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Blocker Tags to Protect Privacy From RFID Tags
geekee writes "According to an article at CNET, RSA Security is developing a 'blocker' tag that disrupts RFID tag transmissions, protecting a person's privacy from those who would abuse RFID technology. The blocker tag would be embedded in your watch, for instance. This method has an advantage over destroying the RFID tags after purchase because useful information on the tag could help consumers (e.g. laundry instructions)." According to the RSA scientist quoted in the article, privacy concerns regarding RFID have been overblown, but it's still worth being proactive when finding ways to defeat the tags.
I haven't ever seen one, nor have I heard of any stores stocking merchandise equipped with them, but the price of Freedom is eternal vigilantism.
Is the RSA also going to start selling Tin Foil Hats? I don't think these devices would even be remotely practical for another 3-4 years when RFID's will be prevalent.
Wonder how this would affect shoplifting? Just wear the watch and walk out $0 deducted from your bank account?!
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Interested in AI? MACR
Juels said that he foresees a day when tags in clothes can tell washing machines the proper way they need to be washed.
This just seems like really stretching for a scenario in which RFID tags will be useful beyond inventory tracking (What happens when 5% of your laundry says "warm" and the rest says "hot")?
Before paying RSA for advanced laundry stealth technology, I think I'd first try something a little more straightforward, like a few seconds in my microwave.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
It's a bit strange for RSA to come up with an innovative product that's a reasonable thing for consumers to buy... I wish them good luck with this, and might buy one myself if they offer it at a reasonable price. (say $10)
Tech Public Policy stuff
Just remember to take off your RFID blocker watch before trying to get on a plane. Try explaining THAT to airport security:
You: "It's a watch that protects my privacy from the invasive government by sending out waves of non-dangerous radiation!"
Them: "Terrorist!"
You: "But it's just radio wa-wahhhhhhh!" *getting taken away in handcuffs*
is that legal to block radio frequency? Isn't it the same problem that movie theaters came across when they wanted to block cell phones' frequency but they can't because of the law?
IANAL, but I think it may not be legal!
Montreal - Best city to live in!
I here Wynona Ryder has already order a bunch of these!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
If we let companies use these tag's, we are saying to them "We are ok with this." And of cource in the future (near or far) they will click it up a notch. Sooner or later, they will invade more of our privacy, under the guise of "targeted advertising". Weather there is much privacy lost or not is not an issure, the fact than we are allowing this to happen shows the companies our mindset. We are not going to fight back aganst these kinds of intrustions. Or are we?
OMG OMG OMG WTF OMG WTF BBQ STFU RTFM, OMFG OMG OMG OMG ROFL LMAO OMG WTF STFU ROFLMAO
Yes but how does that help you after the RDIF tag leaves your
body?
Revolted, he shouts for the manager, and tells him, "Hey, that guy just put my meal under his arm!"
The manager replies, "If you've got a problem with that, I suggest you avoid our donuts."
Sure, this will be legal until DMCA 2.0 comes out. Let's help the lobbyists name it: Digital Millenium Anti Inventory Tamper Act (DMAITA).
_______
2B1ASK1
This is not meant to be a hostile tool," Juels said. "It balances consumer privacy and retail use in a profitable way...Tags are too useful to completely disable them."
if these tags cost only 10 cents, why can't we completely disable them? it's not like were going to reuse them or use them at all outside of warehouses and stores, there doesn't seem to be any practical use for them in the home
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
Movie theaters blocking cell phones is illegal because they're blocking other people from communicating with a third party.
This is perfectly legal. You're only interfering with things you already own.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I'd rather destroy them... and I will...
RFID tags respond to a radio frequency by emitting their own transmission. Could they not be designed to self-destruct when they detect either a different frequency or a frequency with a different amplitude??
I mean, Jesus, could that be too freaking hard to achieve?
Oh that's right. If people buy RFID tags and blocker tags, that means more people are buying more stuff. And that's the greatest good of all. How silly of me.
What a concept! Near the end of the article is the quote about how hard it would be to add the blocking capability at a later time. I would hope these guys are looking at a LOT of security aspects to this technology before they unleash it everywhere. Interestingly, Business 2.0 is currently running an article on Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) and how they have just now really begun to get "wired". Naturally, they are using a lot of RFID technology to track their rail cars. As recently as ten years ago (when I interviewed with them) they were still using paper and pencil. Sometimes an engineer would stop a train and call back to the dispatcher on a pay phone. Bring on the RFID's. MOM, I want a train!
In principio erat Verbum.
Next they'll come out with an anti-blocker to prevent you from blocking. Then the anti-blocker-blocker will come out to protect you. Seems a little like caller id to me.
Cut'n'paste troll
./
Like news.com.com.com.com is going to suffer because of
jeeeze!
Couldn't you use it to block the rfid tags inside the store? Say the one embedded in the package you're shoplifting?
It'll spiral into a build up of detection technology and masking technology. Like the radar gun/detector/jammer industry.
If only we could get some RSA technology to block this guy from continuing to contribute bogus posts.
Seriously, the whole thing reminds me of Sylvester McBean's magical Star-On Star-Off Machine.
sure it would be legal according to the constitution... but the DMCA expressly prohibits this.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
I have no faith in a blocking tag. Retailers will set off alarms every time you leave a store if you block their signals and readers will be made to defeat them in time. All you will get out of this evil technology is more grief, just like the phone system. The root of the problem, customer data retention and sale, is what needs to be addressed.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...my anti-anti-rfid tag, uhh ... tag.
FLR
Why?
It's the 21st century, surely we can produce materials that simply stands up to washing and drying without needing special attention?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
One of the advantages being promoted for the tags is that you'll be ableto take a shopping cart, just run it through the checkout line, and the scanner and RFID tags will quickly add up everything in your cart. You can expect this technology to become as prevalent as bar codes are now. But with such a system and tags that are not disabled after you leave the store, you're likely to end up being charged again for your shirt, or watch, or underware or shoes or some item in your pocket with an embedded tag if you are close to the cart when it is scanned. It will become the new way of scamming the customers, soon to exceed the scan prices often being higher than the shelf price but never being lower.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Wow, this is awesome !! This is one step closer to things like, watch-sized EMP death rays.
I've always wanted an EMP in my watch.
-
And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
You must have missed the bit where it was claimed that the cost of the device is ten cents. It should sell for no more than a buck. It's just a scam to make money for RFID makers, so I expect it to be a ripp off in every way. It's just too easy to see this comming.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
But has a case of these tags being abused to violate privacy actually come about? I keep hearing about the dangers of them, how they're going to destroy what little privacy we have, etc., but I haven't actually seen anything bad being done with them yet. Can somebody enlighten me?
The Human Cow - bringing you scrumtrelescence since 1995
just place clothes in microwave, high power for 10 seconds
:)
no rfid
just dont touch that zipper (ouch hottt)
So a great part of the RFID hype is over preventing theft. When they are implimented, and theft rates drop, will they drop their prices too? They (corporations) claim that theft and other losses have a large effect on prices. Do you think they will prove themselves wrong?
Along the lines of buildign a better mousetrap: How long will it take a theif to discover a way to neutralize these tags? What happens when a person walks out of a store with a cart that has 30% of the tags inactive? How will anyone know that s/he hasn't paid for everything?
On a tin-foil-hat note: this is how freedoms are taken away.
- "It's for convienence!"
- "But it'll save time... no one is going to monitor what types of razor blades you buy."
- "If you just swipe your finger, you'll check out quicker, save time and money 5% off to customers who use RFID!"
- "I'm sorry, but it's a requirement that all people have RFID tags in their heads. well, people were cutting off their fingers to not be tracked by us. And anyone who doesn't submit to InstaTrace is considered a criminal."
I hate to sound like a Montanian, but consider this when security and freedoms are concerned (I forget who said it, didn't bother googling)."When you draw a line in the sand, and step over it, it does not appear to be a big step from your last position, so you allow it. But if you continue to allow it, over time, you will realize (albeit, probably too late) that you do not have your original position in sight as you turn around."
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
1) create rfid tag
2) create blocker tag
3) profit
I have just received my patent on an RFID Blocker Blocking Mechanism.
It is a small 8.4oz radioactive device that is spot welded to any part of the merchandise which emits shrill radio signals in the 3Ghz spectrum culled from the choruses of 6 random songs from the 70s group ABBA. No device, person, or bat can overcome that!!!!
After that it will be the RFID blocker blocker blocking mechansim!
Man, these RFID people are getting desperate. First it was "it'll stop theft". Then it was "It'll keep food from getting spoiled/infected. And that'll keep food safe from....TERRORISTS!"(Don't worry, I missed that train of thought too, but the T word is like 'dot com' was a couple years ago, so...) Now it's "it'll help you do your laundry." If you can't remember how a certain shirt gets washed by the time the little printed tag wears out, you either need fewer clothing, or a brain. Besides, what's the washing machine gonna do, scream at you like your mom/girlfriend/wife/CowboyNeal would, for mixing the underwear with the christmas socks? How useful.
Now, of course, I have one question- I assume there'll be maybe two bits for water temperature(cold, cold/warm, warm, hot), two bits for fragile-ness(delicate, knit, perm, regular), maybe two bits for color-compatibility(how much it bleeds) and color(dark, color, white, etc).
The question is- can we get an Evil Bit added?
Please help metamoderate.
I think it would be cool to have a system where a device sends out all (or many) RFIDs to confuse a reciever.
Another thought is that it could send out a bunch of random RFIDs thus (hopefully) protecting anonymity but keeping statistics useful?
"One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the tags will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new radio-frequency overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their returned-goods and overstock caves."
-kgj
These things contain unique IDs. A shop will only be scan out and charge for an item that it has identified as being in stock. Once it's been purchased and scanned out of the system if you go back to the store (or another store) you won't be charged because that store knows it doesn't have a product with that ID to sell.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Why? Because there is one company out there trying to sell a device that does something and then someone else comes along and sells something that undoes that first thing. Well, pretty soon someone else will happen along to sell a third thing that undoes the second thing's undoing of the first thing essentially redoing what the first thing did in the first place. Kind of like Sylvester McBean. Only McBean was especially devious because he was one person playing both sides. Kind of like the phone company selling your name to telemarketers and then selling you caller ID. and then selling the telemarketers lines that don't respond to caller ID, and then selling you a service to block telemarketers. Either way we are better off with out the whole thing.
If it's possible to detect the source of a blocking tags, you could just be attracting far more attention to yourself in a store. Instead of a machine monitoring you, you could have a security guard...
This device sounds excellent. It does exactly what a privacy tool should -- it provides consumers with choice, rather than just arbitrarily having to accept whatever oligopolists throw at them.
What size range would the holes in a screen need to be to block RFID frequencies? I think it might be nice to embed such a mesh in the lining of a purse or jacket...
DES with 16 rounds is worse than the Russian GOST with 1024 rounds.
DES: key of 8 chars REDUCES to 8*7 = 56 bits REDUCES to 48 bits due to the key's compaction REDUCES to 32 bits because the E-permutation to take avalanche effect is not true (aka, the S-Boxes CONVERT CAREFULLY 48 bits to 32 bits).
DES is easy crackable with 32 bits of pseudo-key.
The AnTiCrYpToLoGiSt
Cool! I'll just incorporate a few anti-RFID tags into my tinfoil hat, and then let's see the CIA try their thought-control lasers on me!
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
... and block the RFID machine from reading the label on that Discman you have under your jacket.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Criminals ought to have a field day with that some day. My dad was telling me about those things the other day, Wal-Mart is supposed to start using them within the next 5 years.
What is slashdot?
Yeah, but Star-Bellied Sneetches are still superior.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Well once they make things to jam our jammers, we just need to jam their jammers; over and over ad infinitum.
The obvious response will be a "RFID blocker tag blocker" which will be able to overcome the RFID blocker tag and/or prohibit purchase of a blocked article.
Sounds like the "Caller ID > Caller ID Blocker > Anonymous Call Rejection" game all over again, with even bigger profit potential.
You've got to be kidding me. Obviously it would set it to warm, or it will tell you that you have mixed items. Perhaps you should ask yourself what would normaly happen if a human was doing this manually? Then perhaps that is what would happen here. Surely this is blindingly obvious?
I don't know about you, but if I paid for everything, and this anti-RFID watch thingy sets an alarm off and they want to check me, you can be DAMNED SURE i'm going to make a scene about it if I KNOW its the watch setting it off.
On a side note, I was wondering, when I worked at Kohl's and Blockbuster, we had product that had security tags on them. You'd swipe them to turn them off after they were purchased, but often times the machine didn't turn them off, and the customer would beep on the way out. Is the store allowed to make the person come back and check? If you don't go back and they chase after you, is that the same as accusing you of stealing? What are the legal restrictions on that (yeah.....i know, great place to ask for legal advice).
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I'm actually looking forward to these things. They should be easy to get and hack. Imagine the look on the salespersons face when their scanners indicate that you are currently wearing four truck tires and a goldfish.
Rather than being "silent" and not emitting any radio signals, whereby you would be in stealth mode, you will be emitting a radio signal that will stand out like a turd in the punchbowl.
You'll instantly be flagged as a renegade everywhere you go. You will be seen as not being a "team player" for one thing, and they will look at you as someone trying to hide something.
You'll be worse off by doing this than you would by destroying the tags and walking around undetected by the RFID readers.
The only hang up to that would be is if there are sonic or IR detectors to detect the physical presense of a human being which would then cause the RFID detectors to scan you.
No matter how you do it, it's going to be a BAD thing. People should just take it upon themselves to destroy the tags on the shelf and destroy the dectors when are where possible.
In case anyone wants to read the original paper on this it's at:
l o-TheBlockerTag.pdf
http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/JuelsRivestSzyd
For everything that you can just soak in water, like clothes or shavers or whatever, does it destroy them?
This reminds me of the discovery of X-Rays. New glasses were sold that supposedly allowed you to see through clothes and then new clothes that supposedly blocked X-Rays...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Yeah, that little perk was the frosting on my cake, as it were. Here is a tidbit many of us may recall:
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
All I want to know is when the military can start RFID-ing bullets and dog-tags. Think of the body count logistics! And then they could prove that none of their bullets were used to kill innocent civilians.
Oh wait forget it
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
If you put an RFID blocker on, I wish you luck getting into your workplace with your access control badge...You know AKA "Geek Badge"...
What about that little item sitting on your dashboard to go across bridges in the San Francisco Bay Area - I think they call it Fast Track...if you zip right through and have the blocker on - guess what.... Ticket from the bridge comission and California Highway Patrol (or other entity where you live).
Ahhh yes - such the rebel you are - not only will you get a ticket each day you zip through the toll booth with it turned on, and then when you get to work, you will think you got fired and your access removed!
To help you out, the phone company sold you an "unlisted number",
This is either FUD or things have changed. Every phone number I've had for the past 12 years has been unlisted and unpublished [1]. I've had my current number for 5 years now. I might get one telemarketing call every two months and they NEVER address me with my name.
[1] I do feel it is a rip off that I have to pay them to have this "unservice" but to me it is well worth the $2/month.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I foresee millions of directv style lawsuits where everyone who purchased one will be sued because they could use it to shoplift merchandise!
IANAL but my sister is and she gets really shitty about this.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Because they're so small you could hide them near the scanners and ensure they don't work at all. Of course it'll piss off the repair people. Doesn't work in the store. As soon as you take it away it does.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Ok, RFID are electronic in principle. Can't you stick your clothes in the microwave and fry the suckers? Just a though.
At least they will not intentionally do this. The reason they technically can make this work is that they can geve EVERY item a unique serial number. So, if its in their database of items in stock, then they charge you AND delete it from that database (or flag it, etc.) The cool thing about having unique serial numbers is that recalls become much simpler. Instead of saying recall every one of our product made on date X because production machine 1003 might have contaminated them, you say recall serial number's so and so. You can also do things like check the expiration dates on foods/medicines/etc by passing within the scan distance and checking them against the manufacturers exp data (although range I saw was currently limited to about 4 feet.)
One thing that does bother me is the manufacturers who feel this needs to be embeded in the product itself. I have not yet seen a good argument (besides marketing-same guys who bring us spam and pop-ups) for not just placing the things on the packaging which we can dispose of after we buy it. Even returns can be accomplished by requiring the packaging to come with it.
If I had a chip scanner, this way could drive up and down the neighborhoods and see who just got a new vcr, tv, xbox, playstation or whatever. It would be great for criminals because they can now keep track of who has what so they can steal to order - no longer random luck.
...by the jamming signal you're giving off?
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
You shut-up! Wynowna is innoscent. INNOSENT !!!
... whimper ...
Dint you see her eyes on TV????
AND Shes purdy!
shutup!!!
IANAL, but I have done some study in criminal justice and had actual experience with some of these things in several states:
No. If you are walking out of a store and any of these things happen you can simply ignore it and walk away:
1. An alarm goes off because a security tag was not removed/deactivated
2. An employee asks to see your receipt
3. Anyone asks you to please step back in the store or open a package for inspection
Most state laws require a store employee to witness a suspected thief take an item from the shelf/display, conseal it and leave the store without paying for the item. They (in most states) must witness this entire chain of events without loosing visual contact with the suspected thief. The visual part can be multiple employees coordinated via radio, or a network of cameras or a combination.
Unless a person stops you, identifies themselves and states that you are under arrest/detention for suspision of shoplifting, you may leave the store. If you refuse to cooperate you can be physically restrained and possibly charged with resisting arrest later. Anyone can arrest anyone in most any state, it's called citizen's arrest, and usually has all the legal force of a police arrest. If you attempt one you'd best have damned good probable cause and know EXACTLY what your state/local laws require you to do and say.
Any attempt to detain you outside those rules is seen as, at best, unlawful detention, and up to kidnapping.
If you refuse to cooperate, the store can refuse to allow you entry or service at a later time, but they can't do anything about the current situation.
I do this all the time: Home Depot's security tags frequently are not deactivated, and I just keep walking. I also refuse the "can I see your reciept" offers at all stores except CostCo. Because CostCo is a private "club", refusing the check means they could revoke my membership.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
You just need enough microwave current to disable the RFID, not torch it into an inferno. You should be able to titrate the amount of microwave time to successfully destro the RFID without undully affecting your posessions. Obviously you don't want to nuke your new ultra quiet Seagate hard drive....
..........FULL STOP.
A simple way to defeat EAS and RFID tags is to shield them from the electromagnetic field used to detect them. This has been on the TV news in the Netherlands: in a shopping mall in Amstelveen, a suburb of Amsterdam, shopping bags lined with tin foil are banned, and you are fined heavily if the police find you with one.
The only way that I can see it working is if stores keep a record of all RFIDs that they have in stock, and then only charge you if the RFID matches when you walk out.
How are they planning to actually administrate that? Scan all products on the way in? So they shove a pallet full of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs though their stock door and a mondo scanner reads the RFIDs off of every box? Or do they scan a barcode or type in a code that just says what should be on the stack?
What I'm interested in is the possibility of deliveries getting screwed up and RFIDs getting entered into the wrong systems. There's the problem with buying something at store X then store Y thinking that it belongs to them, but there's a problem for the stores as well. If you want to buy something and for some reason the RFID isn't on their system, how do they sell it to you? And should you buy it, knowing that the RFID might appear on their or store Y's system at some point?
And given that the biggest theft problem that many stores (especially supermarkets) face is employee theft, do they need RFID scanners on all their doors? If stock does go missing while it's still on the system, what happens to those RFID numbers? Do they just sit in there indefinitely, or is there a plan for removing them? What happens when Joe Customer walks in wearing or carrying something that he's bought second hand from an employee or shoplifter who obtained a five finger discount?
It won't take many of these incidents to put a hell of a dent in consumer confidence over RFID, quite aside from the privacy issue of stores knowing that you're wearing a rubber g-string and fishnet stockings under your suit pants.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
How do we remove the RFID from the CD?
-Put in microwave oven.
-set to 2 Seconds full power. (kids, do try this at home with your AOL cd collection!)
-Return CD to shop with a "this cd does not work on my player"
-Get refused a return because RFID is damaged.
I am not sure how I am going to deal with RF tags telling the stores what I have in my shopping bags as I leave the store. Stores will have no shame in this area. The increasing tendency of retail stores to search customer's bags as they leave the store is a good analog. They have no right to do this without the customer's consent unless they have actually seen you shoplift, but the security guards at the door are seldom told this so the situation sometimes becomes tense. I am constantly amazed at all the people who simply let themselves be searched for the privilege of walking into a store. Will this acquiescence to invasion of privacy extend to RF tags? Should it?
I never allow my bags to be searched by store security. Once I have paid for my purchases the items belong to me and not the store, including the bag the store gives me to carry them in. I will not allow my property to be searched. Datavision in NYC is particularly bad about this and I have been called names and shouted at for refusing to be searched. They have blocked my exit on several occasions which technically constitutes illegal detention. Although I make a point of remaining calm and reasonable during these confrontations I suspect that one day they are going to lay hands on me at which point there will be big trouble.
They say I have to let my bags be searched because they have a Company Policy to search all bags - how absurd. They think I am weird when I tell them that I can't be searched because I have a personal policy of not being searched by store personnel. Being the reasonable person I am I used to let them look at the receipt, but I don't even do that any more after they started refusing to give it back to me. Are they soon going to be able to search my bags and person electronically with RF tags with or without my permission?
Stores often try to justify their actions by posting a sign at the entrance saying they reserve the right to search all bags. So what? Posting a sign saying they want to violate customer's rights does not mean they can do it. They could easily post a sign "reserving the right" to strip-search all customers leaving the store, but that doesn't mean they can do it. Will we soon see signs saying "We reserve the right to electronically catalogue all items on your person as you leave the store"?
IMHO the big issue with RF tags is the opportunity for misuse by stores and governmental agencies. If we don't start saying NO now it will end up like it is with bag searches. The type of information on these tags shoud be restricted. Should Eddie Bauer know that I just bought shirts at Land's End? Or for that matter that I just had my prescription for insomnia filled at the local pharmacy? Or that I was in a northern Detroit suburb last August because that's where and when I bought my pants at an Eddie Bauer? The opportunities for misuse are practically limitless with this technology.
If your work has proximity swipe cards - you're already carrying round RFID. Slide the card inside tinfoil and you'll find it doesn't work. I discovered this when mine fell into the tin foil i use for wrapping my sandwiches...
A more proactive - albeit possibly legally dodgy as you'd be transmitting - would be to get a RFID transmitter that transmitted random RFID codes as you walked around the store. I believe this would be more effective in stopping RFID in that it would make the system worthless, flooding the system with reams of false data. Whether it needs doing is another thing - there's a degree of paranoia surrounding this whole thing, but I sure as hell don't want my purchases RFIDed.
Use the word "active" rather than "proactive" unless you intend to sound like George Bush.
If you have a device that blocks or scrambles the RFID tags' signal couldn't it be used to thwart the anti-theft functionality of them? Then it becomes an issue of aiding shoplifters. Yay, let's make the RFID folks look like saints while the implementers of this technology look like pirates and thieves. Yay!
Also, how long before the DMCA gets invoked on this? It is circumventing or disabling a security device.
I like the idea, but I'm afraid it'll never make it to market.
We are in the process of opening a family entertainment center where your membership card will be RFID. The scanners will be at cash registers, customer service desks & on games. Wanna play a game? Pass your card by the scanner, do it again to confirm & $.50 is deducted from your account. The range on the scanners will be about 2 inches.
How damn hard do you think it is going to be for me to troubleshoot the thing not working when some guy doesn't mention that he is wearing an RFID blocking watch? Or even worse, they make the things too damn strong & no machines work in a 12' radius around this guy.
Somebody please design an 'RFID Blocker Detector'. I don't care if they make one. I don't care if people wear one. I just can't have people wearing them in my facility.
As per the heat detectors used by the police to see if you were growing weed. We had that argument as our oral arguments at University of Dayton Law School. I argued that it was not constitutional and even though the Supreme Court gets it wrong on occasion, this time they did it right. Thanks for bringing it up.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
All speculation about EMF puleses, legality of blocking transmission by flooding a given frequency, etc. : That ain't how RSA's tag works.
When an RFID reader senses multiple tags, it "walks" a binary tree to find each tag in range. RSA's proposed 'blocker' tag responds to every branch of the tree... to the reader it appears that all tags are present, thus making it impossible to determine which tags are in reality present. The blocker tag obeys or violates laws or regulations exactly the same as a 'regular' tag... because it's doing the exact same thing, except it answers for every branch point. No EMF, no 'interference', no 'scrambling', nothing bad, just verbose!
Though it may not be technologically feasible, the whay it should work is that people should have to conciously do something to loose their privacy; not the other way 'round.
Plus, of course, as has been mentioned elsewhere, these blockers would likely break some of the basic functions for which RFID is designed. In theory, with RFID, you could wheel your fully-loaded shopping cart through the checkout isle, and everything in your cart would automatically be read via RF and added to your tab. Would save everyone tons of time at the checkout! Put shopping bags in your cart at the start of your trip, then place goods directly into the bags as you shop! But this breaks if you're wearing an RFID blocker.
Only $699 right now! If you wait a few months, it'll be $1199 (or whatever) per hat!
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
The government will step in and declare EMP a weapon of mass destruction if they haven't already.
-- No sig for you!
I can't find the troll text. Am I just missing it?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Great, now we all have to walk around with a personal electronic countermeasures pod. Where can I get my privacy intrusion seaking missle system?
When will the first DMCA/RFID/RFID Blocker suits be filed. I know right now this has nothing to do with copyright, but soon enough...
Industry gets to save millions by using RFID tags every year.
RSA security gets to earn millions by selling RFID blockers.
Sounds like a losing proposition *for* me.
Now if RSA security were in league with the RFID makers, the business model sounds suspiciously like
(1) Poison well.
(2) "Ask" for compensation for no longer poisoning well.
(3) Profit!
There are also "unpublished numbers" which some telcos offer. That basically means that the telco is only allowed to give your number to the police if they ask for it. I have it, and I get almost no telemarketing calls anymore.
Dude, I fell for it. I took the pill. I copy/pasted your sig into a linux shell, just to see what the hell, and there it was:
GET A LIFE!
I am so busted.