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NYT on RFID
The New York Times has a piece on RFID tags. It's basic, but worth reading as a milestone - the technology is starting to enter the public eye. These RFID tags will have unique serial numbers - every RFID-tagged item you purchase will be uniquely different from every other nearly-identical item, enabling it to be identified and associated with you long after the purchase. And no, microwaving will generally not destroy the tags, and no, most items won't be microwaveable anyway. Try to microwave your couch.
You mean you don't have a jiggawatt microwave gun?
That goes next on the list to a lime pit for all mad scientists.
1 tequila 2 tequila 3 tequila floor
But How does it benifit the end user, oh wait I don't have to wait as lon in the checkout line with five screaming kids and a trolley full of sofas
How to Find That Needle Hopelessly Lost in the Haystack
By BARNABY J. FEDER
ew product tags equipped with microchips and tiny antennas could one day make it easy to scan all the groceries in a bag simultaneously, allow businesses to locate any item in a warehouse instantly and enable the Defense Department to better manage inventories of mundane necessities like meals and spare boots. Hitachi announced this month that it has developed tags so small that they can be embedded in bank notes to foil money launderers and counterfeiters.
Tags with the technology known as radio frequency identification, or R.F.I.D., transmit a digital response when contacted by radio signals from scanning devices. Older versions of the technology have been around for decades, but now major manufacturers and retailers and the Defense Department are pushing to speed the development of a new version that could be read by scanners anywhere in the world, making it cheaper and more efficient to track the flow of goods from global suppliers to consumers.
The Defense Department expects to issue a statement in the next few days calling on suppliers to adopt the new version of the technology by 2005. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. made a similar announcement in July when it said it was requiring its top 100 suppliers to place tags with the new technology on cartons and pallets shipped to its stores by the end of 2004.
Radio frequency tags are currently used in products like wireless auto keys, toll collection systems and livestock and military armament tracking devices. A radio tagging system at Prada's store in SoHo in Manhattan identifies the clothes a shopper takes into a dressing room and allows the shopper to call up on an electronic screen images of the items being modeled and information about other colors and sizes.
But as business's interest in the technology grows, so do efforts by privacy advocates to place strict limits on its use.
"Very few people grasp the enormity of this," said Katherine Albrecht, director of Citizens Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, a group that was founded in 1999 to protest the use of frequent shopper cards and credit cards to collect data on individual consumers' purchasing habits.
Ms. Albrecht and other critics say that companies and government agencies will be able to monitor what people read or where they assemble from radio tags embedded in their books or woven into clothing. Unlike bar codes, which cannot be scanned unless a laser has a direct line of sight to them, the radio tags can be read through walls, and multiple tags can be read in an instant.
"R.F.I.D. certainly has value in the supply chain and in inventory management," said Beth Given, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. But she added that "there are so many potential issues once it gets beyond the point of sale that consumer protections need to be written into law."
Privacy advocates have suggested, among other things, that the tags be designed so that they cannot be reactivated once they are turned off, that all goods with a tag carry a consumer warning and that the tag must be removed when a product is sold unless the buyer agrees to leave it on.
In theory, there may be benefits from keeping the tags active once a product is sold. Washing machines, for example, might identify the clothes in a load and automatically select the appropriate cleaning cycle. And a smart medicine cabinet could tract the expiration on drugs.
Ms. Albrecht, however, has called for a one-year moratorium on using radio frequency tags on individual items while discussions about the implications of the technology take place.
The privacy concerns have already caused some technology managers to play down their interest in using the tags. The Benetton Group, the clothing retailer, for example, announced in response to consumer protests that it had not attached the tags to any individual clothing items. And Wal-Mart halted plans for a widely publici
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/29/technology/29TAG S.html?ex=1065412800&en=ae0b64773a522d63&ei=5062&p artner=GOOGLE
No, I didn't RTFA, as it requires a requires a registration. My question is, how long do the power sources in these things last? The link to EPC global did not answer that question.
Remember folks -- when you buy tinfoil, remember to remove the RFID tag from it before you make your hat.
Ha! I laughed at my buddy a few years back when he said that the U.N. could fly over your house and scan it to see how much money is in it. Now that is a reality. The RFID tags would be useful for inventory purposes, but the privacy thing is hard to shake. Who says that "advanced" criminals in the future won't develop a "super RFID scanner" and scan all of the houses in a neighborhood and "see" what goodies are in each house to try to figure out which house to rob. OR the government can use it to see which house is guilty of thought crime! :)
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Why aren't RFIDs used for baggage handling at airports? In Europe all baggage of a passenger has to be removed from the plane if this passenger does not board. This may lead to delays because they have to sift through every piece of luggage.
RFIDs should make this much easier...
We may not be able to stop companies from putting RFID tags on their stuff, which becomes *our* stuff when we buy it, but we sure as hell can find these tags and remove or destroy them after purchase.
How difficult would it be to build your own RFID detector? If it is too difficult for Joe and Jane Average, how much might one cost at WalMart/Target/Walgreens/geektoys.com?
Somebody want to start a business making these? I have a manufacturing background...
For RFIDs to be exploitable in the way many seem to think they will be, and for them to be at all useful in a similar manner to bar codes for taking product inventory and the like, they're going to have to have a very generic way of checking the code. Otherwise the store is going to need several readers to check their stock, and the whole usefulness of the scheme will be lost.
If they can read it easily, you can read it easily. It's just a matter of getting a much lower power transciever or tweaking the wavelength in an existing one to manipulate the distance of the read -- you can easily narrow down the position of an RFID tag in an object if you have a modified reader that only works from a millimeter away, right?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Why should I? I'm not paranoid.
That's because you don't understand the dangers. The knee jerk reaction to this type of story is to worry about "big brother", government spooks, or whatever. But that's not where the danger lies...
What you do is becoming more and more traceable. Every telephone call you make on a mobile phone, for instance, is logged and traceable back to you. Don't need to worry about this because you're not paranoid? Think again. You see, it's not the government you need to worry about. It's your wife or girlfriend!
Sometime in the near future...
Wifie: Hey, I brought one of those personal stuff locators today, you know, the ones that locate stuff by RFID tags?
Nervous husband: Oh, erm. That will be useful...
Wifie: Yes, very useful. I found a large heap of pornographic magazines on top of the wardrobe...
Nervous husband: Oh! Erm... That's...
Wifie: And why do you keep condoms hidden in the back of your washbag? I'm on the pill. The machine says they were purchased only last week.
Nervous husband: Ah! Now then... I. Erm...
I'm guessing you're not paranoid because you're not married or you don't have a long term girlfriend. You will be...
yes, if you RTFA instead of just cut'n'paste whoring, it gives examples of a smart washing machine detecting clothes and a smart cabinet detecting medicine.
surely it'd be better if the washing machine could read the appropriate temperature etc. for the clothes rather than have to connect to some database? as well as being simpler and having less privacy concerns it would be more reliable as you aren't dependent on an external database being maintained just to look up a few properties of the product.
I have to admit, I can see why retailers would want to exploit RFID tags. It would save them a lot of money in labor, as well as reducing the load on any loss prevention manager. This boils down to either more profits or lower consumer costs.
I have three opinions about them.
1) Everything you buy that contains an RFID tag must be properly labeled. The consumer should know what they are buying.
2) There should be a way to easily disable them after taking the product home. Ideally, they should be deactivated on your way out the door, but there are complications(non-technical) hindering the store's choices.
3) Any product that has a unique characteristic or property shouldn't have an RFID tag. For instance, if I go to the local Sears, Home Depot, Lowes, whatever and buy a personal fire safe(w/o the changeable combinations), I wouldn't want the safe to have it's combination somewhere indexed to the RFID chip's serial number. There is a greater security risk here, this is but one example.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Would microwaving (whatsoever) the tag in a bank note render the note unusable? Will shops also have machines for automatically alerting the local police if I try paying with one of the forged ones?
What if I, without knowing it, carry such a note?
Guantanamo calls.
I'll worry about this when someone makes a reader that works well when several tags are in the field at one time. Currently farmers downunder are getting RFID tags for all their cows and most sheep. The farmers are sort of sold on a concept like Mr Spock's transponder saying Bessy is 126 meters at heading 74 with an arrow pointing at the cow. The problem is the current readers are good to read a cows tag at nearly .5 meters and when you consider how wide a cow is there is a bit of a problem.
In an unrelated subject, if someone has any clue about RF and DSPs and pulling several cruddy analog low powered alalog signals out of the either, I know someone that would like to talk to you.
It will be a kind of everyone lives in glass houses society. The only people with privacy will be nudists.
As far as good uses for RFID after you bought something with a tag:
- Imagine your refridgerator knowing what you had in it, and how old it was. The same for your pantry.. and then applications where this data is used with a database to pull up recipes you can make with what you've got on hand.
- On the other side, trash cans that know what you throw away and if it's a recurring item (milk, razors, DEODERANT!) it can add it to your shopping cart (this could bring back things like webvan).
- Washer and Dryer that knows when you've mixed your colors with your whites and warns you (because your clothes too are tagged).
- Insurance... you could walk around in your own home pulling all the tags for things to archive your stuff for your homeowner's insurance.
Dear Slashdot,
Following some advice that I read on a popular website, I attempted to microwave my couch. In the subsequent house fire, I lost many of my prized possessions, and my microwave oven was damaged beyond repair.
Do I have recourse to legal action in this matter?
Not so long ago, we had a story here in the Netherlands where a shop was able to locate people who bought a certain item, which was poluted by someone wanting to damage a company, because these people had used a bonus card, with a unique number identifying them, and because the shop did register who sold what. Some people had become seriously ill after eating the contaminated product. Luckily, they all recovered.
Well, this is the exact type of use RFIDs are good for. Borders knows you bought that last week because the object is unique and is registered as sold in their database. And if the consumer protection groups are able to do what I think they will try to do, you will have elected to turn the RFID off at the point of purchase and they will have done so, for fear of you detecting it with your homemade RFID detector and suing them for invasion of privacy.
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg. -- Samuel Butler
If a manufacturer wants to stop resale of it's goods on the second hand market (think: CD, software, E-book) it says so on the packet and puts a unique RFID into every item.
Then it goes round the car boot sales and picks up the items (doesn't even need to buy/touch them - scan as they walk by), tie back to the original sale (you did pay by credit card didn't you ?) and hit you with a court case.
Result: more profit
But what is worrying is when information about you is used in ways to control your behaviour. For instance, if you are thinking about quitting smoking and purchase the patches to help with the cravings. Those interested will track your movements along with the movements of other "quitters" to place smoking triggers along your path to make it that much hard for you to shake the habit.
Perhaps you're a person who has bought a lottery ticket or two. Suddenly you're flooded with all kinds of gambling offers. Sure, you can say no to their offers, but what will others think when they see you getting that barage of junk mail to visit all those cassinos? What will your boss think when they start sending those offers to your office?
Most of us live lives of moderation. We like to take in occasional vices, but we mostly try to keep things pretty mundane. But this isn't allowed in the corperate world. They have to seek out potentially new exploits to justify getting an MBA. Any information that they can get will allow them to find a wedge between you and your better judgement.
I know, I know... You're too smart for their tactics. You're in control of your own destiny. It doesn't bother you when they mercilessly pick away at you. You're just content to sit back in your recliner watching "Matlock" re-runs on cable.
The sad part is, people don't see any value in privacy, because they don't realize the benefits it allows. Being anonymous allows you to have your turn next in line, and receive the same amount of respect as a person who is twice as affluent as your are. Once your personal worth is on the table with everyone else's, your value in society has just been broadcasted, and you will wait until those more worthy have been served no matter how long you've been waiting. You may never be served at that rate...
Oh, but you'll just head on to their competitors, right? Think again. They bought the same list. They also know that you'll be more desperate than before since they knew where you were coming from... Now they can really ream your wallet *IF* they decide you're worth having as a customer.
Privacy also allows you to be forgiven for your past mistakes more easily. Who hasn't made a mistake or exercised poor judgement when they were more youthful? It's the foundation of experience, but if your subordinates know every detail, they aren't as likely to be as subordinate. How can you credibly jump on them for making the same mistakes you used to?
Privacy has a very real value for people in society. It's not just about dirty magazines or illicite affairs. It's about not having to worry what the score is every moment of your life. It about not having to be publicly humiliated at unexpected moments. It's about maintaining person dignity and self-respect.
If you don't have any respect for yourself to keep private things private, how can you expect anyone else to respect you as well?
"But How does it benifit the end user, oh wait I don't have to "
For that all you need is an ID thats unique PER PRODUCT, not PER INSTANCE OF THE PRODUCT.
Its the individually unique ID thats the problem here, if it was like barcodes (identifying the product) it wouldn't be such a problem.
begins.
They are going to put these in tires. When you buy your tires the seller is going to be required to enter your information in a database.
One day when you are going a little too fast in a school zone or run a yellow that switches to red too fast an underground computer is going to sense the rfid in your tire, immediately reporting the number via rf link to police headquarters.
You would think that this would be for the purpose of giving you a ticket. You're right, you will get a ticket. But that is not the end the trail for your rfid number.
It immediately gets sent to the state government where it checks to make sure you are not a deadbeat dad that the wherabouts of are unknown. Simultaneously sending it to the FBI to see if you are a name on the "patriot" act watchlist and indexes your location. If you drive on the same street on a regular basis they will know where to find you.
You're not a deadbeatdad, lawbreaker, or terrorist you say??? Well the trail that your rfid number takes does not end there. Your rfid number is sold by cashed-strapped states to a commercial database under the auspices of "risk mitigation" that insurance companies subscribe to. Because you were speeding, you are at an increased risk and your car insurance rates are subsquently raised. Because you drive dangerously, your health insurance rates are also raised. Maybe they cancel your policy outright.
You're thinking I'll just remove the rfid. No you won't. Driving with unregistered tires is against the law, and if the police can't scan you as you drive past his cruiser he pulls you over and immediately suspends your license and impounds your car. But you won't be able to remove it anyway, without destroying the tire, as it is purposefully integrated with the "steel belt".
Does the trail end for your rfid tire number now? No, it most certainly doesn't. To see where it leads further, you are going to have to talk to my patent attorney.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
You don't have to disable RFID tags to screw with the data collection and tracking systems. If you are able to find and collect RFID tags you can carry them around with you wherever you go. Imagine having three or four car RFID tags on you as well as about a hundred refridgerator RFID tags. Dumpster diving for RFID tags would be great fun. You'd have tags from stuff that never really led back to you and would confuse the hell out of anyone trying to make sense of the history of the items. You could do things like remove all of the RFID tags from your clothes and keep only one RFID tag in your wallet that was from a pair of underwear. If anyone looked at the data they'd think some guy in the same pair of underwear he's been wearing for weeks is walking around carrying a few cars and a bunch of Refridgerators.
This would be much more fun than filling our frequent shopper cards with bogus information or completing surveys with ridiculous answers.
The RFID chip works in conjunction with a tuned circuit {capacitor and coil; the coil also behaves as an antenna} that extracts energy from an applied RF field. The resonant frequency of this tuned circuit is the operating frequency for the system. The size of the coil determines the operating range. An RFID device with integral tuned circuit measures about 20mm. by 10mm. by 2mm. and has a range of a few cm. A smaller device would require an external coil, but the bigger coil would extend the working range.
The transmitter feeds an RF power amp with a sensitive ammeter in one of its power supply leads.
Now, when the tuned circuit is brought within range of the transmitter, it will pick up the signal. But that is all. A voltage will be induced across the system, and a current will flow, but they will be out of phase. When the voltage is at a peak, the current is nil, and vice versa. Recall that power = voltage * current, so there is no power. Bringing the tuned circuit into range of the transmitter will not affect the ammeter reading.
However, if you connect a resistance across the two ends of the tuned circuit, then the current across this resistance will be in phase with the voltage. Energy is now being changed from electromagnetic waves to heat. And, strictly in accordance with the first law of thermodynamics, the reading on the ammeter will go up. Reduce the resistance and it will go up more. Of course, the imperfect coupling from transmitter to receiver itself behaves like a big resistance, which effectively limits the power available for the receiver {and therefore the ammeter swing}.
Anyway, if we switch this resistance in and out of circuit, we can watch the ammeter moving in sympathy with the switching.
The RFID tag gets its power by rectifying the AC induced in the tuned circuit, and using this to charge a capacitor. This capacitor stores enough energy to allow the tag to miss a few cycles, because it unavoidably will as a consequence of how it works. The tag then switches on and off a transistor which sits across the bridge rectifier {a transistor only conducts in one direction} in accordance with a predefined pattern. When the transistor turns on, more power is drawn from the transmitter. {As a side effect, the voltage is pulled down and the RFID tag has to rely on the capacitor contents to keep in this state, remember how far through the sequence it is, and so forth; so this state lasts only a few cycles}. The transmitter can see, by measuring the supply current to the RF power amp, whether the transistor in the RFID tag is on or off.
The external RF field also provides a stable timing reference to the tag, because it can count cycles accurately and dead-reckon a few cycles when it has to.
So, we have a one-way communication from the RFID tag to the transmitter, even though the RFID tag has no power supply of its own. If the RFID tag is absent or high resistance, this is a zero. When the RFID tag goes low-resistance, the transmitter can see this as a one. This allows us to send a binary number from the RFID tag.
All the RFID tag does, once it comes into range of the transmitter, is continuously send out a series of zeros and ones by going low and high resistance. It is up to the transmitter to spot the resistance of the remote end.
It is also possible to send data to the RFID tag, by switching the RF field on and off. While this could be used for programming of tags with serial numbers {instead of laser etching as is currently done}, it would require the tag to have some sort of EEPROM or Flash memory. These devices currently have a high power demand making them unsuitable for operation on RF power alone, but recall Clarke's first law: When a scientist says something is possible they are usually right; when a scientist says something is impossible they are usually wrong. So it is almost certain that future RFID tags could be reprogrammable.
The canonical method for deactivating
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Part 1, in my driveway. Not possible, car sits in locked, windowless garage at all time, with alarm on door. Garage is part of inner house structure. Car does not leave for work as work is within walking distance. Part 3, toll booths. Dont have any, never seen one, ever. Part 4. If they're bored enough to set up tracking units on dirt roads, make it look perfectly like a healthy growing tree or passing deer, as they'd have to as there is NOTHING ELSE HERE. Then they can have the car id. Your still an idiot.
*There's Klingons on the starboard bow, scrape em off Jim!*
How many folks that are paranoid about rfid tags currently own and use a cell phone? Or have a discount card from their grocery store?
The longest range I know of on RFID (I write code for a company that implements wireless solutions, mostly in warehouses) is almost 20 ft. And that's at very high frequencies (14MHz, with active tags (they're quite a bit more expensive) and using lots of power (up to 60w). Texas Instruments makes a decent one, but so do the likes of Brady, Symbol, etc... This is nothing new...
Besides, they're just tags. Removable. If you think someone is going to be watching your purchased items, throw the tag away. Fairly simple really.
But if you have no cell phone, wear aluminum hats, etc... you could always make your own furniture...
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
...this isn't something to be worried about so long as you haven't been doing anything wrong.
I really wish people wouldn't use this argument for anything. You see, "wrong" is subjective. And unfortunately, in many governments of the world today, that which is wrong is determined by those with money and influence over legislators.
Today I'm doing nothing wrong by owning the book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy", but if those in power deem that to be wrong tomorrow, I'd better find a way to keep that from their attention.
We must fight RFID's by refusing to purchase products that employ them. And as for companies that use them, even in business practice to label pallettes, we must boycott their products and services.
I have some comments on the use of RFID, since I'm currently researching them now. I don't have too much to say about consumer rights on the issue, but thought my work is relavant to the topic of RFID in general.
.05% if they used RFID in combo with their current tracking system. You can't imagine the cost of placing the wrong container on the wrong ship; we're talking easily 6 figures or more.
I'm in the shipping industry and although we're not the end-consumer, I can tell you that many container terminals in the US (and probably overseas) will likely be looking to RFID to further automate the process of container tracking and increase effeciency in yard operations.
I'm working on investigating them now in terms of feasability, etc. It's very interesting to look at the productivity and error reduction advances that can be made using RFID. The only challege we have is getting the container owner/leasors to put them on the containers and keep them there (i.e. they get damaged easily with the use of heavy machinery on the docks). Plus the longshoremen don't like the automation because it threatens their jobs and they'll try to damage the system if possible.
The biggest gain is reducing mistakes, which relates to how many retail places are looking at using them. I doubt anyone wants to track your sofa to you, but Ikea probably wants to know the history of that piece of furniture in terms of returns, etc. Plus they'd like to know where it is in their warehouse. There are some cool triangulation technologies out there which can find an RFID tag in a 3-dimensional space.
For us, we use what are called "top-picks" which are these wheeled or track based container lifts that can move over the top of a stack of containers and lift them and move them around. There is a terminal operator in LA who has a real-time 3d view of the stack for the operator, all based on what their TOS (terminal operating system) knows about that stack. They have errors, and they're thinking they can reduce the error rate to less than
Anyway, RFID tags have a role in manufacturing and operations such as ours. The cost is worth it (we estimate currently at $1-$2 per tag) because the gain in enormous. Additionally the optical technologies our there (OCR and such) just can't achieve the success rates (trying writing software to read the trucks beat up old license place). I think we'll see more and more of them, especially in the warehousing and retail world, as well as in the heavy industries like mine. I don't know about the whole "walk out the door checkout", thing as I think there's some margin of error there that the store won't want to take, plus the privacy issues (as pointed out over and over in other users posts) are of course a factor. However, consumers, espically in the US, continue to be blind to them for other technologies such as the grocery store "cards". However I don't believe poeple will willing get an RFID card for a store unless they have a financial incentive to do so, like the discounts the grocery cards bring to them.
Cheers,
Colin
I just bought the C&C expansion pack, Zero Hour, and inside the CD case itself (behind the front label) was affixed the standard little rectangle (to trip sensors in case you try to steal the game) but underneath it was a 1.5x1.5 RFID patch. This is the first time I've seen an RFID tag used for videogames..
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
>Try to microwave your couch.
Following Slashdot's written instructions, and in reliance on their good faith, I experienced the following adverse consequences.
Lifting the couch to the microwave caused a back injury which has limited my daily activities, interfered with my ability to earn a living, and caused continuing pain and suffering.
In order to fit the couch into the microwave, it was necessary to disassemble the couch. Some of the structural pieces have not gone back together properly. Slashdot will, I am certain, see the advantages of a negotiated agreement compensating me for the loss of use of my couch, and for the additional injuries suffered when I tried to sit on it after reassembling it.
An irritating smoke was released while microwaving the fabric and stuffing. I have had continuing respiratory symptoms and am suffering psychic pain over the fear that I may have been exposed to carcinogens.
Severe electrical arcing occurred near the springs while the sofa pieces were in the microwave. This started a fire which destroyed my house. I also expect compensation for destruction of property, and for living expenses while the house is being rebuilt.
Please contact my legal counsel with the address for service of process, and the policy number and name of carrier for your liability insurance.
(It's a joke, son).