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RSA Creating RFID Blocker Tag
burgburgburg writes "RSA is introducing a new RFID cloaking system to guard secret data. The RSA Blocker Tag technology uses a jamming system designed to confuse RFID readers and prevent those devices from tracking data on individuals or goods outside certain boundaries. At its security conference, RSA demonstrated the blocking technology in a pharmacy setting. The pharmacist provides your prescription in a special bag with the Blocker tags. When the drugs are in the bag, RFID readers are blocked. Take them out, they're readable. The tags work by emitting radio frequencies that fool RFID readers into thinking they're receiving unwanted data, causing them to shun data from that source. RSA promises that this new technology will not interfere with the normal operation of RFID systems or allow hackers to use security technology to bypass theft-control systems or launch denial-of-service attacks." Maybe it's just me, but this seems to not address any of the important RFID issues at all.
OK paranoid people, now you've got something to line the inside of your tinfoil beanies!
I guess soon we will all want to start using lead paint again on our houses.
Now I can stop wearing all this aluminum foil!
I see a new business opprotunity! Several states decided a while back to make a profit off of the backs of the citizens by selling government databases to spa^H^H^H marketers. One of those databases was the registration data from the DMV.
Combine that with RFIDs scanned as they leave the store, returning to the car, and I think we will have an incredible insight into the nature of those people's purchases. I'm sure some clever individuals will be able to build a portable scanner and have some underpaid kids key in the corresponding plates... won't this be wonderful!
Sig under construction since 1998.
After this, of course, Wal-Mart comes up with the RFID-blocker-blocker. And then RSA develops the RFID-blocker-blocker-blocker. And so on.
So what keeps someone from sneaking DVD's out of a store in one of these magic bags?
Cube On! (http://stores.ebay.com/PuzzleProz)
RSA promises that this new technology will not interfere with the normal operation of RFID systems or allow hackers to use security technology to bypass theft-control systems.
I think this kind of technology is asking to be abused. Just like the cell fone signal jammers.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
So once stores are using automated RFID-reading-Visa-charging tills instead of employing humans, you be able to get one of these bags, fill it with goodies, and walk out without paying?
Sounds good to me.
SteveB.
I hope they start selling a t-shirt with a giant version of those tags printed on the front.
I probably would wind up getting sued. I guess you have to have a business plan to be able to jam signals without fear of prosecution (mostly kidding here).
It does seem like a reasonable application but, as the story says, isn't intended to address the broad range of objections. Still, protecting privacy of medical information is a step in the right direction... and what's to prevent me from applying it elsewise?
Why not simply make the bag out of a material that simply dampens radio signals, opposed to sending out additional, confusing signals? It's a technique used to keep security sensors from detecting RFID security tags. And the substances that work are ..reasonably commonplace.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Why not just pull out the RFID?
RSA's next annoucment will be tags that will block the operation of the tags that block the operation of the tags on the things you buy. This will be offered as a security enhancement to stores to prevent the RFID system from being jammed.
www.eFax.com are spammers
About 6'2" tall, maybe... 2 feet wide... with a breathing hole if possible, and maybe some plastic towards the top to see out of.
Oh, I don't know about that. Seems this is just the thing to keep those guys wearing RayBans and black macks, lurking in an arcane sea-green Dodge Dart parked in the far corner of the drugstore parkinglot from discovering which medication you're on this week for your schizophrenia and irrational paranoia.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Great, now I have to wear a body condom to block my RFID's... Actually, i'm glad to see companys looking at RFID in a responsible way. Hopefully between that and angry consumers, this can be a usefull technology without being a privacy hazard.
The pharmacist provides your prescription in a special bag with the Blocker tags. When the drugs are in the bag, RFID readers are blocked.
"Excuse me sir, could you please leave your stack of empty Walgreen sacks here at the counter"
--Best Buy employee
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
What I want is to be able to disable the damm tags on anything I've already purchased and taken home!
-MattT *** Not speaking for my employer, or any other sentient beings ***
Although you really should have to do something like that, I would think that it would block the signal.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
RFID can't transmit through farraday cage, no?
ANd since it's passive device, nobody can detect it...
That's what shoplifters use right now to defeat the currently used radio tags. 60 minutes did a segment on professional shoplifters last Sunday. It's a $10 billion a year industry.
Who told the criminals about Faraday cages? Did they learn it on the Internet? We need to remove this dangerous physics information from places kids and robbers can get it!
The latest Slashdot meme.
is this anything really special? it seems to me like its just another variation of a radar jammer at a RFID frequency.
Any thoughts on how these tag jammers will affect anti-shoplifting technology? Will shoplifters gain an edge?
Essentially, the blocker tag system works by tricking readers that all the possible RFID tags are present at a given time. Because RFID readers can communicate with only one tag at a time, when multiple tags reply to a single query, the reader detects a collision.
When that happens, the reader tries to communicate with each tag individually, asking each for its next bit, which identifies the portion of a binary tree the tag resides on. However, when queried in the presence of a blocker tag, the blocker tag also responds, but with a "0" and a "1" bit, confusing the reader and preventing it from getting valid responses.
So couldn't you just always have a blocker tag with you at all times? Say you build one of these into your watch, for instance. Wouldn't that make a store's entire RFID system useless for the items you're carrying?
Also, blocker tags in bags don't do anything to protect your privacy once you take the item out of the bag; so if the RFID tag is on clothing, it would still be active while you're wearing it, but not while you're walking out of the store with it. Something about that definitely doesn't seem right.
"this new technology will not interfere with the normal operation of RFID systems or allow hackers to use security technology to bypass theft-control systems" Is this not what the system is? The bag is made to bypass the reader. Take a bag into the store, Put stolen goods in bag. Walk out. How long until you can buy these bags or the material on Ebay.
Stay tuned for new sig...
Forget the tinfoil hat, I'd rather put this big over my head.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
You don't need a special chip to stop RFID tags from functioning. Look at the EZPass/FastPass/etc. systems in use on highway systems across the country. They come with a metallized plastic bag, similar to the antistatic ones that your hard drive came in, that blocks the signal from the EZPass so that you won't register when you don't want it to. All you need is your standard Anti-static bag. Drop your RFID tags in there and watch the readers try to find them. Signals won't penetrate: no chip necessary.
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
I can't wait to see Wal-Mart employees lash back and block Wal-Mart's RFID tracking...
Ehh, then again - I'd bet half of them have no clue just what it is that's in their name badge.
As described, what they've built is pretty much the embodiment of "harmful interference". It'll require an amedment to the FCC's Part 15 rules to be legal. Which seems fairly unlikely...
Or perhaps...
<conspiracy> It sounds to me like RSA actually has some other use in mind for these tags. </conspiracy>
Children in the backseats don't cause accidents. Accidents in the back seats cause children.
What's the world comin too..
pretty soon you won't be able to have lead lined handbags.. or metal screening sewn into your clothes that just happens to block the frequencies that RFID transmits on..
er.. wait.. did i think that out loud.. please excuse me while i go for "citizen" thought retraining.. oh wait.. that's NEXT WEEK..
blocks from 10 MHz to 20 GHz mobilecloak
Uh...why would you need to put RFID tags on drugs or on drug containers in the first place?
If you're talking about prescription filling errors, that would be solved overnight by two things:
a)making doctors fill out prescriptions similarly to how most government forms are- one box per letter,capital letters(and when a prescription is rejected- the pharmacy makes it clear to the patient, AND the hospital, WHY. Doctors who can't be bothered to write clearly for the safety of their patient find themselves on the street).
b)training pharmacists better, holding them and their employers accountable for mistakes, and FDA(or state) conducted spot checks(we check health codes at restaurants to make sure Jenny the short order cook doesn't store that pot in the wrong place, but we can't be bothered to have someone fill a prescription a few times a month and check the results at a lab?)
If we're talking about theft(gillette's supposed reason for doing RFID), the major source of theft is armed(or claiming to be armed) robbers stealing powerful painkillers that have value on the black market.
RSA is grasping at straws here, finding a solution to the problems with a solution that was invented out of thin air(for a real problem). Say that 5 times fast.
Please help metamoderate.
Not to mention a whole host of other problems. Seems RSA is looking for a new business model, seeing as their compression patent expired.
Maybe it's just me, but this seems to not address any of the important RFID issues at all. Yes, but it sure solves the issue of it being difficult to steal items from stores that use RFID for inventory control! (I recall seeing on TV that the the professional "boosters" are already using foil-lined bags.)
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
...so I get RFID tags on my bottles of pills. Great. Then I put them in this bag and the tags are jammed. Ok.
SO WHAT THE HELL IS THE POINT OF THE TAGS IN THE FIRST PLACE!?!
If I have to take the bottle out of the bag to show it to the pharmacist or cashier or whoever when I want to get a refill or pay, why not just put a goddamn BAR CODE on the stupid bottle!?! There! Done! I show you the bottle, you do something with it. Bam! Just like what we have today! No extra cost! No upgrades! No new hardware! This is like inventing Caller ID so you can sell everyone Called ID Blocking! Why have BOTH? We can just live without the RFIDs in the first place!
"Life's funny sometimes." "And sometimes it isn't." --Cat's Cradle
we like to call it the microwave
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
...I'm sure that they'll find some law, like the DMCA, to use against anyone who dares try to assert this bizarre "privacy right". If no law can currently be manipulated into supporting their agenda, they'll write a new one and pay Congress to enact it.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I think this proves that tin foil hats do not go far enough, rather we need tin foil suits to protect us from 'them'
Irrelevant. If you can show the tracking system is trivial to break, public opinion is swayed against, big time. Remember the uproar about the Clipper chip? Same deal.
If some demonstrations are made of breaking this more completely, the RFID bud can get nipped.
-----------------------
You are what you think.
- The tags themselves have to be designed with fusible links (so that they can be overloaded & die), and
- The POS devices have the option of tag nuking, or maybe some area at the POS where tagged goods can be placed that will nuke them. (Many stores already have those pads that wipe out inventory control tags to prevent theft - same kind of notion.)
So, the question at a practical level is - is the industry actually responding to this, or is RSA's announcement just bandwagon hopping?"The time is always now" - Victor
FCC regulations prohibit deliberately interfering with radio communication. 47 CFR 15.5(b)
Maybe GB has a "cunning plan" involving citizens, RFID's and evildoers.
Odd. When I want to block an RFID tag, I put it an ESD bag. (Electrostatic bag, the kind that come with many computer components). When I ordered an RFID based automated toll-booth system, it came with an ESD bag, and in their FAQ they explicitly state that if you don't want your tag read and your account charged, just put the device in the bag, easy as that. Presumeably, an ESD bag (which has enough metal in it to accomodate a random static discharge) would create a Faraday cage around the tag, and keep the radio signals from getting in or out of the bag. Now all I have to do is make a shopping bag out of ESD bags.... or just line a backpack, and _bam_. Shoplifter's dream. just remember to close the bag first....
"Is this not a rare fellow, my lord? He's as good at any thing, and yet a fool." -from "As You Like It", Act 5,
Maybe it's just me, but this seems to not address any of the important RFID issues at all.
Why would this address any of the important issues. The important issues are based in policy, not technology. Technology enforces policy.
...will fabric be available so I can make myself an RFID proof body suit to prevent the corporations that will inflict the Mark of the Beast (tm) on me from actually finding me? Keep in mind you religious right looniwhacks that it's not the government you should be worried about, it's big business.
Un-news
I submitted an article on this to /. a few weeks ago but it was rejected. Typical of /. to print every anti-RFID piece of FUD they get but to ignore anything that might indicate that some companines get it.
Lasers Controlled Games!
somebody goes and patents anti-static bags as a means to block the RFID signals?
It's the incredibly sophisticated camera arrangement in most retail stores. I knew someone who worked at a best buy, and they said they saw so many people try to get away with shit in aisles, but they saw 'em do it on the cameras. I'm not sure if this is really accurate though; anyone had an experience as a shoplifter at big places like best buy? I've never actually heard of a successful shoplifter, but maybe that's just because I don't go looking for it.
SCO has issued a 'cease and desist' letter to the RSA, claiming that their use of RFID blocking technology violates SCO's IP wherein they use 'patented processes' to block RFID tag scanning. Patent searches reveal that SCO has recently hired several convicted shoplifters and their associated technologies now belong to SCO.
Maybe it's just me, but this seems to not address any of the important RFID issues at all.
First, enlighten us and tell us what the "important RFID issues" are.
Then, tell us why this device was supposed to resolve them, and didnt.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
damn, damn, damn, damn
If I had only waited a few years to steal.
Oh yes, I feel safer already!
</BLOCKER>
Merely a pacifier in the mouths of consumers. "Oh we are safe now, back to living/enjoying RFID as per the norm". Tell them whatever they want to hear, they will believe you and be happy.
We've tested it here at the UCONN Library. We use RFID tags on our books, and if you know where the tag is and hold a pack of cigarettes in front of it when you leave, it will block the tag from being read. In this case, tinfoil really WILL protect you!
Should market a powerred belt buckle with enough strength of signal to jam everything in a reasonable area. I imagine a suitably rebelious buckle with a little battery.
I know people who would buy one just to be difficult, others because they are smart.
ls
1994: Since when do people want to visit other computers on a giant network?
1984: Since when do people want an entire television channel devoted to videos of musicians singing and dancing?
1974: Since when are terrorists going to attack airplanes?
Just because it isn't happening now, doesn't mean it's not right around the corner. C'mon dude, get your head out of the sand.
Just the thought of these tags gives every Walmart exec a permanent erection, from the distribution department to the ad department, and every department in between.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
DVDs are part of the payment they receive from the MPAA!
All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
The problem with all of this stuff is that I have no way to check any of it for myself. How do I know that the "blocker bag" they gave me works? How do I know that someone won't start a business of supplying cheap substitutes, for businesses that want to pacify their customers, that look like real blocker bags but don't do anything? What do I look for? The genuine RSA seal? What if the pharmacist hands me a bag that has some other company's seal on it? Do I trust it?
Will there be a TRUSTe seal on the bag to tell me that I can trust the company that made the bag... just like the TRUSTe seal that certified that eToys would never sell their customer list?
Suppose I have a genuine RSA-branded blocker bags with an authentic non-counterfeitable TRUSTe hologram on it. How do I know it's working properly? Will the pharmacy supply a "blocker bag scanner," like the price-checking guns in Walmart, that let me verify that the blocker bag is actually working? Will the blocker bag scanner have a Commonwealth of Massachusetts weights-and-measures sticker on it to assure me that it's working properly?
If the answer is that I should just trust the pharmacist to be telling the truth when he says it's a blocker bag... well, why shouldn't I just trust the pharmacy not to do anything bad with the data they are capturing from all the RFID tags I'm wearing?
Just because CVS/Pharmacy gave a marketing firm a list of diabetic customers to sell to companies marketing products for diabetics doesn't mean they'd ever do such a thing again. Heck, that was way way back in dark ages... 1998.
These companies are all like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. Trust us, trust us, trust us... even though we've betrayed your trust over and over again in the past, we'll never do it again.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
RSA is, of course, trying to sell a product, but I prefer this solution, which pretty much eliminates the RFID specific privacy concerns. If the tag is disabled when it leaves the store, the privacy concerns aren't any different than with bar codes. Other stories on this feature here and here.
Note that companies can combine UPC data gathered from the check out with credit and customer-loyalty-card information to create detailed profiles of their customers, so this issue isn't specific to RFID tags, and need to be addressed seperately.
When will we start having people offer them under the skin? Seriously, I would contemplate it.
.-=Wit is educated insolence=-. -Aristotle
Of course this is open to interpretation, but one possible reason why RFID blocking would not violate FCC rules: Once you've purchased the pill bottle, it along with the RFID chip are your property. The only radio signal you're interfering with is your own.
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but aren't the tags in question used for tracking inventory and such? It's not like this blocker is intended to be used against RFID tags that the makers explicitly don't want to have disabled, so why don't the RFID tags themselves have a "disable code" that turns them off?
RSA promises that this new technology will not interfere with the normal operation of RFID systems or allow hackers to use security technology to bypass theft-control systems
Are you on crack!??! you put whatever you want in the bag and walk out the door, how is that not allowing people to bypass theft-control systems (theives not hackers). Im sure this has been posted 100 times below but i just had to post again without RTFA or the posts.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Personally I plan to get a microwave dryer
a ry/Sa10458.htm
http://www.worldandi.com/specialreport/1993/febru
RFID runs on much lower frequencies... Well belo 10MHz.
Sorry, you're way off. Instead of thinking of some imaginary bizzarro world where the correct number of pills magically jump into the right bottles without human intervention, rather think of a world where the pharmacist isn't risking mis-reading a doctor's chickenscratch on the prescription, and the correct medication is always dispensed. Think of a world where allergic reactions and dangerous drug combinations are automatically detected and alerted, rather than relying on an overworked human's powers of observation. Imagine a world where the biggest screwup that the pharmacist could make (and yes, we would still need pharmacists) is putting a couple too many or too few pills in the bottle.
Then you'd be a little closer to a more realistic and practical future for this type of tech.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
I'd almost got most local retailers to the point where they at least ask me if I want a bag (read: unnecessary trash) rather than automatically foisting one on me for trivial purchases. Now I'll need a bag with a device that makes it even less recyclable just to maintain the same level of privacy. Somebody earlier referred to an arms race. The fallout's already dropping.
It reminds me of the principle that proposes that any invention which requires further inventions to deal with unwanted side effects, needs instead to be redesigned to eliminate the unwanted side effect in the first place. (Example: the fable of the Sultan who got cats to get rid of the mice, got dogs to get rid of the cats, got elephants to get rid of the dogs, and then got mice to get rid of the elephants. Oops.)
It's what separates elegance from "kludge."
(However, in the case of RFID tags, whether invasion of privacy is wanted or not, depends on who you ask.)
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
What do you mean? This addresses the very most important problem with RFID, namely:
The fact that RSA can't make any money off it!
I wish I could have a gizmo that would disale cell-phones withing ten or so feet. It would be very useful in movie theaters, on the bus, in restaurants, etc.
Sort of like may explanation about VG2 detection on my radar detector:
"Okay, the cops have radar, right? So I have a radar detector. So the cops have a radar detector-detector (VG2). So my radar detector has a radar detector-detector-detector. That means I'm safe until the cops get a radar detector-detector-detector-detector."
I guess you look for a some thing that absorbs or reflects EM waves, rather than let them pass through.
In Soviet Russia, RFID blocker bags you!
Now that you've posted you can't mod me up though. :)
Lasers Controlled Games!
The problem is that we don't want the tags being tracked. The simple answer is to not use them, or have the cash register that reads them, disable them.
Who can up with the incredible stupid bag idea? Now I have to pay for a blocking bag, which is going to cost more than a plain old bag, or lord forbid, no bag at all. I do not wissh to spend my money in this way.
If it wasn't for the vanity of that moron the last time, there wouldn't a cabal of morons slowly moving the country back to the dark ages. I'll bet there're secretly funding his campaign.
After working for several months with the new EPC compliant tags (what WalMart has mandated) I can, with a great level of assurance, say that one does not need a chip to prevent reading of the chips, that is way overkill, and probably not really reliable.
There are a couple ways to easily defeat the chips:
1) put the product inside of a foil lined bag. Doesn't even have to be heavy foil, any slightly metalic foil will block the RF signal to the point that the tag cannot be read.
2) Hold the product close to your body. The water in your body absorbs the RF signal, silencing the backscatter RF signal.
3) Put two standard RFID chips close together and the antennas will 'shadow' each other, blocking the signal from both.
From my experience it is harder to read the tags than it is to not read the tags. (the fact that you can read a tag is almost a miracle in itself) To build an entire chip to defeat an RFID chip is just stupid.
RSA is just looking for something else to patent, like they did the RSA algorithm.
Nothing here...move along
But seriously I doubt RSA has anyone's interest at heart here. This sounds more like a firm with a vested interest in RFID producing a sop to all those unreasonable, revenue eating objections that politicians and normal people might have about erosion of privacy, big brother, etc. After all, they have an anti RFID bag!
Something much more effective that would give stores pause for though would be a reasonably priced, pocket sized device that created a wall of static for any RFID in the vicinity. Or better yet, something that fried RFIDs in situ. I wonder how keen they'd be for the tech if the RFIDs in their goods were frazzled by persons unknown even before they reached the checkout.
It seems to me that if you could build a scanner able to tell the difference between one tag answering and two tags answering, you could still read tags in spite of the blocker tags.
Those who wanted to plant scanners in the doors to see who comes and goes are not above buying a next generation fancier scanner to see the people carrying the blocker tags.
More details in the first article at my blog.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
All my paranoid visions are coming true. It's not paranoia if they're really out to get ya.
How many times have we seen new technology introduced that purports to solve all the "problems", only to find that some hacker has outsmarted it with a new version of technology a very short time later Some of the main players in RFID have been working on the problems of reading tags too close to metal objects for some time now and may be able to detect past your foil bag.
How hard to you think it will be for a smart company to differentiate between a 1 or 0 of amplitude A from the blocker occurring almost simultaneously with a 1 or 0 of amplitude B from the RFID tag? 6 months? 6 weeks?
SWEET, I think I may like the RFID thing, just get one of these things, and voila, stick anything you like in bag, walk out of store....
From the Snopes "Urban Legend" web site: "NASA never asked Paul C. Fisher to produce a pen. When the astronauts began to fly, like the Russians, they used pencils, but the leads sometimes broke and became a hazard by floating in the [capsule's] atmosphere where there was no gravity. They could float into an eye or nose or cause a short in an electrical device. In addition, both the lead and the wood of the pencil could burn rapidly in the pure oxygen atmosphere. Paul Fisher realized the astronauts needed a safer and more dependable writing instrument, so in July 1965 he developed the pressurized ball pen, with its ink enclosed in a sealed, pressurized ink cartridge. Fisher sent the first samples to Dr. Robert Gilruth, Director of the Houston Space Center. The pens were all metal except for the ink, which had a flash point above 200C. The sample Space Pens were thoroughly tested by NASA. They passed all the tests and have been used ever since on all manned space flights, American and Russian. All research and development costs were paid by Paul Fisher. No development costs have ever been charged to the government.
From the Fisher Space Pen web site: The cartridge was pressurized with nitrogen so that it didn't rely on gravity to make it work. It was dependable in freezing cold and desert heat. It could also write underwater and upside down. The trick was to have the ink flow when you wanted it to, and not to flow the rest of the time, a problem Fisher solved. Fisher's development couldn't have come at a more opportune time. The space race was on, and the astronauts involved in the Mercury and Gemini missions had been using pencils to take notes in space since standard ball points did not work in zero gravity. The Fisher cartridge did work in the weightlessness of outer space and the astronauts, beginning with the October, 1968 Apollo 7 mission began using the Fisher AG-7 Space Pen and cartridge developed in 1966.
For more information about the history of the ball point pen, go here: http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/cosmo30/history_b allpoint_pen.htm
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
You can't really get around the fact that a foil bag blocks all electric fields passing through it. It would act as a Faraday cage. Now IANAP, but if I recall from Physics class, the foil bag, as a conductor, acts as a sort of ground for all electic fields attempting to pass through it, so the charge from the filed ends up on the surface of the bag, so none penetrates into the center of the bag. Now of course a tin foil bag isn't a perfect conductor, so it will let a little bit of the electric field through, but with a fairly highly conductive bag you could cut the electric field down significantly. Unless the readers use extremely high powered signals, they wouldn't get through. Plus, the tag doesn't transmit a very high power signal to begin with, so the signal will never get out.
If you can read this then I forgot to check "Post Anonymously"
I don't know how bizzaro it is to you, but considering that most of the technology is already in place at the point of manufacture (ie, machines which count the number of pills at very high speeds, double check that against the known, discrete weight of each pill, and the weight of a filled bottle, other machines to move and sort the bottles according to what is being manufactured and so forth), the only dangerous varible I can think of is the placement of each bottle in the cabinents at the individual pharmacies -- which also can be controlled to a certain extent when the system is purchaced and in place -- I see no reason why a fully automated pharmacy couldn't exist.
I think the only thing keeping such from existing is people's lack of trust in those who craete such systems.
We all need to start carrying RFID jammers.
They are for our protection and safety.. what are you, some sort of un-american terrorist?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
but you obviously don't think like a walmart exec
and more importantly, they are making decisions about rfid, not you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What I was thinking.
I guess what they say is true great (and maybe evil) minds think alike!
It's bad enough now if something doesn't have/can't read the UPC code, the cashiers can't figure out what to do, they will be lost if it has no/unreadable RFID tag.
This is not the sig line you are looking for... -- Old Jedi Sig Line Trick
Amn't I the only one who read the title as RIAA Creating RFID Blocker Tag? I was like: well, its random, but better than your usual behavior of suing people and producing crap music, so overall: go RIAA go!
Since one application of RFID is security, isn't this illegal per the DMCA?
Excuse me, but why would they put RFID tags on items like medicines and then design bags to block them from the view of the RFID system? Why not, uh...just not tag them in the first place?
The more I read about this RFID thing, the more I'm thinking the idea just hasn't come along to the point where it has to be. Obviously, if these issues are getting discussed at a high level, we need to put something in place that's a bit more targetted to the problem: we want to be able to read items for a specific purpose, and no other purpose. Walk out of a store with items, get automatically charged to the credit card = good. Someone sitting in the parking lot with an RFID reader able to tell you just walked out with Preparation H, herpes medication, and a coffee enema kit = bad.
I'm betting that the propeller-heads among us have the capability to solve this problem, technologically I'm talking. Also, do we have to start out tagging everything? Why not just tag the non-controversial items? Let's not start with the Complete Homeopathic Colon Invasion Toolkit (TM), or people themselves. Let's start with something a bit more pedestrian and refine things from there...
sev
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Just let all information formats on RFID tags be public. Let anyone buy a reader. Obviously, going in to a store with a RFID tag re-writer would be a problem, but the checkout-register could doublecheck randomly.
Make storing customer personal information on such a tag a felony, even if the customer signs any forms indicating otherwise. Business can still use RFID for quick checkout, inventory management, etc.
Since we all have readers, we can doublecheck that the tags are, in fact, erased. I would suggest having readers all over the store, even on the way out. If they are not properly, totally erased, bring them back to the counter. Even 10% of customers doing it would provide major incentive to get the tags erased correctly, the first time.
In fact, why don't we walk around the store with RFID readers? That way we can check the real price of each item - no confusion or misleading shelf placement. If there is a rebate, that information should be on the tag.
Lastly, to achieve nirvana, all we have to do is require the wages of people who made the item on the RFID tags. That way the (now well informed) consumer can choose between shoes, clothing or other goods made in various countries - and actually be confronted with how little people earn in some places. Sure not everyone will care, but enough will.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
Use aluminum foil instead. It's a radiant barrier, and properly grounded, can also make a Faraday cage or wikipedia link out of your house. (ie, reduces energy consumption and reduces EM energy emanations from passing into/out of your house, resulting, supposedly, in lower health risks as well.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
It's bad enough that every corporate conglomo is going to be allowed to invade your privacy for their own records, but now there is going to be a second conglomo who is going to SELL you products to protect you from the first! Jesus H. Christo! We need to elect another political party because both current groups somehow think this is a good idea. They have both been sucking on the corporate teat too long.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
The typical antistatic bag has a rather high resistivity, so while it dissipates static charge adequately, it doesn't block RF very effectively. Use a tinfoil bag and you'll find that it blocks the signal.
BTW, EZpass etc, are NOT active systems, at least not most of them. The toll transponders MIGHT be active systems, but I doubt it; that big plastic shell may just house a better antenna to ensure adequate reading range (no battery = many fewer headaches when users fail to replace said battery and return the transponder when they start getting spurious "no-transponder" tickets).
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Armor piercing rounds generally have steel cores. The main use of steel core ammunition in the US is for cheap surplus rounds sold and mainly used for target practice.The don't make good rounds for hunting (or assassination) as they tend to pass through the target without shedding much energy. Good rounds for hunting are soft-tipped or hollow core and expand and stay in the animal. That way they transmit the most energy and create a more lethal wound channel.
...
If you consider the size of a buck deer, moose, or elk it quickly becomes apparent that if you allow sportsmen to hunt these animals, then you must have appropriate ammunition available that will dispatch them with a high probability with one shot. If you look at the rounds used in the past to hunt elephants you'll see they are huge are in fact not very common, and the rifles that can fire them are quite expensive, and even more uncommon. And, if you disallow hunting, then you have to reintroduce natural predators for game animal population control; look at New Jersy's experiment with elimination of deer hunting. Famine in the deer population as it grew, increase in disease in the deer population and increase in related vectors that directly and adversly affect other animals and humans.
If you want to change the rights of gun ownership in the US have the courtesy to attack the problem head on. Make an attempt to change the 2d amendment. Legislation that violates the 2d Amendment is just an affront to the legal basis that supports all our laws. When you do, remember that over 50% of US housholds own guns, legally. Guns are _so_ easy to manufacture that a plant in NJ was set up by organized crime and operated for years creating blackmarket firearms. We dropped (in WWII) leaflets showing how with simple mechanics tools a reliable fully automatic weapon (the so called "grease guns") could be made my resistance fighters. Make sure you address all the potential avenues for criminal creation of firearms when you try to make a legal ban of them. And then consider what other rights you have to give up to allow enforcement of those provisions to assure crimminals don't have firearms. And consider those who legally use a firearm in self-defense and assure a way to protect all the citizens all the times. I see very large budget increases for the new police state you'll need to implement this.
Feel free to mode this down along with the parent. Now if only he'd have suggested RFIDs in bullets or handguns
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
I didn't read the article but from the OP it looks like it just makes it so the RFID reader rejects the information. That means that there was some sort "attempted" transfer of data involved. In other words, the alarm would go off, it just wouldn't know what caused it. The best way I can think of to do this is to have the RFID reader hooked up to some sort of database that only contains information about items sold in that store. That would solve the problem of an alarm going off everytime you entered or left a store with all that RFID embeded clothing you're wearing. It would also solve the privacy problem if the RFID tag only contained a unique key (like a barcode :) ) that corresponded an identical key in the reader's database. Of course then you'ld have a problem if you entered the store where you bought your clothing...Eh whatever. I can't think of everything :)
When the drugs are in the bag, RFID readers are blocked. Take them out, they're readable... RSA promises that this new technology will not interfere with the normal operation of RFID systems or allow hackers to use security technology to bypass theft-control systems..." What kind of double speak is this? Look, either the technology blocks reading of RFID tags, or it doesn't. If it does block reading, it enables people to bypass theft control systems. If it does not, it does not protect privacy. It's as simple as that! RSA is trying to convince us their technology is smart enough to tell the difference between an honest drug consumer and a shoplifter?!? WTF?!?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
This is actually a great tool to solve one of the problem of RFIDs when used in pharmaceuticals. It's a problem I honestly never thought of before. When you buy some drugs from the pharmacy, anyone with a scanner can easily figure out what sort of meds you're taking -- such as anti-STD medication. To preserve privacy, the pharmacy can now place the drugs in a bag which prevents your drugs from being identified on the way out of the store, sitting in the back of your car, or in your purse or pockets.
Of course, it's no "easily ripped out and destroyed before going into your trash can," but it's a step in the right direction.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
It is illegal to actively interfere with radio communication/transmissions with the intention of disrupting the process of communication/transmission. How can this be legal in the U.S.A? It is a felony.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
At any "exit" point of a store where the product with the RFID tag is given to a consumer (checkout line, etc.), why can't they just render the tag unusable until the consumer wants to reactivate it? That way, both bases are covered. Those who don't care about RFID cannot be tracked and those who want to know if they have 80 quarts of shampoo at home can track it.
Seems to me we are about to be dragged into a consumer privacy Cold War that will make SPAM and computer viruses look like idle fun. How do you want to live?
a) Get used to having your every move recorded in a giant marketing/antiterrorism/conformity database. Ignore little annoyances like being IRS audited every year because you checked the wrong books out of the library.
b) Buy and continuously upgrade your array of privacy-protection technology.
c) Live in a shack in the hills and deal only through barter.
d) Armed revolt.
I don't personally find any of these attractive.
Here is the original paper on RSA's idea of blocking the RSA tags.
I posted a link to this a few months ago, after heise.de posted an article on that very thing.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
In the RSA paper, there is a section on this very thing (in fact a lot of things discussed here are put forward in that paper).
Basically it says that in a forseeable future, you may want to actually have certain RFID-tags 'alive' so your home appliances, like a washing machine or microwave, can use the tag to, for example, autodetermine a program that has to be run on said product. All sorts of interesting stuff presents itself here.
The trick is that you want to block (certain) RFID's at certain (private) places, and you will always have the last say in the 'who is scanning my stuff'-question.
This RSA-technique tries to have both. Now if there is a good standardization of RFID-numbers (like 1000xxxxxxxx = clothing, 1100xxxxxxxx is food etc.), you can practically shut every part of the binary RFID-tree out that you don't want anyone to scan.
If we harnass this technique instead of plain dismissing it, we could actually get somewhere. But I agree that standardization and privacy-protection, not commerce, should be first and foremost of the agenda of RFID-introduction.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
It is like calling someone by their name. Two people answer - that's perfectly ok, but you can't determine who's who: that's your problem, not theirs. You are not really interfering, you are simply "doing as you are told".
In this case a binary tree is followed down and the RFID-blocker tag responds truthfully to the question "who has the next bit in tree 010X ?".
You are not jamming the radiosignal that the other RFID is transmitting. (which would indeed be illegal, as it probably jams a whole lot more than just the RFID in your bag).
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
of corse use gold(or copper) foil
De sig boss de sig
RSA has studied solutions to prevent the readers from hanging on a "malicious" RFID-blocker. Such a solution is named in their paper:
It is conceivable that expensive, special-purpose readers could filter out blocker tags. For example, if a few readers working together could estimate the location of the tags, they could ignore a multitude of fake identifiers originating from a single location. Of course, existing readers are not capable of this hypothetical technique.
If they will also sell said solution, is something that needs to be watched I guess...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
It's interesting that you cite the prevalence of firearms as a factor in determining whether to make them illegal (or certain types of them) and yet a similar situation with regards to drug use seems to make no difference to legislators waging their war on drugs.
As you point out - there are many factors involved in these decisionsm, and the Constitution is only one of them. Just don't leave out money.
Some kind of nanotech or maybe a biotech bacteria that eats black powder would be so cool.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
heh. aint technology fun.
any metal lined bag will easily block rfid readers from reading tags. In the lab we use anti-static bags to store the tags we dont want to read-- works great.
I bet thats a bit cheaper (and smarter) compared to anti-rfid tags.
Yes, Michael, it's just you. The rest of us realized the tin-foil hats do nothing a long time ago.
so, how long before the robin hood device(interference/nusiance account debit [like charging an account of the dept of highways for example] generator) laid by anarchists outside of stores or at tollboothes all over just for the fu factor?
if this move towards RFID technology continues its shift towards industry acceptance
doesn't anyone wonder what the next generation of threats, which will for most effectiveness probly be EMP bombs, wonder what they'll do to every RFID tag in a 500 mile radius?