Officials secretly RFID'd at Internet Summit

ewoudenberg writes "A Washington Times article reports that researchers managed to gain entrance to the Internet and technology conference in Switzerland last week only to discover that the summit's badges contained undisclosed RFID chips. The badges were handed out to more than 50 prime ministers, presidents and other high-level officials from 174 countries, including the United States."

Comments

Cool.

[torpor]

Politicians should be made to wear RFID's from the day they enter office in service of the public, to the day they leave that office.

"For the people, and of the people" can only be effective if the people keep a track on such people with power ...

Re:Cool.

[Handpaper]

It's 01:30. Do you know where your Congressman is?

They Got Him!

[bruthasj]

With RFID.

Note for the humor-impaired: this is a joke.

New terrorist spying method

[brian728s]

Lightbulbs are now being labeled a terrorist device, used to spy on people and documents at places including the pentagon, the whitehouse, and even the United Nations building. Hackers used the light bulbs to send out light, which when intercepted by their illegal hacker tools called "eyes", can identify diplomats, and read classified documents. Americans can rest assured that their safety is being protected by operation "hammerbulb". Democrats are concerned about a lack of hammers to complete the operation, but administration officials assure them that rocks can be used if the shortage proves true.

Privacy

[penguinoid]

They met to discuss privacy matters on the internet (among other things).
I wonder what their policy will be?

We don't need no stinkin badges!

[Anonymous Coward]

Badges? We don't need no stinkin badges!

Re:Summary

[Crash Culligan]

To summarise the article, a group of reporters were pissed that they weren't invited to attend the conference.

That's no surprise. If I recall correctly, the G7 summits are intended to be discussions on global economic policy, to which none of the affected people (pretty much everybody but government officials) are ever invited. (In fact, I don't hear of many economists going to those conferences either; if I'm wrong, please correct.)

As for press not getting in, sure you may loathe muckraker reporting (many people do), but sometimes there's just too much muck to allow to pile up. Do you really want your government to be deciding elements of policy without any input from its constituency? That's becoming the norm, and guerilla reporting may soon be the only way the operation of said government can come to light.

They disected a security card, and found (shock, horror) that it contained features designed to maintain security at said conference. Since this is the only dirt they managed to find, they spin it up into a sky-is-falling end-of-the-world privacy story.

Yeah, I see where the article could sound like sour grapes. But then there's something to be said for the irony of the situation, and I'm glad that someone was in there to highlight it.

1. Government officials attend privacy and security conference.
2. Reporters crash privacy and security conference, demonstrating lack of security.
3. Reporters analyze badges from privacy and not-security conference and find RFID tags, demonstrating lack of privacy.
4. Article about lack-of-privacy and not-security conference reaches the public.
5. ???
6. Privacy!!

I'm not perfectly sure, but I think that next-to-the-last step should be Citizens of the world slap their respective governments upside the head and scream "What were you goobers THINKING??"

At least, that's my take on it...