to %15 when Ralph nader gets %5 of the vote, you'd better believe they'll raise it to %30 when he gets %15, and 50% when he gets %30. What happens when he gets a vast majority? Lets just hope by then the corperations don't have a milita of their own that they can use to kill us all. I don't like how the next 10-20 years are looking at all.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
> RFID tags have the potential problem of a thief scanning my house to see what I have inside.
Yes! Certainly by the time that RFID tags are implanted into just about any product in your house, thieves also have developped bee-like robot drones to fly around your house and establish the necessary proximity for reading the tags!
.. because i live in cambridge. the sainsbury's across town (a competitor, for all you non-UK types) does exactly the same trick to monitor the consumer but doesn't even try to conceal their efforts behind a chip. if you try to buy the same gillette blades there you have to physically explain to an actual person that you want the blades, that you're not going to nick them, that you might want specifically the gillette ones as opposed to some in-house crap, etc etc. so let's not get too excited about an invasion of privacy simply because it involves electronics. (yes i do realise that this is /., and no i don't work for tesco).
Hmm... now where did I put that razor, OH YEAH! I shoved it up Big Brother's ASS! Thank goodness for RFID, or I would have never tracked it back there.
Indeed, and very nice cards to use they are too. Make going through the gates far easier.
Interestingly though at the moment when you use them on buses sometimes you end up as two people, the driver beeps you in, and then you use the oyster card on the machine too.
In the near future there will be a prepay system as well, so you use your card as and when, at the end of the day it decides on the most cost effective set of tickets to charge you for the journeys you made.
Oh yes, the other thing is that new tickets can be loaded onto the cards automatically as you pass through the gates at a tube station.
This could mean the end of in-store cameras! If retailers could track their stuff, there would be little need to take pictures unless something was being disturbed. And they would need to wheigh you on the way in and out to make sure you haven't left a bomb or something in their store.
... Not that they would.
As far as cattle go, i did a network install for a farm that had big ugly collars for the cows. Inside was a radio transceiver and a pedometer. Why a pedo, you ask? Because apparently, in order to get maximum milk production, you have to "couple" cows every so often. They indicate that they're getting restless by, you guessed it, walking around a lot more than usual.
How's that for computer-matched dating?
And tests proved that anyone wearing 15 million RFID tags could not walk out of the store.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
If their bad habits didn't cost so much.
For instance if you could support a heroin habit while on welfare, and the heroin was clean and dosed right not overdosed (prescription), then you'd have no reason to steal. So fewer addicts would steal.
At least drug habits are the main reason we have thieves in Australia. Not sure about the USA - ie I'm not too sure the social welfare system works reliably.
There are heaps of addictive drugs available on prescription that don't cause major social problems. The worst drug problems are caused by legal drugs eg smoking and alcohol. Although I think making those illegal would be futile too.
Now I just gotta figure out how you can make a prescription dose for gambiling addictions.
Not sure we have car tracking in oz. What my idea would be is to have (apart from the RFID), a gps system and a satellite pager. So when you paged your car, it would send back its lat and long. Rather than continuously transmitting to a monitoring station. Which is nice for taxis but not so good for me.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
>the store can update the chip the moment you walk out of the store,
>to contain the excat time, location and idendity of the buyer
Not according to most of the information currently available about RFIDs. Most of them are merely a passive device that can only actively transmit its serial number, and only its serial number. What's done with that serial number is up to the system that queries it, and it could certainly tie together the purchaser's information and the RFID serial numbers of goods purchased, but that's merely database magic, not RFID technology.
Actually it's much more likely that the FedEx card in the parent post has active data storage, than any run-of-the-mill grain-of-sand RFID.
The RFIDs envisioned to be used for tagging goods are as simple as possible, to make them as cheap as possible. At least at this time, nobody's proposing what I'd call "smart" RFIDs for marketable goods.
On the other hand, RFID manufacturers are implementing (at least in some chips) the ability to self-deactivate - something of a self-destruct code. But that does not require any storage memory, just the ability to short out a circuit on command.
So while this is POSSIBLE, nobody is proposing it at this time. This post seems to be a bit hyper-conspiracy-theory oriented.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Just think we can slip rfid into all SSN cards. Great, then have government employees war driving around doing a kind of wild life inventory. Welcome to 1984. Microsoft SECURE computing and total control of the population. Who cares about Charleton Heston, guns and other NRA nonsense. Freedom has become meaningless, if the Government no longer reflects the will of the people, then starts to take measures to monitor all individuals movement. Somehow I cannot see any American government going quite that far without very strict privacy legislation to make this sort of technology sensible. If we do not strictly regulate all usage of this tech there will be abuse. It is too much of a temptation for the control freak bureaucrats who hide behind the sceens and survive changes in polititions (J. Edgar types) to resist!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Incidentally, someone made an interesting observation about un-deactivated RFID tags in consumer mechandise... it would be very convenient for the above-average mugger to be able to stand on a street corner at night, with a little scanner, and know exactly what you have that he might want to steal.
"Hey, slick... the dude walkin' dis way has $120 in cash, three VISA cards, a Rolex, Air Jordan shoes, a Blackberry pager and a Kyocera phone... good target!.... here, cover me..."
"Yo, dude, into the alley, empty the pockets, and hand over the Rolex and phone - don't tell me you don't have it, sucker......
A bit later:
"Nah, skip her, she only has $20 and a Timex... nope, skip him, he's got a Glock 45..."
Come to think of it, I can see a market for fake tags... I'd buy a few from pepper spray, a sizeable handgun, maybe a folding knife...
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Imagine the fun...
Walk into a department store someday soon, with a small foil pouch full of RFID tags stripped from popular and expensive items that you own and kept the receipts... maybe a few expensive watches, a couple fancy consumer electronics, etc... wander around the store for a half hour, hanging out near those shelves... being certain to handle some of those items suspiciously and having your picture taken by closed-caption cameras... take the tags out of the pouch... then walk out without going thru the registers.
WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP the alarm sounds... you get arrested and searched for shoplifting... and upon proving that the tags are from objects you own and purchased, and with the help of the ACLJ or ACLU, you sue the store for false arrest and negligent use of their new fancy technology...
*Smirk*...
Even if you don't win any money, such tactics would certainly help push the careful use of RFID deactivation. Civil disobedience is likely to be a big problem for RFID promoters and marketers.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
If there were money involved, it would be done. Talk about efficient identity theft.
This protest seems to me rather over the top, tinfoil helmet to me.
Of course, if nobody does anything, RFIDs could be used to infring liberty.
But what ills are not overcome by requiring that RFIDs should be clearly marked, and removable without damaging the goods to which they are attached. On items with packaging, such as the razors, they should be in the packaging. On items without packaging such as clothes, attache them with thos little plastic tags they already use for prices and useless information about the manufacturer.
To police it, ensure that an inexpensive scanner is available which allows a domestic user to detect any RFIDs thay have not removed. The fine on the company in the event of infringing the above rules (i.e. putting hidden RFIDs im) to include an element of reward to the finder of the hidden ID of at least the cost of such a scanner.
If you then remove all IDs when you get home - no more onerous than unpacking and removing those tags, then the only time the shop knows about them is as you leave for the first time. If you paid for them, they know that from the checkout. If you didn't, then presumably you are stealing them and deserve what happens to you.
This doesn't require wholesale observance to make it destroy the effective use to infringe privacy impossible. If more people than not remove the RFIDs (as they would) the residual information becomes effectively useless.
Of course, the CIA could always attach an RFID to your backside and track you wherever - but no law or consumer protest is going to stop that.
If it works, it could allow shops to cut losses by (say) 5%. If the marketplace works, this should cut end user prices by (say) 4.95%. Which may not sound be much, but if I got a 5% pay rise today (which is the same thing), I would go home happy.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
...to see how many people noticed that the Venus for women blades fit on a Mach 3 razor!
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
Hey . . now that's one SHARP wit you got there ! but hey . .let's CUT to the chase . .this is very touchy subject !!
Gillette pull RFID tags after banging your mother?
This is now the severalth (sure, that's a word, isn't it)story about RFID tags used in general consumer merchandise. Most all reactions I've seen are negativbe toward this use. Most seem to cite a fear of being tracked or having their purchased remembered by the retailer.
Let me start by laying out what I know about RFID chips/tags:
1. they have a transmission range measured in inches, to a maximum of a few feet
2. they require a specialized unit to send out the RF pulse that "activates" and reads the tag
3. the information stored in them is generally programmed at manufacture. (there are r/w tags, but they seem about as useful as putting the bar-code or price on a label with a pencil)
4. reading the RFIDs in bulk is a tenuous affair at best and certainly expensive.
Specifically regarding #1, I can't locate any exact numbers for range, all the companies just say "short, medium or long" range. But the examples they give seem to represent that even "long range" is highly relative and still means only 2 to 4 feet, perhaps as much as 10 feet. In a retail situation the range would probably need to be two feet or less.
So given that information, I can't begin to figure out what everyone is so upset about regarding the use of RFIDs in retail items. They don't enable anything you can't do already, they just make it faster and more reliable. They don't store any personal information, they can't be read in bulk from any significant distance.
What do these tags represent that is so heinous that public demonstrations are called for to prevent their use?
This will be the third (I recall) time I've tried to have a reasonable discussion about this, and am hoping this time I'll get something more than FUD back. Please state your reasons in a clear, legible hand. I promise to read them all . The winner wil go back to K-PAX with me.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
So let me get this straight. Gilette always had the best of intentions, and did not encourage the use of the system for photographing customers. Tesco said what the hell, and did it anyway. Now they've canned the trial after protests in Cambridge.
But wait! Now Tesco are going to try the same trick with DVDs at their Sandhurst store. Did they really listen at all? :-(
Oh, and since it's obligatory to bitch, I told them this last weekend. :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I can see where all of this is going. This truly is heading to the mall scene in Minority Report.
BUT IT JUST GETS EVEN WORSE...
So you walk past a sensor in the mall wearing a pair of jeans with a RFID so small that you can't find it and never will, and all of the sudden you have an ad popping up for whatever market they sell your jeans to.
Better yet, when someone commits a heinous crime in that mall, a lot of sensors will have a record of the type of jeans and shirt anyone, including a criminal was wearing leaving a crime scene. HOW WONDERFUL! Imagine what happens when you are in the neighborhood wearing the same or similar tennis shoes and jeans combo! Regardless of who you are, the cops are going to come and question you! Probably take you downtown for a little questioning. Screw with your life for a bit. Shake you around. INSTANT PROBABLE CAUSE... after all "he was in the same area a few days later wearing the same type of jeans and shoes, your honor. And we have a homicide that is unsolved in the area."
Suddenly, you get busted for a crime you didn't commit!
You may call me a paranoiac but remember all of those people that have been in prison all of those years that have DNA evidence that conclusively proves that they weren't rapists. Trust me, there is nothing out of bounds that a cop will use to solve a murder case. NOTHING. That is not what a cop does. A cop hunts out crime. If he slaps cuffs on the wrong man, well, that is the court's responsibility to make sure it was the wrong guy, not the cop's responsibility. Also, cops do a little game called "courting you to death," like if you piss them off giving you a court summons (costing you hundreds of dollars) for a parking ticket, and messing with your life in a court appearance. You really don't want to defend yourself in a 'you vs. the cop' situation. It never, ever works. Most are good, but jerks are the ones that give me the willies.
Remember when cops were using thermal imaging guns to look into people's houses and checking electric bills to see if they were creating illegal grow operations? Think about it. THIS IS PROFILING HEAVEN. MORE DATA MEANS MORE PROFILING. The best part, you can't find out that they are profiling you. The cops pull you over for a bad turn signal, when all the while they are looking for a couple of key things, like the perfectly legal ammo you just bought at the gun store to take back to your ranch. Argue with them? GO TO JAIL. OR GO TO COURT AND PAY COSTS AND WASTE YOUR TIME.
It is not a matter of if this technology will be abused, it is simply a matter of when. You should look at history to see that. Evidence of it is everywhere even in the most polite societies.
How soon will it be after this stuff that some corporation starts walking people through your neighborhood with directional transmitters and antennas, and when you buy a Papa John's pizza, the next two days a Pizza Hut coupon is pinned to your front door or comes in your mailbox? Corporations are are not going to worry about the ethics of what they are doing. They are simply going to do them to sell you more pizza near their store to cut costs and sell more. It is now just going to make this world full of PHYSICAL SPAM.
Trust me, when the person in the mall with the clipboard seeks you out and says that she has a product that is better than the one you just purchased and is sitting in your bag, YOU'LL HATE IT. Either way, they'll be grifting your data... and you'll be paying for it.
If you hate it when Radio Shack asks you your fucking address when you buy a coax cable, then you'll really, really love what is around the corner.
Sorry for creating that picture for you.
Its as simple as this. In warehouses, having to do a reinventory would take a few minutes with everything having an rfid tag in it. You'd just go around to each section and do a count using ur special scanner to count the product number. If it differed you could find out exactly what was missing and report it. It sure would help with theft by preventing it. And in stores, you couldn't walk out with a stolen item unless you paid for it and the cashier turned off the rfid tag when you paid for it. Simple as that. If there was a law that required sellers to turn off the rfid tag once the item was purchased I think the privacy advocates would shut up then. I for one welcome this technology then.
Now as for preventing theft in warehouses, the worker would have the scanner and do the inventory, the scanner would be hooked up to the local network and record when the worker did the inventory. This way any workers that don't report missing inventory would be caught right away.
Heh...funny, here in the States, RFID's are being seen as a potential way to track people via purchases...seems to me that bearded terrorists are the last group who would be picking up tagged razors...oh well.... :D
Doesn't mean they're not out to get me.
They said, "No you can't see what's in my bags, call the police if your interested." So the police were called.
When they arrived they examined the bags, found no stolen merchandise. But the store manager conviced them to arrest the guy on charges of trespassing and distrubing the peace. The charges stuck, so consider that the next time you try this move.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
The use of RFID tags seems to be inevitable. Evetually the big companies will just stop telling people that they are using them and make their buddies in the media keep it al hush hush.
What I would like to know is, once you get one of these tags, how can you destroy it, but not destroy the thing it is on. If I buy a shirt in the future, and it has a tag on it, I would like to be able to destroy the tag so that it can't be missuesd, but keep the shirt. Does anybody know what some ways of rendering the tags inoperable without damaging the things they are attached to might be (besides cutting them off)?
Buy Mach 3 razors at Tesco,
Your picture gets snapped,
Who's to be blamed?
Who's knuckles get rapped?
Aftershaved Gillette,
Nicked in the acts,
Points to stubbled Tesco,
Now let's get the facts!
Let me spell it out with my styptic pencil: Poetic justice will only be served if they both get nicked!
However, it is important to note that Gillette helped develop the photo snapping shelves in the first place.
Check out CASPIAN's Boycott Gillette site: http://www.BoycottGillette.com. It documents the Gillette shelves with an INTERNAL MIT AUTO-ID CENTER VIDEO and SLIDE SHOW.
Gillette VP Dick Cantwell just happens to be the Chairman of the Board of Overseers of the MIT Auto-ID Center. The Auto-ID Center is the organization developing the infrastructure for RFID, and their goal is to tag and track everything in the world--at least anything they can hold still long enough. I for one will squirm like the Dickens if they try to tag me or my bad puns!
I don't know how many of you know how RFID works, so i'll try to explain (yes, IAAEE, I Am An Electrical Engineer).
Basicly a RFID scanner works by transmitting a certain frequency (125Khz is very common). The tag has a L/C (coil-capacitor) ciruit tuned to this frequency. It uses energy from the circuit to power a tiny circuit (that's how it can work without a battery), which will then send it's stored code. It sends the information back to the scanner by effectively shorting out it's receiver circuit. Doing so drains more energy from the transmitter circuit on the scanner, which can be measured and so the code that the tag send can be decoded.
Now a couple of ideas on how to block it:
- block the scanner by transmitting the same frequency at a highly varying output level. This makes it effectively impossible to measure the tag shorting out it's receiver circuit, because of the heavy fluctuation in the field strength.
- use a microcontroller to send random codes. If enough people do this, the database will get stuffed with false information and will eventually be useless.
- fry the tags in your stuff, EMP-style. I think it would be possible to break the little circuit by placing the tag inside the transmitter coil of a powerfull (but very simple) oscillator running at 125kHz.
he assumes that no industry operates in cartel-form.
if u studied it, i think u would find that free-flowing, laissez-faire industries are actually in the minority...
why don't we just fry the chip (or the chips makers) with a EMP or HERF generator. i mean, it wouldn't hurt, but it would overcurrent the chip, and weld its (if it's a normal silicon chip) aluminum wires together. resulting in a "Denial of Service"
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...