Slashdot Mirror
And They Shall Know You By Your Books
Val42K writes "People have been concerned about provisions of the Patriot Act that would grant law enforcement access to your library records. Now libraries are considering placing RFID tags into books instead of barcodes. The RFID tags will (supposedly) be turned off when you check out of the library, but could they be turned back on? What about the possibility of you being located and tracked by the books that you carry?"
I didn't realize RFID tags could be turned off. Are they not basically passive "reflectors", powered by the scanner's signal?
Anyway - from a privacy perspective there is much to fear about how RFID will be misued. However, as a geek I can not overlook the incredible myriad of practical uses for them. To be pragmatic about it, I'm quite sure that such uses will override the privacy concerns in the long run, just as credit cards have done to cash, for example. The best we can do, I think, is to push for sane privacy legislation like we don't have for banking.
I mean, how cool would it be if you ran a restaurant, for example, and you never had to keep track of what food to order? Your garbage can would just detect that your chef had thrown a tomato can, and add a new can of tomatoes to the next delivery. I can think of a thousand practical uses for RFID and I suggest that any geek with foresight should be thinking not about how to stop RFID, but how to protect our privacy in a world which will inevitably be filled with billions of the little things.
well this tracking must explain my impulses for buying Catcher in the Rye all the time :-p
For those of you who are wondering the movie, Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts
...in bed
RFIDs wouldnt be bad. If they threw one in your library card too, that would be good. You could then just grab your books, and walk out the doors, with it automatically being thrown on your card.
The library here in San Francisco is considering doing just that. The point was made that privacy really depends on how they do the RFID tags: do they contain only the ISBN code or do they contain a serial number? Of course, any library could switch from the ISBN system to a serial number system at the bequest of Ashcroft and his thugs.
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
Quick.. get a towel, soak it in water and wrap it round your head!!
;)
They are out to get you!!
I thought the general consensus of librarians was that the USA PATRIOT Act was wrong. Why would they further promote it?
(Yes, I know it's the San Francisco Public Library, but it has to be a very isolated incident.)
"Conspiracy Theory"
I can imagine you borrow "The Catcher in the Rye" and an alarm goes off and black helicopters are at your house!
They already know me by the trail of my dead. So I'm kinda screwed anyway.
Oh yeah, black helicopters!
Seriously, Slashdot seems to have no problem stifling technology when it gives rise to insane, improbable conspiracy theories.
Library Wants to Put Chips in Books
In soviet russia, they put books in chips!
Why won't they just attatch a big sign saying "Hey! My name is foo bar, i'm working at foo doing bar, my homephone is +0160003960132, my political oppinions are foobar" to your back?
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Conspiracy Theory anyone? Better not borrow "Cather in the Rye" heh. and yes, I have read the book on my own, not in high school (although I did read it then too)
I think so!
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
What about the possibility of you being located and tracked by the books that you carry?
Man, some people really have a bloated self-image if they think "the man" is so interested in them as to track everything they do.
Seriously, get a frigging grip people.
- Read the book at the library
- Photocopy the pages requires
- Get someone *else* to check the book out for you
- If it's recent enough, order/buy the book at a bookstore, use cash.
Any other suggestions?Call on God, but row AWAY from the rocks!
Nothing like a really dumb conspiracy theory to hold back progress. People, these tags are readable up to a few inches. Maybe a foot at most. They are nothing but glorified bar codes. Good for tracking inventory at most.
Do you use credit? Do you have a license? SIN? Bank card? Trust me, you have more things to worry about being tracked by than your stupid library purchases.
This will just make checking out books a bit easier. Walk through the RFID scanner, swipe you library card, and walk out. The "man" can track your book useage by your library card anyway.
Also, every library I've been in has had those theft prevention devices that beep like crazy if you pass one of the books through them. This could make it a bit easier for the library to figure out just what book got taken.
This seems like an actual good use for RFID. It should be carefully eyed, but not just dismissed because RFID is somehow involved.
the big deal behind these things. What exactly are people doing that they are so paranoid that people are watching/tracking them? If you're just another regular Joe who is going to take the time to abuse this technology and use it against you?
If you've attracted enough attention to yourself that someone is trying to track/stalk/gather information about you...chances are they'll do it any way they can and not say "Oh poo, I wish I could use RFID tags against this person!" and give up.
I wonder how far away those buggers can be read from? not more than a few meters, I think, so if there is a person 'tracking' you with them, they can probobly see you. Also if there is a way to turn these thing off (or destroy them for items like clothes or furniture) or a way to block the readers if there is a network of readers to fear the geek community will find it.
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
Better return that copy of 1984 I took out the other day. Now wheres that bottle of Victory Gin I had?
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Simply pack the books you borrow into tinfoil, or an aluminium case. It is really very easy to cut radio waves around small objects.
You could just shield the inside of your bag with any metal foil.
What are you gonna do, head out into the fields
every morning and bring in a basketfull? Actually,
you'd order them from someone - someone who, if
they wanted your business, would employ RFID packaging.
The amount of time you can save with this sort
of technology makes it way too worth it. And this
comes from someone who saw a lot of the restaurant
busienss for a while.
I agree, of course, that they really shouldn't be digging through your book records.
But seriously, who checks out books at libraries anymore?
(OK, I went to the eng library to get a book on distributed systems, but for the most part general public libraries have a shit selection in my opinion.)
A lot of libraries do something like this already - at the University that I attended, and the one that I now work at, they just slide the book past some sort of detector to check it in/out. And of course there are detectors by the exits to check if you're trying to steal books. Irritatingly it's set off by books from my local public library as well, which is a bit of a bugger when you're carrying books from one and trying to leave the other.
The obvious difference here is that there will allegedly soon be RFID detectors everywhere rather than just in the libraries, but other than that, it's a pretty bloody obvious and sensible thing to do.
Hey, did you leave home without your tin foil hat this morning?
I've been researching RFID quite a bit in the past few days - we're planning to use it for an application to greet visitors in our building. The problem is that so called "passsive" tags (without batteries, powered by RF from the antenna) have a maximum range of 1.5 to 2 meters - and that's with the big gate type antennas used for most store theft prevention.
Active RFID contains a battery and can be tracked much further away, from 6 to 100ft, but it's impractical b/c the tags are expensive ($10+) and somewhat large. Many automated toll collection systems use active RFID.
Also, not all RFID systems are compatible. So unless the guv'mnt decides to install those big gate antennas all over your local neighborhood, this whole passive RFID paranoia is mainly just FUD.
Just don't check out (heck, don't even buy) "Catcher in the Rye". Black helicopters galore...
I think that the poster makes a misconnection regarding the new privileges in the patriot act (as much as I hate it) and this theory about book spying. The library record clause of the patriot act is scary in and of itself, and as far as I'm concerned, provides much more to be worried about than this new issue because it gives the government a much easier way of quickly determining "terrorist sudpects" (why clandestinly scan the books in people's hands as they walk out the library door or as they're hanging out reading in starbucks when you can just ask the library directly what they have checked out?) - but certainly, the two ideas for pseudo spying are fairly unconnected.
Sheesh. Now I have to microwave my library books as well? I wonder if they'll mind the books coming back smelling like hot dogs?
StopRFID FAQ
Two words: Tinfoil backpack.
if tracking by rfid will save me on $40 late fees, i'm cool
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Date: the not-so-distant future
Time: 9:37 PM
Location: Chicago, unspecified subway stop
A student gets off the train onto a semi-darkened platform, the only one there. He checks his watch, tries not to panic. He needs to get back to his apartment, and fast. He has a term paper to write and only thirty-three hours left to do it.
As he heads for the revolving gate, he's blocked by a stranger in a dark suit, dark glasses, and a hat. The hat obscures whatever features the glasses leave visible. He speaks. His tone tells the student that he is very, very serious about what he has to say.
"Roger Thomas Richardson." The stranger adjusts his posture, hands in his pockets, features still obscured. "Age twenty-two, unmarried. Profession: university student. Major: Far Eastern religion. GPA: 3.8 and dropping, but your advisor believes you have a chance to change that." He pauses, takes a slow breath. "Am I correct?"
"Who... who are you?" says Roger, trying badly to hold his ground. "What do you want from me?"
"What do I want?" The stranger takes a piece of folded paper from his pocket, unfolds it, makes a gesture of reading it. "I want a book, Mister Richardson. Specifically the book A Contemporary Analysis of World Religions by Chang A. Yin, ISBN number 079236139X, published 1982. Copy number one of one held by the Chicago Public Library." He refolded the paper, stuck it back in his pocket, straightened his coat. "You're overdue, Mister Richardson."
"What? I... I thought I had three weeks... I called, they said...."
"You called to renew, Mister Richardson, but you have been denied that renewal. There is another student in your class who needs that book just as badly as you do. More badly, in fact. If he does not complete his paper in time with a spectacular passing grade, there are...certain people who will be very disappointed. Very disappointed indeed, Mister Richardson."
The stranger reached inside his coat, took something from the breast pocket. It was a pair of scissors. They gleamed in the fluorescent lights of the subway. Two men, unheard, grabbed Richard's arms from behind and twisted them around his back. Richard could feel his shoulder try to dislocate under the pressure. He winced, tried not to scream in pain, and failed.
"We want that book now, Mister Richardson. We know you have it on you. And when we have the book, we want you to give us..." he snipped the scissors once, the metallic snip echoing again and again down the subway tunnels. He grinned, and his perfect white teeth were reflected perfectly for Richard in the blades of the scissors.
"...we want your library card."
Get a grip on reality and drop the unhealthy paranoia and tin foil hat.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
Is this really practical? They are literally (hah!) going to tag 2 million + books? Time is money sure, but does the time it take to tag this many books and the cost, really out way the time saved locating books that get lost in simple tracking?
Also, how do you deactivate a passive device?
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
Anyone who complains about library monitoring is stupid. I mean didn't you see how they caught that weirdo in the movie "Seven"?
We can learn a lot from Hollywood.
-Thank you.
J.Bruckheimer
If putting rfid tags can let them track you, that means whenever you travel by air and check luggage in, you are being tracked. That's because checked baggage is being tracked by rfid tags now. once the bag is checked in, a computerized system keeps track of the bag till it completes security screeing inside the baggage handling system till it reaches the gates where the bags are loaded into the aircraft. But, once the bag reaches the gate, the tag cannot be removed, as the bag needs to be delivered to the right place in the destinantion airport. So, you take the bag and the tag home with you, thus creating a possiblity of being tracked. In that case, being tracked by books should not worry us as we are already being tracked!
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
SELECT RFID FROM tLibrary WHERE Gender = 'Female' AND Married = 0 AND BookCat = 'RomanceNovels'
Address = GetGPSLoc(RFID)
"Well hello there, lonely lady. My name is Quagmire. He Heh, Alllll right!"
These things are usually BOTH passive and active at once. That's one of the reasons they're so powerful. The ability to be passive and active simultaneously, or to be passive and active at the same time, results in the mightiest heroes. System.
Don't you remember that the gin ration was increased to 0 mL. It was to celebrate our great victory over the evil axis of Eurasian and Eastaisan conspirators. Remeber HATE, It's in you to give. Brought to you by your comrades at the Ministry of Truth.
RMS wrote about something similar last year.
Now, if you excuse me, I'll have to go buy a copy of Catcher in the rye...
I think you need to head back to class, chief. This is some reporter getting creative with his language. It doesn't "report" to anything, it's just registered as a passive device.
Borrow the books and scan them and take them right back. They can't RFID a jpeg in my laptop.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Disabling the EAS feature does not affect the ability to read out data from the tags.
Government, eh? Of the people, by the people and for the people. What country do you think you live in?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
paranoid crackas! get a life!
What kind of RFID is this?
For most RFID tags to work you have to be a few inches from the scanner. It's very hard to locate people this way.
The USA. What's your point?
What exactly are people doing that they are so paranoid that people are watching/tracking them? If you're just another regular Joe who is going to take the time to abuse this technology and use it against you?
The same thing could be said about generalized, anytime, anywhere, wiretapping.
If you're not doing anything, you have nothing to worry about.
BS. It's nunya dam bidness what books I check out, or whom I have a telephone conversation with.
With these things, it just makes it easier to monitor who takes out what book. They wouldn't monitor "you", but instead just get a weekly/monthly dump from the scanner at the library door, and filter for keywords. "Explosive", "Semtex", "subversive keyword of the day", etc, etc.
"Oh look, Ralphie has taken out a few books on weapons construction. Let's keep an eye on HIM."
that you can encase them in to stop them from working. If you put them in one of these, for example.
Probably I would not be able to take from library the book "How to build a nuke in your garage in 2 hours" withouth having the FBI allover me.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
Idea for a new slashdot poll:
"Assume your local library replaces bar codes with RFID tags. Are you ACTUALLY worried that this will be a material violation of your privacy?"
Come on, people, aren't there about a million more important things to worry about?!
But the dogs will carry RFIDs on their collars so you can easily sue the owner.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
Once saw a student at Stanford go charging out of the library through a turnstile, unaware that the turnstile was connected to the uncharged-book detector. The turnstile locked and he was bent double over the turnstile bar.
Aye, there's the rub.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
This isn't that big a privacy issue. A library needs to identify individual copies of a book, not just title information. If a library system has three branches and each branch has a copy of a book, the library needs to know that the copy from branch A was checked out but that branches B and C still have copies on-shelf. If the RFID returned something like an ISBN, that wouldn't be possible since the ISBN is tied to the title and edition, but not the specific copy.
Right now, there are dozens of major systems for handling book identification (currently via barcode) and circulation. Even if you could grab a book's RFID-encoded ID number, it wouldn't tell you anything unless you knew what library system it came from, what circulation system they use, and had access to that circulation system. Most libraries' public catalogs don't let you search by item number, only by ISBN, title, call number, etc. In other words, the only people who could effectively track your book would be the library system that owns it. And since they already know what you're checking out, who cares?
My local library (Colchester, UK) is already doing this. To check out books, I now have to place the books on the counter and swipe my library card through the computer. The titles of the books pop up on the screen, a recipt is printed and then I can go. My only concern is that someone (government, police) could set up a scanner elswhere to scan for "dangerous" books such as "Why people hate America."
I bought a second hand book from them recently. The first thing I did was rip out the label from the back containing the RFID tag.
A latent existence
And quoth the first responder:
They make it feasible for a sufficiently savvy agency to see who is taking what books out of the library by scanning at a distance, or even seeing who had what book in their hands at the tables inside. If you think that the dropped ceilings in most libraries don't have enough space to hide all kinds of radio gear and directional antennas, you don't know enough E&M.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
There's a rumor circulating that THEY are planning to place
:(
RFID tags on tinfoil to track you everywhere you go or stay.
Now that's what I call a total control.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I haven't seen any microwave comments yet... so hear I go:
Just slap the books in the microwave for a few seconds. The energy carried by microwaves is very powerful - more than enough to destroy any electronics. It will induce a charge in the circuits that shorts them out - why do you think putting metal in a microwave is bad?
On a side note, you can remove the front cover of a microwave than use it as a electronics-destroying machine....
-Colin
The RFID's were visible behind the due date card slot glued to the inside of the back cover. There was only one entrance and exit to the library which was bordered by RFID checking gates. If a person walked through them carrying a book he shouldn't have (or at least the actual RFID, which could be removed from the book and discreetly deposited in an unsuspecting student's backpack) a loud beeping would go off.
Anyways, the system worked fine.
Doubleplusungood. We are at war with Eurasia, so we must have always been at war with Eurasia. As long as I dont have to go back to room 101 and face.. them..
Underneath the spreading Chestnut tree...
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Just enter a mall and scan for females carrying at least two volumes of Knuth.
So, everyone is worried about privacy. I am too. But maybe, just maybe the real solution is not to secure privacy, but to completely eliminate privacy from the top to the bottom. No privacy for me. No privacy for you. And no privacy for Bush either. No privacy for CEO's, secretaries, geeks, diplomats, even private detectives. Not for the cops, certainly, and not for the FBI either. Its all there for everyone to see, anytime. So, if they can track my reading habits, I sure as hell should be able to track theirs. Just maybe it would work. Sounds crazy, but maybe. What scares me about privacy violations is not so much that my privacy is violated, but that the footing between me and the snoop are not equal...that they have power and authority to spy on me, but I do not have the power and authority to spy on them.
Logic, macros, and more
Didnt Ray Bradbury right a book about this?
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
man.. how low would you have to be to steal a book from a library? Assuming you're not 12 or something.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Yes, there are potential privacy issues with RFID tags, but with the right combination of legal requirements and *technology* they can be overcome. We're supposed to be good with technology around here, "News for Nerds" and all, and this *is* a technology problem at heart, so instead of just bitching about the issues, why not solve them and have our cake as well as eat it?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
"Only six months ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place."
Btw, another act of censorship he mentions was apparently by right-wingers to suit their own objectives:
In my story, I had described a lighthouse as having, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a "God light." Looking up at it from the viewpoint of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in "the Presence."
The editors had deleted "God-Light" and "in the Presence."
Censors are scum, plain and simple. There's no reason to separate them based on whatever ideology they claim to support.
This would really upset people and really amuse me.
The best of both worlds!
I could place an RFID scanner/antenna/array outside my apartment pointing at the sidewalk and the street. I then aim a webcam at it and make sure that the video of the webcam is timestamped.
I don't have even the slightest clue about how to do this... but the idea certainly amuses me.
If you would read Schneier, you'd know that the only way to make a secure system is to design security into it from square one. You cannot tack security onto it. If we design our library checkout/inventory systems in a way which makes it easy to abuse them for surveillance and thought-policing, rest assured that someone, somewhere will do that.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Interesting that this should be on slashdot now. Just got back from the library an hour ago and, along side the usual READ and Check Out Our Graphic Novels signs was this gem:
NOTICE TO PATRONS: FEDERAL AGENTS MAY MONITOR MATERIALS YOU CHECK OUT AND MEDIA YOU ACCESS FROM THIS LIBRARY.
It then goes on to explain how the Round Rock Public Library attempts to protect its patrons' privacy, but that under the Patriot Act, it is required to divulge such information upon request of the appropriate authorities, and that the same law prevents them from informing you if such a request has been made.
Now, I am all for catching the bad guys and preventing further terrorist attacks in this country. I believe we are fighting a war of civilizations, here. But I also believe extremists will use sources other than a public library to acquire, for example, bomb making skills.
It seems to me that when the federal government stoops to FUD like this, they discredit the entire effort.
And notice I'm posting this AC
...because the same way your garbage can could keep track of what you're tossing out, someone else could walk by your place on trash-pick-up-day and discern from all of the RFID tags in your waste that you lare likely elderly (tags present for hearing aid batteries and Metamucil), have a cold (tags present for Tylenol Flu and Cold), have a really severe cold (tags present for four boxes of Kleenex), own decent stereo equipment (tags present from packaging for monster audio patch cables and old issues of Hi-Fi magazines), a small dog (tags present for Purina Small Dog Chow), have a visiting infant (tags present for Pampers), and isn't the fact that this information would be available not only in your trash, but on your own body as you're walking around, isn't that the least bit scary to anyone else?
Come on now, I am with you guys on most of this stuff, really, and I hate the concept of RFIDs in general.
/. alone will not bring consciousness to the people. How about some in depth discussion ala the civic-minded Franklin article from the other day. These problems need to be addressed from a more global and high-level perspective( can you tell c is not my language of choice!) - how do we bring the knowledge to the masses. How do we as developers, among others, move forward with that. Open source, of course, but how to embody in people the EXPECTATION of more.
But seriously, this post is ridiculous. Call me flamebait, tending offtopic, but see the bigger picture.
First of all, your reading habits, liberal or conservative, whatever the genre, do not characterize you beyond what you project on yourself. Just reading something proves nothing. One only becomes intelligent by reading multiple perspectives to understand an issue.
Then consider your cell phone, and your cable modem, and remember they 'identify' you too. And you know you click on those Amazon/BN/whatever links to read about your commercial needs of the moment. (Thanks, I know this is an 'extreme' characterization, but this is a 'general' topical post, lighten up)
I too fear for my personal freedoms, things I have previously taken for granted even. But the true fight here is to quantify the balance between personal liberty and the greater good. America has a track record of fighting to establish a common format for everything... it's ridiculous really, but somehow, people seem to be content in their isolation. Works great for hawking the latest gotta have it . It seems as if many don't understand what they miss when they lack international perspective.
Lately the slash has been highly specific on very few items - SCO, RFID, wireless, and it drowns the true spirit in the minutiae. Sure books that call home are "not a good thing", but bickering over details on
Barcode tags nowadays can do exactly the same job! RFID is just stupid geek stuff!
Has anyone seen how many judge-approved supeonas have been issued by the federal government since 911? Exactly none. With 11,000 field agents, the FBI has better things to do than to find out if you are really a doctor checking out those anatomy books. I don't know which is worse: terrorism or slashdot editors' (and their sycophants) paranoia
Dawn of the Dead
Have Dotties ever heard of deferred gratification? Patience? Slowing the fuck down?
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
I work as a librarian at a medium sized public library.
Each item has its own bar code, which for instance may be "1 2345 0000 6789 0123".
The first digit is a class identifier--perhaps 1 for circulating materials (books, dvds, cds, etc), 2 for patron library cards, 3 for internal materials, 4 for hardward for checkout.
The next four (2345) are an arbitrary code picked by the library to identify the book as "yours", so that you reduce the chance that you scan some other library's book and it happens to have a code that is the same as a book in your library.
The remaining digits are a semi-randomly assigned (depending on how you catalog) identification code that identifies the individual copy. So if you have three copies of Tom Sawyer, they each get a different code.
An RFID system would be similar in its numbering scheme. Some method to try and weed out books from other libraries, plus a number to associate to the library catalog.
To determine what books you have--you'd have to have access to the library database. Just like now, the number 31978000024851 doesn't mean anything to you unless you have access to the library catalog that issued it.
That being said, there are some seriously useful things that RFID could be used for in a library.
1.) Run a scanner wand down the shelf, and it tells you what's on the shelf and whether it is in the right place.
2.) Depending on the range, track what books are used and returned to the shelf--this will give you a more accurate circulation count, which will make it easier to demonstrate how much the library is used by the public.
3.) Depending on the range, poll the whole library to determine if a book that is supposed to be on the shelf is actually here, or if it were stolen.
While the problem of someone being able to develop a GUID based on your various RFID chips is still a problem, it would be technically easy to make it near impossible to determine anything useful from an RFID chip in a library book. On-site public key encryption! Each book has a public key encoded into its RFID chip. Only the library server has the private keys...
Jim
I noticed many people are defending themselves by saying "Well, don't worry about it. They can only be read from a few inches, or a foot at most"
I ask you this:
What's stopping later advancements in technology from reading them at greater distances?
Many posters seem to think concern about RFID are silly, but most of them probably do not read material that is unpopular. Maybe they don't even read at all. For other people, ideas are not so easy to come by and can result in real problems if they are targetted by the police or special interest groups. RFID will generate a chilling effect on access to unpopular materials. To the Moral Majority, this will be great news.
_khl
I use something called an EZ-Pass, a device that lets me drive on toll roads in the Middle Atlantic, debiting a pre-paid account. It's cheap, convenient, and I don't have to experience panic each time I approach an exact-change lane. I had the interesting experience a year ago of using it to drive all the way from Maryland to the Peace Bridge between Buffalo and Canada; never had to shell out a dime, and each toll was about half the posted price. Most places have dedicated lanes, too.
Yeah. I know they could use it to track me. They could somehow link it back to my bank account. They could probably even watch and bust me for speeding.
My brother in law thinks I'm crazy to allow one of these devices of the Devil into my automobile. He no longer uses his home computer because he's convinced that his ISP (Verizon) has nothing better to do than to track his every move online. He pays cash for all but the largest purchases, won't use an affinity card for his groceries, and doesn't visit ATM's (jeeze, remember standing in line at the bank to get a check cashed?). He has no spare or leisure time because the very housekeeping of life takes him twice or three times as long as it does the rest of us. He makes my particular life miserable on every visit because I merrily use credit cards, ATM's, discount cards, an EZ-Pass, and my computer.
Yeah, I could probably have lots more privacy than I do. But you know what? Life's short. There are big things to worry about and there are little things. Worry about too many of the little things and you become as miserable as my brother in law. For some reason, I place sneaky library books squarely in the "don't sweat this" category. At least for now.
Anne
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
Fuck Bush and his stupid fucking republican regime. Those republican idiots need to die. All of them.
I'm not claiming that it couldn't happen. But could it just be paranoia? I mean, this IS the BUSH administration!
Sorry, but I don't know where to get the full article, other than my coffee table!
Anybody that wants the above information can find it out by knocking on the door on some pretense and taking a quick peek inside. This whole thing is silly. If I wanted to track someone after they left the library I would follow them home. They're likely to leave the book at home anyway, or wherever else they read it, so it's hardly a useful tracking device. I suppose there might be something to worry about if every book was also implanted with a GPS transmitter or something.... Even then it's pretty laughable... two Homeland Security employees staring at a large screen in the war room ... "Look, over here, Bob. See that red dot? An unusual concentration of Kafka, Kierkegaard, and Kropotkin. You know what that means?" "Ummm, potential existentialist radical?" "No -- he's in the KKK! Get it? Hahaha I crack myself up. No really, though, let's have him interrogated just for the fuck of it."
I have read through the pitches for RFID library systems. They don't turn them off, it would defeat the purpose: reduce the labor required to circulate books. When you drop the book back off at the library it can automatically check it back in if the tag is still active, and no labor is required to re-tag the book before reshelving it.
Remember that RFID tags are normally not programmable, they have sequential serial numbers into infinity and beyond. Without the library's database to cross the serial number to an accession number and thence to author/title the tag is useless.
I'm hot for the idea, the pricetag is just too freaking high for a small library system like the one I work for to even consider suggesting it t the people who write the checks.... yet.
Democrat delenda est
Everybody is talking about these tags. Foo! It's not the tags that are scary; it's the fact that with them; they (gov) know what books your reading. Combined with other new laws you are now in the twilight zone! Speak out of turn, walk out of turn, read out of turn; what's next! THINK OUT OF TURN!
Welcome to 1984!
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
There's probably a much better chance of your being tracked via your cell phone than because of any RFID tags.
I find all these attacks on Ashcroft more than a little amusing. I distinctly remember the scene in "All the President's Men" where a Washington Post reporter prowls the Library of Congress discovering what books Nixon and his aides have been checking out.
Strangely, I don't seem to remember any of those who attack "Ashcroft and his thugs" denouncing THAT invasion of privacy even though the tactic was identical.
Is a powerful newspaper less a danger to our privacy and rights than a government run amuck? Hardly. Government misbehavor has numerous built-in checks and balances and if I'm accused of a crime and can't afford a lawyer, the court will provide me with one gratis.
But if a few dozen people in the right positions in the media decide to destroy your reputation or mine by invading our privacy and even outright lying, there's virtually nothing we can do about it. They don't have to prowl around, discovering what books we are reading. They can simply invent something scandulous out of thin air.
Can you get a court-appointed, tax-paid lawyer for a libel dispute? Forget it. It doesn't exist. If you don't have several million dollars to toss away, the media can say almost anything it wants about you without fear of legal action.
Checks and balances? There are none. If fact to win a libel dispute against the press, you have to prove deliberate malice--meaning that they knew they were lying when they printed the article. Even a dumb reporter can make sure you'll never prove that. All he needs is a get a 'source' for the lie, however dubious.
Naw, I don't think I'll worry about Ashcroft even if he and the Justice Dept were using this provision (and they aren't). I'll worry about what a powerful news media virtually devoid of any legal checks on behavior might do. THAT is what scares me.
When something happens, it leaves evidence. While more esoteric (Godelian) boundaries of knowability are debatable, we act like everything that happens can be known. But we also act with a sense of privacy - even those who believe that Liberty is an illusion, don't deny that the *illusion* exists, and we operate within it. Keeping our privacy is more a matter of social engineering, where people are protected from people, than technology engineering, where people are protected from things. Rather than outlaw RFID tech, engineers can put RFID scanners in mobile phones, and entrepreneurs can put eShopping networks into stores to help customers shop. This empowers consumers with the same cheap tech as the producers, getting more value out of the expense, and putting the privacy issues in *everyone's* hands, where we can work it out as an extension of accepted custom. We live in an inherently P2P universe, which is very flexible and comfortable for those of us who can constructively adapt to our advantage in it.
--
make install -not war
The tech books in my library are so old, no geek would EVER check them out!
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
If you'd like to discard some of the paranoia now, Librarians are probably geeks best friends when it comes to championing personal liberty, privacy and free speech.
The ALA didn't simply back down at the records seizure provisions in the PATRIOT act, they have fought it every way they can: from petitioning local congressional reps, to finding technological solutions to the privacy issues raised.
Hell, one library here in Iowa has a sign by the circulation desk that says "The FBI has not been here today." (The PATRIOT act says they cannot tell you that the FBI has visited a library asking for circulation records. It does not, however, say that the library is prohibited from saying the FBI hasn't been there.) If government agents ever do visit, the sign will disappear.
At the exit station, patrons must walk through a barrier that reads the RFID tag, and looks up the tag in the database of all books currently checked out. If it fails the test, an alarm sounds (and the little exit bar locks)and the patron is asked if they might have something in their bag that they forgot to check out.
The greatest thing about these is the ability to do inventory of a huge amount of books at one using a portable wand/PDA type device. You can rpogram it to beep when a book is found, etc.
Anyway... the RFID tags are not "turned off" at all, and this is not even an option on the types of tags we buy to put in the books. It seems rather silly to me that anyone would even be worried about it. So what if someone "reads" the tag as you walk by on the street? It's just a sequence of numbers that means nothing to anyone but the Library.
They will and books will be the least of your concerns. Some likely RFID gates are air ports and all other public transportation, public rest rooms, libraries, office buildings and all retail stores. Using Patriot Act 2004, government will have access to all private records at retail stores. This will cross link you by the UID tags in your clothes.
I don't need a UID in my shirt or on a can of tomatoes and no one else does either. A number that identifies the shirt as a shirt of a specific size and color is sufficient for inventory purposes. Bar codes have done this very well and are still more practical than these invasive little fuckers so many other fuckers wish to present as "inevitable" and "practical".
Astroturfers, fuck off.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'll make sure that I wrap the copy of "The Catcher in the Rye" in tin foil before leaving the library!
I've said it before, but think about it. There's been talk of placing RFID tags in paper currency. Doesn't this mean that I could say, hang out in front of a bar at night, having a smoke, scanning everyone who stumbles out to see how much they're carrying? It'd be like having your cash and valuables taped to your head, instead of tucked away in your wallet and bag.
Do you own an iPod? Top of the line? You carry that around with you everywhere. Same with your schwank new PDA/Phone. Do you advertise the fact that you're carrying a thousand dollars worth of gear when you're walking around the city at night? If everything has an RFID tag, you might as well.
PS: Of course I'm paranoid! I'm a geek!
If the law could know where you are through your RFID tags...whats stopping the same thing from finding your missing library books. No more bills!
Karma: -2^0.5 . Mainly due to the imbibing of dihydrogen monoxide
Sometimes, people panic when there is no reason to do so.
Background: Texas Instruments invented RFID tags, as TIRIS (Texas Instruments RF Identification System, or some such). I was working at TI at the time, and TI is *VERY* good about blowing their own horn internally on new unclassified gadgets, in the hopes that other TIers will come up with interesting new applications for the new gadgets.
The RFID transponder is a fairly clever device. You put in a fairly strong low-frequency RF field, and it rectifies enough power from the field to power a very limited microcontroller and transmitter, just enough to transmit a unique serial number that is burned into the transponder at manufacture time.
The transponder has a VERY limited range, because of the power limitations.
The serial number is NOT customer-programmable, for very good reasons. This lets them guarantee that every transponder is UNIQUE, and makes it IMPOSSIBLE to confuse your car keys with someone's missing prize bull when you go to the rodeo.
The transponder has NO intelligence, beyond the ability to squeak out the burned-in serial number when it finds itself in a power field. That's it. The host computer has to convert that serial number into something useful.
The specific design goal was for something that could be read WITHOUT CONTACT, as it walked (or drove) past a sensing point. The original goal was an implantable device, for livestock ID. One of the early applications was a drive-by tolltag.
The only way you are going to be tracked in real-time by your RFID-equipped library books is if the government literally blankets the country in tolltag gates.
I confess I know very little about RFID, but I'll bet there are enough people who know enough about RFID to write something to allow people like me to rewrite these things. Has anyone looked into this? I would think you would only have to clobber the identification portion of the thing to make the data meaningless. We can all be Tiger Woods.
It's clear that we need to begin boycotting these so-called "libraries" and their monopoly on books. It's gone too far. Boycott libraries! Get your information from the internet! No one can track you there!
You can usually visit your local Borders or Barnes and Noble, pick a book that you'd like to read and sit in the cafe. They don't mind as long as you're drinking coffee.
It occurs to me that one solution would be to require semi-randomization of the tag numbers. Assign number space (like IP addresses) to individual libraries. Those libraries would then be able to track which random number in that range belongs to each book, but the only thing an external snoop would be able to tell is that you have a book from that library. The only way to know what book that is would be to subpoena the library's records, and by doing that they'd know your reading habits anyway.
Nothing would stop the library from rotating tags, either, in case the Feds figured out that tag 4BD32F345A6672D44 is "The Anarchist Cookbook" -- they could take a minute and swap the tag with a Dr. Seuss book, or just throw it away and put in a new tag.
RFID tags only have a range of a few inches to a foot
In fact companies have announced passive RFID tags with advertised ranges of 9 meters or more. Active tags can have ranges of miles. The very first RFID tags had very short ranges but the technology has improved and will no doubt continue to improve. The greater the range the more useful tags are (and the fewer recievers you need), even if they are not being used for surveilence. It is therefore highly likely that RFIDs will become even more surveilence friendly as time goes by. Directional receivers specially constructed for surveilence (similar to parabolic microphones) could no doubt increase the range at which tags could be scanned by at least an order of magnitude.
RFID tags are fundamentally no different from barcodes
RFID tags can be invisible and impossible to remove from a product. Barcodes by definition have to be visible and even if they are integeral to a product can covered or scratched out. Barcodes need a clear line of sight to work whereas RFIDs can work though significant amounts of covering depending on the material. It is impossible to use barcodes to track people in any meaningfully way (unless you force everyone to have one tatooed on their forehead), but RFIDs can make such tracking trivially easy and totally invisible.
Surveilence using RFIDs will be too expensive and difficult
If RFIDs are widely deployed then the receivers will have to be cheap. If every shop is going to have may of them, like they now have barcode reader, then they are not going to be extortionally expensive. Economies of scale mean that the police will be able to afford large numbers of receivers. It is also the case that you do not need to cover even a small fraction of a country to make surveilence work. All you need to do is place receivers at strategic high volume choke points where large numbers people pass by (entrances to buildings, traffic intersections etc.). Also the usefulness of handheld receivers, especially in crowds, cannot be underplayed.
People exchanging tagged items will make surveilence impossible
This is only true if very few (presumably expensive) items are tagged and so the average person only carries one or two tags around with them. Once RFIDs are unbiquitous most people will have a dozen or more tags on them so it will not matter if you bought your PDA on ebay or your shoes were a gift from you cousin. The majority of the tags will be traceable to you. If fact at this point this effect becomes a positive advantage surveilencewise, since it will make it possible to track associations between people without seeing them meet. If you are carrying a cheap ball point pen that was bought by someone living twenty miles from you then there is a high probabilty that you know each other (or have a mutual friend).
Tags will really come into their own once they are are in a large fraction of products. At this point most people will have at least a dozen tags on them most of the time and the majority of these tags will be traceable to them through the initial purchase. In fact even if such purchase records were not kept (which they certainly will be) or the government didn't have access to them (which seems unlikely given the present climate) it wouldn't really matter.
RFIDs are like having a dozen or so unique ID numbers stamped on you as you walk around. The numbers may vary as you swap clothes, shoes, and items like pens, wallets, PDAs, keyrings etc., but all that is needed is one instance where they scan all your RFIDs and know who you are. Such situations might include security checks at airports, being stopped by the police or any number of other situations.
Once the govenment has a list of RFIDs you were carrying at one particular time it will be trivial to correlate that against previous scans of unknown individuals to work out all the RFIDs that you routinely carry arou
many years ago actually: I went to yard sales, flea markets, and public library book sales. $20 USD goes a long ways in those places. I also inherited most of my family's book collection, dating to the 1940's for college textbooks. I also went to places like the Online Books page, Project Gutenberg, and BlackMask Online to round out my collection of world favorites and classics. Librarians love me, btw...
C|N>K
but it seems to me that the government has always kind of kept track of what I read anyway. Maybe the difference today is the possibility that they'll keep track of everything I read.
Still, I look at it this way: If I get a book or publication from Cuba, I'm gonna get watched. If I order a extreme left and/or right-wing publication, I am going to get watched (depending upon which is in charge, I suppose).
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
RFID tags seem a good way of preventing books from being stolen from a library. But how long before they are placed in books direct from the publisher? Distributors would find it easier to track merchandise, and local bookshops could also reduce their "natural reduction" in stock. Maybe we'll even see RFID tags on music and burnable CD's.
Remember that many librarians are hard-core civil libertarians. The ALA should be every geek's new best friend. Having served on a library board, I can tell you that most libraries as entities are quite concerned about privacy issues, doing all that they can to ensure that patrons leave as short of a data trail as is possible. (That is, they don't retain records of books that people have checked out [once they're returned], schedule their data backup system such that the trail of patron data is as short as possible, etc.)
As both a geek/privacy nut and a library advocate, I am excited at the prospect of library books using RFID tags. The benefits to libraries will be enormous -- checkout and return will be greatly simplified, to say nothing of the ease of sorting and confirming placement of shelved books.
I, for one, welcome my new library RFID overlords.
-Waldo Jaquith
Library records are subpoena-able.. so what's the difference if they can scan you from the street corner?
Some even track what you do research on by requiring a card to get to the card catalogs...
They know what you checked out, and your purchase habits via credit/debit card records... Where you walk via street cameras....This is rather minor in the grand scheme of the loss of privacy.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Lest anyone mod you up without knowing the truth: The Unabomber was caught because his brother turned him in. The Zodiac Killer was never caught.
If only we had RFID tags back before Sept 11 it would have saved all those poor people!!!! WE NEED MORE!!11!!1!!!~`~@#!`zNO CARRIER
--
om Shanti
So how far away can a cell phone be read? A mile? Two miles? Ten miles?
How about 250 million miles? Indeed, we have radio telescopes that can pick up a cell phone on the surface of Mars. If you have the right antennea, you can read RFID tags from any distance.
But let's pretend for a moment that you're correct. Stores are already planning to put RFID readers in their door ways so they can catch shoplifters. Once the hardware is installed, it is a trivial matter to also track every RFID tag that shows up on the reader.
The federal government, while announcing that TIA is dead, also announced that it would be broken into pieces and implemented by several different agencies. The plan involved buying information from private companies, and correlating every tiny little detail to develop a computerized profile on every single person in the country.
If RFIDs becomes commonplace, it will become impossible for someone to blow the whistle on government and/or corporate corruption and live long enough to back up their allegations.
You might not have a problem with that, but I do.
The lbraries should just wait a year to install the standards, as they are public institutions, and so spending all of our money.
RFID is getting dealt with in the retail chain right now, and as soon as the bugs get ironed out, tags will be in all products sold at retail. Books that get sold to libraries will probably have the same ISBN numbers encoded in their Elecronic codes, but have different serial number blocks. The partitioning schemes being talked about for Global RFID use are mapping onto existing schemes of number already. GTIN is one of the big ones, VIN, and ISBN are sure to follow.
It's going to be a bit hard to protect the rfid chips themselves in a book spine. Certainly easy enough for people to remove the old magnetic strip alarms (they even make it easy for you to find).
Q.
Insert Signature Here
Surveilance by librarians? Read the specs, the majority of these tags have to be within 2-3 feet of the rfid reader. I think you'd notice if a guy carrying what looks to be a rather large metal detector were following three feet behind you. Jeez, with all the new copyright laws this whole library issue's gonna be rather mute anyways.
Now the nuts can put tin foil around their books along with their heads.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Lets hope that you are a big winner of Darwin awards.
Doesn't this "[work] fine" only because the same proprietary RealAudio code is being executed, but this time under the auspices of mplayer instead of some Real-supplied front-end?
Digital Citizen
there's already RF security tags on most software and books you buy at barnes & noble etc...
-elmar-
I swear, between this and the dolts whining about 'mind control' in regard to implants that toss meds to you for a whole year without you having to worry.
(Can't remember, was there a Slashdot post on that? Mmm, that was an interesting bit.)
Anyhow, what the hell is wrong with you people?
If you've bought a video card with your credit card, you're already being watched! Big Brother, er, wait, the government doesn't give a damn. Big Corpie is watching you!
If you've used a supermarket savings club card, blammo. Wrote a check? Zing! Driven on a road chock full of cameras? Doh. Used a Microsoft operating system? Ouch! Pay with cash? Hmm, serial numbers and DNA testing - hope you wore gloves!
The fact is, if some evil overlord wanted to find out what's in your wallet, they already can.
So yes, let's deny ourselves a great new technology because of baseless fear. Let's put a stop to cloning (who needs instant, no-wait organ transplants) and genetic research (everyone loves diseases!) while we're at it, too.
Paul H. Muad'dib, you people are all whacked.
"People have been concerned about provisions of the Patriot Act that would grant law enforcement access to your library records"
The feds had the authority to do this 50years ago and they STILL have to abide by the same rules. A court has to allow it. They can not simply do this carte blanche. If the could, what would be the point of putting it in print? They'd just go ahead and do it.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
now come out slowly, with your book above your head!!!
Oh well, what the hell...
A few weeks ago, an article floated that RSA had designed an "RFID-Blocker", which intelligently blocks out RFID tags.
I guess it won't take long before the first investments are made in this little machine...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
RF implies radio frequency. One interesting homebrew radio project that I've discussed back in the days when I was more into wielding the soldering iron than I am now, was a handheld single-use jamming grenade, protected from tampering and disarming by a thermite charge. By putting together numbers and some chip parts we figured that we could put a watt or two power, maybe more, into the air in the frequency ranges we want, and effectively disrupt the communications we desired for a few hours. We didn't get to the practical experimentation stage however, mostly because we didn't have a good use for the thing at the time - we were more interested in listening to signals than jamming them.
Now, from what I understand, the frequencies RFID tags can use to transmit information are more or less specific, due to antenna constructions and sizes. Suppose we have such jamming devices in abundance - they can be made from totally innocent parts. Can they be used to protect yourself from scanning? Can they be used to disrupt scanning on a larger scale?
In Soviet Russia... RUSSIANS comment on YOU.
There is a problem with your "library as overlord" paranoia. The library system in America has been on the front of the battle for freedoms over the years. They've been against book burning, banned book lists, internet filters, the PATRIOT act, etc. Time and time again, they have stood up for our rights. I somehow doubt that they'll all sit around and plot how to get us all with evil RFIDs.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
...and mail them to my senator.
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
# Read the book at the library
Ouch. I shall set up a nest under the stairs at the library where I can read my books in peace *evil grin*
# Photocopy the pages requires
Isn't that already illegal? A violation of copyright? DMCA or some such?
# Get someone *else* to check the book out for you
The whole stir about the RFID isn't that they can track the things you check out, but that they can know later (when you leave the supermarket that uses RFID for example) exactly where you were and what you were carrying.
# If it's recent enough, order/buy the book at a bookstore, use cash.
Again, the books will probably have RFID tags, just like a library book? No change...
*shrugs*
Call me paranoid.
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Compare how many people go the libraries with how many people shop online at Amazon.com. I expect that RFID sensor tag system to be a poor second choice to the corporate databases of Amazon...
oh, but they already DO! it's in a subcutaneous chip between the shoulder blades, no collar necessary.
Welcome to the ciberdog.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
It's a bit of a nit pick, but the Patriot act does grant law enforcement access to our library records.
Yes, because checking out books for free is like stealing them. "Sharing" books at libraries should be a crime, because it's no different than walking into a barnes and noble and shoplifting a book. If we don't get rid of book sharing "library" systems how are authors going to make a living? If authors don't get paid, how will we inspire people to write books?
/sarcasm off
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Fortunately it's still possible to use cash for 99% of purchases. The only real downside is that you don't get card holder discounts.
BTW: If you are worried about being profiled from your library choices, pollute the data by borrowing a few random books. You don't need to read them.
On the privacy note, this needs to be controlled. For example, as a sign-up form, it can be stated that the library will only switch on the RFID tag outside the building when the book is over 3 weeks late on return. Some form of recompense to the library user can be implemented in cases where this is breached.
However, I do have one little problem...What is really behind this technology? Say I was a extreme hacker (i am not)...How hard would it be to initialise the tracker myself? What security is on the RFID that helps prevent someone from turning it on themselves? I mean, if I got a book out and then the ability to turn on the RFID, I could potentially sit and wait for some lady to take same book out and then stalk her (this is all hypothetical, just asking about the possibilities). In this case, who would be responsible?
I don't mind RFIDs, but they need to be controlled by someone we can trust.
One other point to note is legality of including RFIDs in products without public knowledge. Many companies have come out saying they will include them and then backtracked once the public outcry starts, but what legislation is there that says that companies MUST publicise the fact that they use RFIDs, and then, what products do we already own that have RFIDs? Do we need a new product, an RFID checker/bug detector?
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
*breaks out tinfoil hat*
Okay, I feel better now.
My point is that if you're viewing government as Them, then you're complicit in its theft from Us.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
My high school used RFID to detect if a book was carried out of the library which hadn't been checked out. It wasn't so much a matter of turning off the RFID tags as it was logging which were checked out, and not sounding an alarm when those went through the library entrance.
One of my HS enemies dropped a tag from one of the books into the lining of my backpack. It took half an hour to find it and remove it.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Dear Folks,
... want to track (maybe the Koran, Bible, Constitution-History, ...), then I will keep a copy with in reach till the day I die. If a few million globally do the same, then we are sure not to die alone while hanging together by the wall.
If I can (or you) identify a magazine/book-RFID-tag that the FBI, CIA, NSA, KGB, Alcada, Pope, Mullah, KKK,
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
They're them because I don't want anything. I don't want a big bunch of freebies. I don't want to exercise influence over other people's lives.
Since I don't want anything, government can only take from me. They can't help me.
They're them because if they were us (at least the us that includes me), they wouldn't be anyone. They'd be substantially disbanded.
They'll always be them. The desire, by you or anyone else, to make them anything more, amounts to a desire to take from me for your own benefit. It's ethically wrong.
I'm currently attending a master's program in HCI at U of M, and most of the students in my school (the School of Information) are library students, intending to become school, public, or private librarians (mostly the first two). I can tell you from my experience that librarians at the grass roots level are NOT in support of any method, high tech or low, that invades the privacy of their users. They take it seriously. VERY seriously. The political atmosphere around here is very anti-TIA, and anti-Patriot act.
I know we can't trust anyone with our privacy, librarians can be subpeoned too, etc. And I urge you to let your local library know about your feelings. But I doubt we'll ever see these things in action, mostly due to the frequent epic battles your local librarians fight to protect your privacy. These mild mannered people are the intellectual equivalent of the Dunedain, guarding the borders of our privacy and never asking for our thanks. They are a powerful, and often overlooked, ally in the fight for privacy. Am I being hyperbolic? A little, but less than you think. Librarians are much cooler, and nerdier, than I ever gave them credit for. And no, not all of them are women.
Eagles may fly, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
The tags can be put in packaging not in product. That TV can have it embedded in the box, but not in the TV itself. The pants can have it on the lable but not in the waistband.
Simple enough
I happen to work for a library ... as a programmer. Go figure. The point, though, is that librarians take your privacy very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that in this library, they specifically commissioned a change to their operations database so that no data is preserved once the library asset has been returned. That means, as long as you turn in your books, most libraries thumb their noses at the Patriot Act by deleting the record of what you borrowed. (They don't want to comply with FBI subpoenas, they don't want the responsibility!)
If you're overdue, though, prepare to pay. (LOL)
I don't care if authors get paid. I don't care whether they write books.
I care if money is stolen from my paycheck to pay for useless (useless to me anyway) libraries.
And I'm tired of listening to people bitch about something that's going on in libraries that's "a violation of my rights". It's not. The government funds the libraries, they get to make the rules. Want better rules? Fund the libraries privately.
Funding the libraries privately will get you more accountability. It gets you the amount of influence over the rules that you're willing to pay for. And it's ethically better than taking the money from people against their will.
could the tags hold MORE data for the wearer of the tag?
could the tag be modified to work like the fabbled 'babble fish'? if so, then:
the possible use of broadcasting into the wearer, (under wearer control), such things as 'phone calls', 'e-mail', music. at this point, we are well beyond the 1K use barrier.
but how about 'voluntary' control of the wearer to this 'modified' tag? medical uses alone would be close to the 1M mark. "time to take your meds" has a whole new meaning here. or maybe its time to get a check up.
how about personal feed back uses? as your body changes, you can be updated. maybe it will be OK to eat that bowl of 'nuclear holocaust' chile, but as you ingest the food, you get a message requesting a LARGE glass of water with lemon, NOW! we have now passed the 1M barrier. i'm thinking of 8 Billion people with 8 Billion different uses for these little modified tags.
what a neat set of applications one could design.
It is certainly true that it wouldn't be too hard to jam present day RFID tags. However I don't really think it is the answer for several reasons. For a start to do this you would have to transmit a signal which itself could be tracked. All the people who are worried about being tracked by the government carrying radio transmitters with them is sort of self defeating. Also I am sure that if it actually interfered with anything it would be made illegal. After all these RFID tags are not going to be sold to the public as surveilence devices but as anti-theft and stock control devices. Anyone that jams RFID can therefore be branded a shoplifter, even if the shops are more interested in scanning the RFIDs you are carrying when you walk in, to find out about you and help them sell you stuff, rather than about you walking off without pay for stuff.
Also at the theoretical level radio interference doesn't exist. Photons do not carry electric charge and don't ordinarily interact with each other. Interference is due to inadequate receiver technology, at least in a non-astronmical setting (you can imagine situations where the photon shot noise of terrestrial interference might be greater than an extremely weak extraterrestrial signal but I think such such a case would be unlikely for RFIDs). So almost any jamming you can invent could be overcome with better receivers and the jammer would be constrained by present radio power output laws anyway so receiver technology is always likely to win.
That being said I am sure that there will be ways of throwing a spanner in the works in extreme cases, say if you wanted to rob a bank etc. You could certainly remove all RFIDs from your person if you had a receiver and didn't mind cutting up your clothes a bit but it would be like putting a stocking over your face. It would protect your identity but it would make you stand out like a sore thumb. You wouldn't be able to walk around all the time with no RFIDs on you because everyone else would have them so the police would be used to knowing who everyone was and would stop and question anyone they couldn't indentify.
I would modify your grenade idea slightly and put an electromagnetic flux compressor in it. Basically a copper pipe bomb with some extra electronics in it that convets the kinetic energy of the explosion into an EM pulse similar to what you get from a nuclear weapon. If bank robbers weren't fairly stupid they would be using them already to knock out CCTV cameras etc. I am not sure if an EM pulse would take out an RFID tag itself but it would certainly take out the receivers and temporarily halt surveilence in a certain area. I wouldn't lose any sleep over RFIDs if I was a criminal, but for the rest of us they will ceratinly affect out every day lives.
The most obvious and intrusive stuff will undoubtedly be how corporations use them. Dynamic billboards that display advertisments targeted at you as you walk past (like in Minority Report) will be possible when RFIDs are widespread. Even if you are not worried about the government knowing every little thing you do, think adverts for help with your embassing personal problem (hemoroid cream etc.) flashing up on signs as you walk past them down the street, for everyone to see.
At least Jerry and George could finally tell Lt. Bookman for certain who had Tropic of Cancer
"Let me tell you something, funny boy... You know that little stamp? The one that says New York Public Library? Well, that may not mean anything to you, but that means a lot to me. One whole helluva lot. Sure, go ahead, laugh if you want to. I've seen your type before -- flashy, making the scene, flaunting convention. Yeah, I know what you're thinking... Why's this guy making such a big stink about old library books? Let me give you a hint, junior. Maybe we can live without libraries, people like you and me.... Maybe. Sure, we're too old to change the world. What about that kid, sitting down, opening a book right now in a branch of the local library and finding pictures of pee-pees and wee-wees in The Cat in the Hat and The Five Chinese Brothers. Doesn't he deserve better? Look, if you think this is about overdue fines and missing books, you'd better think again. This is about that kid's right to read a book without getting his mind warped. Or maybe that turns you on, Seinfeld... Maybe that's how you get your kicks... You and your goodtime buddies... I've got a flash for you, joy boy. Partytime is over."
- - - Lt. Bookman
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
I think the possibilities are great and as you said the RFID is inevitable. But we must remember that you can still buy with cash if you want to.
/. 'ers.
An off switch is not enough, because there can be enough peer pressure for you to have no choice but to accept the lack of privacy.
Maybe a law might help, I don't know what the solution is so I keep reading
The future is beautifull as long is not left at the mercy of idiots.
first person to market with the farraday bookbag wins!
you're carrying a thousand dollars worth of gear when you're walking around the city at night?
That's a very good point.
There are two technologies that are needed for the public to become aware of the ramifications of this technology:
This would remove the currently insidious part of RFID: that most people are completely oblivious of what it is. Instead, access to the technology and policies for its use are largely set by those wishing to profit by knowing information (be it a government intent on staying in power or be it a company trying everything to get you to push money their way.)
Things are hidden from people now because their natural senses have no way of detecting that part of the EM spectrum, that part that is enabling others to learn of their latest liquor and condom purchases.
This would put the balance back into the whole issue. The economics of RFID would then include how much people value their privacy: some buyers will avoid RFID products and going through places with scanners.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I totally agree that technology in and of itself is neutral and having unique IDs in all the objects around you would be great if you lived in a free society. Just think you would never lose anything again. Lost your car keys, whip out your handheld computer, which has a built in RFID receiver and has the IDs of all your possessions stored in it, and it will lead you to your keys. The problem is we do not live in a free society. The State and its children, large corporations, control everything. They decide how technology is used not us. And since they are inherrently evil and exist to exploit people, we all know how it is going to turn out.
You contradict yourself when you say "Most people ... hold absolutley no interest as individuals to any government agency or corporation" and then "other ... activity is already ... monitored". Your distinction
between trends and individual data is also irrelevant. They need to collect the individual
data to analyse the trends and information about
you is information about you. They do care about
your individual data anyway and it is worth money to corporations. Huge databases of peoples individual information (buying habits, salary etc.) sell for millions of dollars.
Of course information collection already happens but there is stuff you can do about it at the moment. I buy most items with cash if I can. I probably make less than a dozen credit card purchases a year. I never give any identifying information when I buy things if I can avoid it. I do this because, I resent people collecting information about me and selling and I would like to keep the amount of information floating around about me to a minimum, since you never know whose hands it will eventually end up in. With RFIDs it will become impossible to anonymously purchase anything.
The point is that information is power. Every little extra bit of information the government and corporations have about you nibbles away at the last bits freedom you have. Corporations are interested in economic power. The more information they have about you the more disadvantaged you are in your dealings with them. Personalized pricing is an extreme form of such a disadvantage but any information at all is of some help to them. Asymetric knowledge in any interaction leads to advantage, as in insider trading.
The government is more interested in political power although you could think of instances such as collecting sales tax off private sales between individuals (they do it for the only items they tag at the moment, cars) where they might use RFIDs for monetary advantage. But just as corporations can leverage knowledge about you for economic advantage so can the state for political advantage. The state must do all sorts of very unpopular things to feed its children and it is extremely interested in managing the discontent that this generates and not letting it build up to dangerous (for it) levels.
All this talk about double standards regarding who can have information is just silly. Governments and corporations are not people, they have no rights (as much as they wish it was otherwise). Even if we were talking about individuals assymetric power relations come into play. Most people cannot afford to place RFID scanners everywhere and maintain a massive mainframe to analyse and store the results. Bill Gate and the Waltons can and that puts normal people at a huge disadvantage. Factor in corporations and the government and we are really screwed.
There is no choice about any of this stuff. We are not going to be asked whether we want RFIDs. We are certainly not going to be asked about how they are used. The way things worked with barcodes was Walmart mandated their use by its suppliers and suddenly they were on everything. Try boycotting barcodes and see how far it gets you. And with barcodes at least you can see them. With RFIDs you may not even know they are there. They will be much more insideous that barcodes. B
And if something was scanned that's been hidden under a mattress for 6 months then you'd know you have a problem.
Requiring law enforcement is only fair...If they want an "open" society, fine! But it has to be open for everyone, not select groups "poaching" info off the rest! We should be able to see where THEY'VE been too!
What information do you think these tags will contain??
One number. That is all they need. They are like licence plates on cars except invisible to the naked eye. But every bit of clothing you wear, every item in your pockets, including any bank notes will have its own licence plate, its own unique number. You will be walking around with a dozen or more RFID tags on you. Your new car will probably have hundreds of tags in, since car manufactures will probably tag individual parts for stock control. It will be trival for governments and corporations to maintain databases of the RFID tags in every item you have ever bought. As you walk and drive around these invisible tags will talk to every receiver you pass. They will tell the receiver their tag ID and one database lookup is all that is needed to indentify you. It is not just your indentity that can be tracked. Everything that you are carrying can be as well. The police can search your house from across the street with an RFID scanner. You associations with other people can be tracked through the items you exchange. The list is endless. Orwell was only off by about twenty years.
It is fairly inoccuous. Even if the government forced the library to hand over its database it wouldn't be greatly different from it just getting a record of the which books had been loaned to who. The real problem is with having RFIDs in everything. When every product worth more than a dollar has an RFID in it, it is entirely different. You will be carrying a dozen or more RFID tags around with you all the time. There will be hundreds in your car since every major part will doubtless be tagged. At that point identifying everyone as they walk around will be trivial. Even if shops didn't give the tag numbers of products they sold to the government and corporations it would only take a little detective work to get them. Identify some tags with you (at an airport security screening say) and they have you for life, unless you burn all you possessions and start again. And it won't just be your indentity either. All your possessions will be trackable and your associations with other will be infered from exchanges of items.
Did you read Vernor Vinge's "Deepness in the Sky"? Because that sounds exactly like the "localizer" network of dust mote sized nodes use by the villians to spy on all of their captives in that story. The bad guys were VERY much into monitoring and analyzing everybody, lest they be thinking Bad Things.
Of course, if I said any more about it, I'd be a spoiler...
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
you could make that argument about any government program/spending. I do believe government should be small and only serve basic functions, but education is one of them, and libraries are an intricate part of that function.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
every library i've been to has been constantly hurting for money, and both library administrators i know spend the majority of their time attempting to secure grants. my local library recently held a fundraiser to replace old and damaged bookshelves, and people/organizations who donated a lot of money had a dedication plaque with their name on it on a shelf. this system sounds like it will cost a hell of a lot of money to start up, let alone implement. the libraries must be getting grants from someone or somewhere to do it. before you get conspiracy theories, follow the money.
"fools and their leaders, they have no doubts." --levellers, "believers"
But there is a open-minded rational approach, and your argument would object to it. I can only imagine that you apply principles of ignorance. You try to posit foolish tyranny. I reject anything involved with that.