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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.
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
Oh yeah, black helicopters!
Seriously, Slashdot seems to have no problem stifling technology when it gives rise to insane, improbable conspiracy theories.
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!
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
- 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.
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.
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.
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
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."
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!"
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.
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
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!
...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?
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
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."
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
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.
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!
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.
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
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