Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
With RFID.
Note for the humor-impaired: this is a joke.
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.
They met to discuss privacy matters on the internet (among other things).
I wonder what their policy will be?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I hope the media catch hold of it and hype it to hell and beyond. Get some high-flying politico commentators saying how they should have been informed.
Understanding about fire being hot often comes after one has been burnt. Perhaps they'll feel that they shouldn't be "spied on" without their knowledge. Perhaps it might influence decisions they make in future...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Washington Post has their own agendas politically when it comes to reporting. Sure it's pretty shitty to be monitored, but there is nothing stating that any information used was used for anything other than maybe for the sake of having some card manufacturers new card being tested.
Remember intelligence agencies from all over the place keep tabs on each other via other means (ECHELON, HUMINT, OSINT, IMINT, SIGNIT), so I doubt this was anything to be concerned with. Strictly something `chick' to report on. It's far more easier to set up assets to bang (screw/lay/fsck) one of these guys for info, than it would to keep watch of what they do.
User gets in car to go to summit, user's Eazypass or other form of cardpaymentsys tracks what exits he uses via tolls paid. User stops at gasoline station, credit card is used, card information is transmitted. User talks the beltway, cameras capture this. Get the picture? Everyone else sure did. Again other than this being all the rage (RFID's) I doubt it was something major, but surely someone with agendas sees it to be so. When they can produce something absolute that was used with this information, not just 'oh my look at this an RFID story' than I'll worry.
PS... Proof doesn't mean `hey we're the Foobar Newspaper
MoFscker
I wonder if someone is goign to make a killing by selling little RFID chip & reader detectors. Richard Stallman suggested RFID detectors and destroyers as a challenge for privacy adocates. Perhaps clothing with conductive/dissapative threads will be the next fashion trend (just don't count on your cellphone ringing if its inside your pocket ;) ).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
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.
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.
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...
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Maybe its just me, but this seems like a whole lot of noise over nothing. Those badges were probably security badges. You know, the kind many of us corporate workers wear every day to work. If you are one of those workers who have to swipe your ID badge in front of a little box that goes beep, and an LED turns green, and the door opens, the you are carrying an RFID tag (possibly even a smart card, but this is not as common). This is no big deal, its simply a way to control access. Technically, it provides some employee tracking, but its also very useful for security.
Heck, even parking garages are using these for employees now. My girlfriend has a little card (HID Prox card), which she uses at work to get into and out of the parking complex for work. Myself, I work at a company that builds physical security systems, so I work with these things every day. And, I find, that most of the privacy concerns are way overblown. Though, I still don't like the idea of carrying one on me, I am a bit of a privacy nut afterall.
If anything, this article sounds like a bunch of reporters got pissed, because they weren't allowed into a closed door conference, and broke the rules to get an access badge, and then reported on the evil RFID tag in the card, despite this being a very common thing, especially in places where security is an issue.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
For those who doubt the concerns about RFID, it's about who controls your own information: you... or others.
We will get no regulation of the uses RFID is put to, while the Party is in power, and so it's up to us to sort this out.
Be advised that cellphone mfgrs are now adding technology that PUSHes ads to you. Will you be able to turn it off? Doubtful; if all the carriers do it, there's no place else to go.
And of course CDMA has always had geo-location... they promise it's only used to catch indicted criminals, but that claim is very doubtful, given some recent events.
Delegates at a conference could be identified as they approach their car. Obscuring codes don't matter; a sample could be taken at any time prior, at great distance with a parabolic dish. Soldiers could be accurately geo-located by the enemy.
Did you know that all GM cars since 1999 have black boxes in them, which are NOT being used to help you understand what happened 5 seconds before an accident, but to INDICT you for that accident, and expose you to civil litigation as well. Your inanimate *car* has become a prosecution witness against you, even though your own wife isn't supposed to be forced to testify against you.
This is the difference between the old way, and the neo-way, of managing the citizens. The deeper question is, why is our society becoming more and more adversarial, so fast? How do Nordic countries and Canada, get away with cooperation, rather than ever strengthening offense and defense, every day? They don't worry about NOT being something, like we Americans do. Double-plus ungood.
You say that when out in public, you have no expectation of privacy? True, but RFID expands that 'public' from your immediate surroundings (which you are aware of, and choose to inhabit), to the known universe, and for all time. If in 10 years it is considered treasonous to question RFID, some of us will be screwed, now, won't we? We all go places we'd like to keep private sometimes, now, don't we? Care to give that up, for no good reason other than FEAR?! Of our own government/corporate oligopoly? How much of your day do you spend in FEAR?! WTF are you afraid of NOW, FGS?!
RFID is a great idea for inventory, but should be disabled/disablable when purchased. I doubt those chips now in tires, can be disabled, given the vulcanization process. And tags will soon be microscopic.
RFID has no business on a person, as long as corporations and politicians behave adversarially toward their public at the highest levels.
Campaign finance reform is national security.
a group of reporters were pissed that they weren't invited to attend the conference.
And from the article, there's no indication that they're the same as the group of researchers who snuck in.
They disected a security card, and found (shock, horror) that it contained features designed to maintain security at said conference.
If that's what it was for, how come the security people couldn't tell them that? I'm glad you were able to get more info out of them than the researchers were.
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.
The fact that they faked their way in so easily was the first bit of dirt they dug up. The fact that there were undisclosed monitoring devices in the badges was the next. The final blow was that they couldn't get any info from security about the monitoring, and basically that the conference violated at least three privacy laws in the current jurisdiction.
And that if this is how it goes in Switzerland, how will things go in Tunisia next year?
If you figure it's no biggie, maybe you're right. But then again, if we send a bunch of prime ministers and other politicos to all congregate in a single place, and then we put tags on them so that we know their comings and goings, and who is talking with whom, and then we don't have any apparent plan to purge that info at any point... how easy will it be for every terrorist in the world to strike against their least favorite government at next year's conference? This seems vaguely important to me.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
And I will take gladly endorse that viewpoint just as soon as the same courtesy is extended to consumers and private citizens.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts