Chemical, Printable RFIDs

Syre writes "The RFID Journal says that CrossID, an Israeli startup, has developed an RFID system that can be printed using an inkjet printer. The 'nanometric' RFID system uses tiny particles of chemicals with varying degrees of magnetism that resonate when bombarded with electromagnetic waves from a reader. Since the system uses up to 70 different chemicals, each chemical is assigned its own position in a 70-digit binary number. 'Previously, there has been no way to protect paper documents,' says Moshe Glickstein, CrossID cofounder. 'We have created the first firewall for paper documents.' The big advantage is that the tag can be printed on just about anything. 'It's as easy to create as a printed bar code. And we can print in invisible mode for extra security. Printing the tags cost less than 1 cent each.' Their FAQ says that 'CrossID can be read from quite a long distance'. No word on whether it can be user-disabled..."

Comments

+z: Funny?

[OverlordQ]

I fail to see the Humor in this.

Living in the country that tried to introduce CAPPS and CAPPS II and did pass PATRIOT but thankfully not TIA or PATRIOT II, or am I just the only one that could see the government trying to do this?

At what point should this be illegal?

[Sarcasmooo!]

Anyone here optimistic enough to think that Congress will step in before we reach a point as catastrophic as, say, an era where all government documents are tracked and no whistleblowers ever succeed in bringing official misdeeds to light?

What a wonderful Democracy that would leave us with.

Firewall eh?

[noblefox]

But, does this so-called chemical firewall prevent you from burning the paper with fire? I think not...

Whats to prevent people from copying it out by hand? So it has an "invisible" mode... visible or not, if there are chemicals, it can be read... Any hackers out there with biochemistry or chemical engineering degrees? Heh...

It does raise an interesting point though, these folks could very well become the microsoft of the photocopying world. Whats to stop them from making this sort of printing mandatory for copyright sake? Assuming they managed to get that in line, I cant imagine what'd happen to Xerox stocks when people are no longer able to freely photocopy.

I think I speak for everyone when I say, 'I refuse to live in a world without freedom to steal other people's intellectual property!'.

Re:Firewall eh?

[Justice8096]

Actually, it has some very good uses in secure government contractor environments, if you only use it for classified documents.
One of the biggest hassles in that environment is making sure that the documents have been stored properly at the end of the day (locked in special cabinets), and disposed of properly. Add scanners at the copier and trash areas, and you have an effective way of detecting an attempt to improperly dispose of documents.
Line the secure document repository with a blocking material, and you only need to have someone walk down the aisle of cubicles with a scanner at the end of the day, or wherever uncleared personnel are present (especially if you can code the document paper to the dozens of clearance types)
Inventory parts used for specific projects, add scanners, and this could reduce the cost of implementing a SCIF by thousands.

Seems easily defeated

[GuruHal]

I'm no chemical engineer, but the chemical properties of this system seem easy to defeat by simply adding more chemicals to the mix and marking up the RFID. They used the system of chemicals ABCD representing the first 4 binary digits and only A and C present to form the binary value 1010, then properly adding chemical B after the fact should still produce a value of 1110 which negates the entire process.

Getting through building exits

[NetworkNeighbor]

What's to keep me from changing the "70 bit code" by spraying a few more chemicals onto the document? Then I'll just walk out of the protected area with a new hat or something instead of the "protected" document.

Re:Currency protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me this could be easily implemented to be an anti-counterfeit measure.

Or a pro-mugging measure. Why bother accosting people at random when your RFID gun tells you the little old lady on the corner is toting around $5,000 in cash?

Perpetual Identification

[aauu]

Unlike the current anti-theft technology where bulky visible tags are easy to spot and remove, the RFID tag can be a permanent invisible part of each product. The next time you wear any RFID tagged clothing back to the same store/chain, they can greet you ala minority report, aggregate your purchase history, sell such history to others. When you purchase items with your credit card, then you provide additional information useful to many people. The police could find you with scanners in public places such as airports by retreiving your purchase records from stores by determining where you bought your clothes from your bank transactions. We do not need a national id card when every retailer is going to tag the population for the government at no cost to the government. RFID scanners are much less obtrusive than the video cameras with face recognition. Add RFID tags to currency to prevent counterfeiting and trace illegal transactions. Am I being too paranoid?

Re:Tattoos

[blair1q]

Too late.

It's the original spam.

Everyone is into it.


It's so pervasive that

you don't even notice any more.


But some people are predictably taking artistic advantage

and some are merely advancing the art predictably


Maybe it'd be more obvious

if you could sell the old ones on eBay.

Re:Built Into the Bar Code

[originalhack]

1) You try to board a plane but are strip-searched because you were somewhere other than church last Easter.
2) You get audited because you were scanned near an anti-war rally.
3) At your job interview, you are asked what movie you saw last week at the theater that was showing an action flick and a politically unpopular movie.

Ever visit a friend who is a druggie?

Ever visit a friend who is gay?

Ever interview for a job while you still had one?

Freedom of movment and freedom of association are very precious. When you can be tracked at all times and constantly live under the threat of being "categorized" by having your movements tracked, you give up a very important fundamental freedom.

That's not the problem....

[h4rm0ny]

True - there will be ways of detecting these... but consider blending legitimate and illegitimate purposes. You know that you have a RFID in your computer, your watch or the medical-entitlement tattoo that tells the ambulance crew to treat you (hey - that's capitalism), but how do you confirm who accesses this information. It's only a number that the chip emits. Now how do you know that the RFID in your car that you use to allow the police to return it to you when nicked, is not also scanned by the FBI, the taxman and the insurance company for other monitoring purposes?

I can see that different users of RFID might pool resources for monitoring (share recievers and transmitters) just like mobile phone providers share network bandwidth.

My point is that its not the detecting of these numbers (IDs) that matters, but the access to the database that contains that number. Of course, you could just avoid carrying any RFID tags altogether, but unless you can persuade the rest of society to join you, you'll have problems.

Re:user-disableable?

[mzo23]

That is until they make xerox machines detect the RFID's within a certain distance and refuse to make any copies of anything until the RFID is far enough away. Kinda like HP printers and adobe photoshop's currency copying protection. Gotta love a corporate amerika!