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Verisign to run National RFID Directory

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the we've-seen-this-before dept.

JamesD_UK writes "Verisign has been given the contract to develop a national RFID directory by EPCGlobal. Under the directory scheme each company will maintain an Object Name Service analogous to DNS with Verisign running the root server. Verisign has already setup the infrastructure at six different global sites."

2 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. CueCat vs. EPC Directory? by WebTurtle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It seems that this is just a slightly different implementation of an old idea. The only really interesting thing is that they are searching for RFIDs using the same redundancy as DNS.

    What are the similarities between CueCat and the EPC Directory project? It seems to me that the only difference is the scale of the implementation.

    Is that accurate?

    --
    ------- "One of the joys of travel is visiting new towns and meeting new people." -- G. KHAN
  2. Re:Thats nice. by ajs · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I always assumed that Verisign was a US government front company. I guess this makes it pretty clear.

    Think of it this way, if you were in the FBI, advising the White House about upcoming threats to domestic security, what would you say about a growing global network of computers that it's pretty clear all business will rely on within the next 100 years? Would you advise that the government find a way to have a controling hand close to the heart of such a beast? Would you allow the military to give up control of such a thing whithout maintaining some sort of back-door power?

    It's not so much about conspiracy, as about the way you manage resources. Verisign has either been involved in or bought the companies involved in the technologies most likely to scare the government (PGP, DNS, RFID, being a CA). This combination of interests and amazingly lucrative and monopolistic contract awards is fairly damning.

    To jump back to topic, adding in RFID means that whoever has access to Verisign now has access to a giant database of what amount to tracer bugs planted (soon) in most of the items that you buy. Just think of the harm caused by the most obvious uses....

    I really think that a national database of RFIDs should not be allowed. We should have a national allocation scheme like we do with Ethernet cards, based on industry standardization, but NEVER a database of final numbers.