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Senator Leahy Calls for RFID Technology Hearings
securitas writes "Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy has called for congressional hearings into radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The comments were made Mar. 23 to the Georgetown University Law Center's conference on video surveillance technology during a speech titled 'The Dawn of Micro Monitoring: Its Promise, And Its Challenges To Privacy And Security'. Leahy suggested that RFIDs may require federal regulation to ensure the public's privacy rights. Leahy is quoted as saying that the combination of RFIDs, sophisticated databases, networks and the Internet means that, 'We are on the verge of a revolution in micro-monitoring - the capability for the highly detailed, largely automatic, widespread surveillance of our daily lives.' He goes on to say that, 'We need clear communication about the goals, plans, and uses of the technology, so that we can think in advance about the best ways to encourage innovation, while conserving the public's right to privacy.' (Leahy's RFID speech transcript)"
RFID is good technology, with a lot of potential and a number of legitimate uses. Unfortunately it can also put big brother in your pocket, shoes, shirt and pants. If they could do just three key elements in a law I think it could flourish without privacy fears and diminished abuse potential.
/will/ produce them) come about, they would become a neon broadcast flag to theives.
Only allow people to scan for RFID that match a white list of your own property or property in your care with your consent. Any reading not on a white list must be discarded. Once an item is sold it is no longer their property and must be removed from the white list - with todays pos tech this would be absurdly easy to implement. This would allow retailers and distribution centers to use it for their own logistical and loss prevention purposes. This would also keep people minding their own business - literaly.
IF an RFID tag is on an item it should be prominently labeled, and be removable without destruction, devaluation or vandalism to the item that is attached to. For example, someone here asked a bit back, why not just cot off the tag? Answer - some clothing is now comes tagless.
Make sure that warranties and returns do not require RFID tags in order to be upheld. Someone should not be required to keep an RFID tag on something valuable just because they may have to get warranty service on it someday. As more powerful readers (blackmarket
Hopefully, any legislation proposed on protecting privacy can be passed without goobering it up with unrelated riders...
He's calling for hearings. That means that the government is looking out for you. Right?
Or is the government just making gestures so that you will feel better while, they don't really do anything at all? Sorta like airport security.
Have you voted?
... investing in companies that produce aluminum foil and copper mesh.
Most people don't particularly care that they can potentially be tracked with their purchases. It's already happening now, and the world hasn't come to an end. Bar codes and their scanners hasn't made life worse for anybody.
It's funny to see slashdot, home of tech geeks turn into luddites over some things.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
Wow, a congressional committee is now going to weigh in! In 5 or 10 years, I'm sure they'll have something interesting to say about today's situation...
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This is a serious issue. The matter of someone being able to monitor everything people do will call into question all manner of legal issues and definitely needs thought before it is implemented.
The issue of what this tech can be used for has so many deep and penetrating details. If RFID tags are in your purchace goods and you check out but they remain active as you drive down the road, can the police access the data without a search warrant? How about a marketing company checking all of the goods and seeing your travels etc. What do we do about Identity Theft here? There are so many issues that need looked into. Doubtless even if we try there are many more we have not even thought of yet.
Civilized people are facing the choice between the individual becoming merely a tool or cog in the Commercial world of the Industrialists or if the Industrialists tools will work for the Individual. Making this decision out of ignorance is not wise.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
"We are on the verge of a revolution in micro-monitoring - the capability for the highly detailed, largely automatic, widespread surveillance of our daily lives." And in the next sentence says: "while conserving the public's right to privacy." If I know anything, it's that it can't be both ways...
ALL RFID tags MUST be PERMANENTLY disabled BEFORE a purchased article leaves the premises of the place it was purchased.
It would be a simple, one-sentence law that would solve the entire problem. Of course, our government would rather spend a billion dollars in pork barrel research grants in order to come to the same conclusion... I'm sure there's a Vermont think-tank that is pushing Sen. Leahy for this "investigation"
I still haven't figured out what the big deal about "tracking people's purchases" is all about. I really haven't looked into this much, but I understand that the things can't be read from more than 5 feet away. I mean, if the government is within 5ft of my refrigerator monitoring my pizza bites, I think I have much worse problems than being tracked.
Lets face it, politicians only look at RFID as another form of "postage" for which to collect more taxes.
If the true intent of his "hearings" was to vet the technology, he would have industry experts and companies that are employing RFID today go before him and his council of elders.
What we will see (as so often is the case) is hand wringing and posturing to present this as "evil corrupt corporate" technology.
Never mind the 3M+ dogs that already have them imbedded in their necks.
Never mind the windfall afforded from instant package tracking and location determination it will provide.
Leahy and crew (ala "The Sopranos") are viewing this not with the public's best interest, but, with tax revenue dollars in their eyes.
Expect to pay 1cent per RFID tag in the next 2 years, but have to suffer under 35cents in taxes.
Everyday, death is becoming more appealing that taxes.
If everyone can look up *anything* at all about *anyone*, there would probably be a lot less abuse than there is now. It's hard to blackmail someone when the information is already publically available, and when the victim could probably find something that the blackmailer wouldn't want called to the public's attention.
As for identify theft, that's already a serious problem. We already need to find better ways to verify identity and authenticate authorization. Making all that personal data available to everyone probably won't cause an upswing in abuse; most of the people who would abuse having access to the data are already doing so.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
personal RFID blockers/jammers, like a keyfob you carry that gives you a privacy zone by jamming the freq. in say a 3' dia. zone around you.
Imagine when companies begin logging other stores RFID information, to monitor what types of things people are buying... Most stores will begin carrying similar items to what they see rolling in the door from competitors. I see that has the potential to limit choice, stores don't want to inventory anything that's not "popular" on a nation wide basis.
:D
Now the salesmen will have another tool to bother you with. There is the possibility that they could monitor competitors products rolling in the door so they can come up and say, "So, what are you looking for today. I notice you bought that shirt at Dillard's, we have a similar item over here that's even better..."
I'd prefer the shit be deactivated totally at the register when I pay for it.
It is nice to see that some people in the government are paying attention to what's going on. I wonder what consumer rights group contributes to his campain.
I'm intrigued by the discussion surround RFID and retail. Most of the discussions I've seen surround concerns about retailers gathering too much information about their customers' buying habits. The other major concern commonly noted deals with third party tracking of the rfid device once it leaves the store. However, neither of these seem like valid concerns to me.
The ability to track a customer's buying habits, most retailers have that ability now. Bar codes uniquely identify a product. Unless you pay with cash (or a gift card at some retailers), the retailer has access to your name and some corresponding number (checking account or credit/debit card number). Those can easily be stored, RFID is not needed to accomplish this type of information gathering. In fact, many retailers use loyalty programs so that they can track cash and gift card purchases as well as credit/check. All of this begs the question: Is this a bad thing? If more information about your buying habits brings you lower prices, are you willing for your retailer to have that information?
As for tracking the RFID signals once they leave the store, I do not expect this to be a valid concern for long. For a retailer to use rfid on its products for anything other than loss prevention, it needs to be on every product. That means small and cheap, which in turn will drive the manufactures to make them with as low of a signal and as little storage capacity as possible to meet the retailer's needs. And, much like the security tags today, it is a simple thing to disable the tag once it has been scanned/read at the Point of Sale. This would even be preferable, therefore making it easy to scan for tags that are still active trying to make it out of the store (ie, shoplifted items).
All this is not to say there are no privacy concerns here. However, I think too much attention is placed on the retail use of RFID and not enough the other potential uses. Can anyone imagine DL's with embedded RFID? How about the RFID tag in my employee badge? These are the areas that I see real potential for abuse. At a retail store, if you don't want to be tracked, just pay with cash and don't use loyalty. You're data falls into the "other" bucket. If you don't mind being tracked, use your credit card, get your airline miles, your loyalty discount, and save a bucks.
If you would like to be a leader with a large following...drive slowly down a windy two-lane road
"The RFID train is beginning to leave the station, and now is the right time to begin a national discussion about where, if at all, any lines will be drawn to protect privacy rights"
Personally, I don't care if RFID's track my every move. I'm looking forward to their ubiquitous existence which WILL happen no matter what anyone wants.
What does concern me is if RFID's are closed in their architecture. RFID's should be open so that any reader can read any RFID tag, which will probably happen anyway in order for them to become as prevalent as barcodes.
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There is a bill in California right now that sets out to address consumor privacy concerns. NPR also talked about this in the morning. I agree w/ poster #1 with the potential benefits of RFID and despite my liberal and consumer advocate leanings, I am in favor of them. Clearly, however, policy needs to be set for how they will function both in and out of stores/warehouses. Should they be deactivated when leaving a store? At first I thought yes, but then other potential uses are quashed. Suppose your refridgerator could give you an instant inventory? That kind of thing is something i'de like to have someday. A middle ground was proposed by RSA to have a bag that temporarily blocks RFID until you get home. I don't know how good that will work for all situations, though. Like it or not, RFID is coming. The benefits are just too great to ignore. The question is, how will it be regulated? Now is the time for consumers to lobby for legislation dictating how RFID can be used!
Have a Happy.
Ask, and ye shall "recieve", not.. (Ugh, bad pun!)
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The size issue you bring up is, I suppose (currently) valid.
However, tracking is a real problem. The obvious place to put an RFID reader is in a store doorway, just to act as a second check to avoid shoplifting.
More and more stores do this. Cheap and effective.
Now, every time you walk in or out of a door, you tell the people running the store of all the items you're walking around with. That goes into a database, perhaps forever.
Once you wear a couple of items, it becomes easy to "taint" new items. Wearing a tagged pair of jeans? Now folks know that you also own your tagged sweater. Now there's a log of where you go WRT commercial establishments anywhere, forever.
I gotta say that *I*'m not comfortable with it. I'd like to see (a) European-style privacy laws placing limits on what RFID data can be used for, and how long kept, and (b) laws made for retailers forcing them to destroy tags at the time of purchase. If it's so easy to destroy tags, it shouldn't cost them anything to blow 'em away at checkout. Normally, I really dislike government regulation of information handling -- however, the consequences of corprate data gathering using RFID is really disturbing.
May we never see th
Agent 1: Reading target now. Oh... Oh my God... He's wearing a shirt from the gap and pants from Old Navy!
Agent 2: That... son... of... a... BITCH!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I've always said I don't mind RFID tags as long as there are no laws mandating them.
1 578&cid =8657013
I would probably choose to buy the product without a tag. And when I buy products that have them, I remove them.
But what concerns me is a law (and I could see this happening) that forbids anyone to remove RFID tags. That would scare the crap out of me. But up until that point, I'll handle the tags myself.
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Is Karma really that easy?
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10
Just think of all the ways you can screw with "data trackers". I can see it now - big batches of random RFID tags auctioned off on ebay. People walking around with little foil bags of RFIDs, periodically pulling a few new ones out, and putting others back in.
Look, here, someone's just walked past with an 8000# stuffed hippo. Wait, here he is with a Ford F150. Wait, there he goes with a Harrier Attack Jet. Think of all the fun you could have. Especially with stores and security guards. You have RFIDs that code to their products, they hual you in for "shoplifting". Whoops. You sue - big bucks. :D
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Isn't this a bit complex? If you're planning to lift the garment anyway, why not just lift it the first time and save the energy...
As part of the return process, the garment/tag will be re-added to the inventory. Most (cheap) tags are read-only and only say "I am tag {2575452E-E8D5-42CD-896D-2796C44D2EC6}". When the "customer [or agent thereof]" shoplifts it, the item record matching the tag will now have sold = false, and trigger the alarm. The door reader would only pass tags it doesn't know about or ones with sold = true. (If I was designing it. :^)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I wrote a paper last summer about environmental ethics and technology for a sociology graduate class. Environmental ethics and technology? What could be the connection? Our environment and how is becoming overrun with technology for technologies sake. RFID if a fine example of the slow building of a technological mountain that we will not notice until it is too late. The fact is that technology will enframe most people so that they do not notice it anymore -- MTV generation. For example, who remembers life with only 3-channels of UHF programming, or no condensation-trails from jets in the sky? Now there is a generation that knows only 100+ channels of programming. This will happen with RFID in the next 20-30 years and RFID will be everywhere. A new generation will be born that won't know, or care even if you tell them - generation gap.
Most likely congress will ban RFID readers as a criminal device because people will be worried about criminals reading their homes/cars and corporations will worry about bad data being introduced into there systems, so no personal RFID readers/scramblers/decoders/whatever... -- these will be made illegal due to PRIVACY/BUSINESS concerns.
Overall technology needs a gas tank to keep running: coal/gas to power the PC's; RFID and your stuff in a databse to fuel the MBA's !
Even if RFID is only used on money you will still be tracked. The granularity of tracking is increasing at a scary pace - maybe there is a "moore's law" somewhere in here - so where will it end? Most currency in the world will use RFID and some say that there is a U.S. 20 bill that will be cirulating shortly using RFID - so bill #434566 withdrawn at bank #12 by Joe Smith and bill #434566 used to buy CD ABC at music store XYZ.
Story on NPR today and it does seem that the people representing the privacy side are acting nervous and the business side is confident that they will have their way. And finally there is the relentless tide of consumers who don't give a crap and that is another possible way that RFID will become ubiquitous with a 10% discount coupon attached.
Just some random notes on RFID.
Think of it this way, If you go to the Mall and walk into Abercrombie, and buy a pair of shorts today, then if you took that pair of shorts to the GAP and tried to scan the bar code, you'd end up getting an 'error' code of some sort. Why? Because GAP doesn't care about Abercrombies stuff and they don't KNOW what the code is. Why doesn't the GAP know A&F's code, and what item that code represents? because It's a proprietary network!
Everyone needs to remember, these companies are not interested in the 'open source' world and 'sharing' information the way the /. community is (or big brother).
If all of the companies who are going to start using RFID tags decided to share the exact details of what each code means/represents in a mega database with the government, then yes - it's time to dawn the tinfoil hats... But until the day that these RFID tags are carrying more than just an ID number and arn't encrypted, you should be safe.... All the person with the 'scanner' will know is that someone came in wearing products with XXX_ID and YYY_ID'd items.
Leave it to the guys at 2600 to go around and determine what the ID's represent and then publish the lists...
It's refreshing to finally see so much coherent, sensible discussion of this topic. The conspiracy theories are, quite frankly, beginning to wear thin.
When put into perspective, this technology is like so many before it. The _possibilities_ for misuse are there, but the probability of widespread misuse, considering the implementation hurdles, cost, and effectiveness, is far outweighed by its valid uses.
Besides, there will always be vendors who will not use the technology. If you're really concerned about your "privacy," why waste your energy trying to hold back the tide? Take your dollars to the vendor that makes you more comfortable. You _still_ have the freedom of choice.
I swear. RFID tags can be one of the most enabling technologies in history, automating zillions of tasks that otherwise slow down economy and society.
I for one have no problem being on record for things I in fact did do and places I did go, and it's lot like that's a real threat anyway. I'd make the database myself and sell it if anybody would pay enough to make it worth it.
As I see it, there is NO SERIOUS DOWNSIDE to RFID, it's not GM foods, it's not guns, and it's just information. Nobody gets physically hurt by tiny radio tags. They're not even especially bad for the environment.
What we need for RFID is NO LAWS, not lots of them. The Internet will be the medium your big brother nightmares are shipped over, but I don't think anybody seriously thinks we needed to pass laws in the 80s slowing down the game because of that. Why do we suddenly need to do so now with another super enabling technology?
And politicians wonder why voter turn out is low? They waste their time and my tax dollars on stupid hearings and debates. Why don't they do something about the patiot act and dmca first? Those are much greater invasions of my privacy than some little electronic tag that will let stores know what kind of jeans I bought.
I remember the uproar on CueCat a few years ago.
Give a slow barcode reader to everyone and then watch them use it.
What prevents a 2nd year EE student from publishing a circuit or code openly on how to read and decode the tags? Is this a DCMCA reverse engineering threat?
Could the Prism wireless chipset which has been hacked already under Linux hit RFIDs with the right signal to get a return signal as a result?
Hopefully Congress will force as a concession that RFIDs strings be freely available I think like ISBN numbers. UPCs I think you have to pay the Databases or license the decodeing algorithm especially ones related in manufacturing and parts cataloging and not Point of Sale IDs. IE the stuff that doesn't get read by a check out scanner.
Foremost, such a law should not specifically use the term, RFID. See my solution in another part of this discussion.
The FUD surrounding this comes from the fact that once RFIDs are in place, then the infrastructure to install a single RFID reader, and track comings and goings is minimal. Basically if WalMart starts selling RFID enabled clothing, then tracking becomes easy. Distributed tracking over many locations is so expensive as to qualify as Science Fiction. Yet, it's feasable that an influential company could do so, think McDonalds size.