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RFID Luggage Tracking at Jacksonville Airport
securitas writes "AP reports that the Jacksonville Airport permanent RFID luggage tracking system will be installed this fall in time for the Super Bowl. The article concludes explaining that when San Francisco and Seattle ended their RFID pilot programs, they 'switched back to bar-code systems, saying the radio systems were unnecessary.' Mirror at Globetechnology, with more at Computerworld ,a large article at Jacksonville Business Journal, as well as some history from RFID Journal and Computerweekly." Moving to an untested system... paying for it by firing the baggage handlers who could help you recover from problems if the system proves to have bugs... what could go wrong?
So, with an unmarked van in long-term parking, a few deep cycle batteries, a power inverter, a laptop, a frequency generator, and a pringles cantenna I can single handedly take out an entire airports luggage tracking system whenever I want?
Granted this would probably be an act of terrorisim, but rfid is not a secure system. Using it to track your inventory is ok because if it fails, you have alternate means of tracking it. Additionaly there isn't too much incentive for 'terrorists' to jam it (NYT Headline: Gilette unable to locate 22 pallets of Mach3 Turbo razor blades for 30 minutes during terrorist cyber-attack). Now, if the same happened to our luggage system (NYT Headline: Air traffic around the country delayed because of Jacksonville terrorist cyber-attack) people would notice.
Perhaps a even more destructive approach would be to record and randomly playback rfid signals. You'd have luggage going all over the country.
RFID is a good means of tracking items no one is going to go to the effort to jam/misdirect. It is not a secure means of tracking those items and should never be the only means.
Think about the upcoming system. Right now, pallets and maybe cases are tracked on the manufacturing/distribution level. If they were tracked individually _and_ were the sole means for product checkout.. well.. just sticking that pack of razor blades under your tin-foil hat during your full-cart insta-checkout would fool it (not that sticking it under any other hat in our bar code system is any different). The point is with RFID I can sit outside a wallmart on christmas eve at 5pm and shut down thier checkout systems.
Well, enough ranting RFID can be a great tracking tool when added to current systems. It is not a replacement for all current systems. Anyway, i'm not planning on flying through florida any time soon.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
But we do know for sure that it's located in Madagascar. Sorry, we have no flights to Madagascar.
Husband: Fuck Jacksonville, I'll never visit their city again.
3 years later...
Husband: Honey...What cities don't have rfid tracking?
Wife: None, dear. Looks like were vacationing in the basement again this year.
Husband: Sweet, I think Doom 3 should be out by then.
...that they'll lose my bags?!?
... they'd somehow misplaced it at an airport the size of a thimble.
i'm serious, folks, it happened again a few weeks ago
I don't see how this will help you find lost luggage unless you & the luggage simply get seperated in the airport. Usually when you notice that your luggage is lost, you're already at your destination airport and the luggage either a)didn't leave the origin airport or b)left, but on another flight.
Lost bags often sit in the airlines office for weeks..months sometimes. I worked for a ground handling company and would occasionally try to reunite lost baggage with the owners, but even after contacting the owners, they never claimed it. Probably because the airline already paid out their lost-baggage claim settlement.
Point is, 2 of the largest airports on the west coast said "This isn't really useful" and dropped the plans. Maybe the others shouldn't even bother with RFID.
They can't even get my luggage from one plane to another when they're next to each other.
Now if they mean they have a harder time losing track of the luggage then I would agree with the above statement.
snip
The authority is trying to recoup that money through state and federal grants and by eliminating some of the 30 part-time, temporary workers that reroute lost bags.
Aww come on, it is just a few part-time jobs (probably jobs with high turnover that they won't need if the system works as promised) and it looks like it really increases the chance that your luggage won't get on a plane to Tahiti when you are going to Los Angeles. Must we just assume that RFID == Evil in every case??
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
"I've lost my luggage!"
"No, your luggage is smarter than you and has decided to go to California for the winter. Have a nice stay in Jacksonville!"
Seriously: RFID tags on luggage is a good idea, as any traveller wondering where the heck his suitcase went to will tell you. The systems will have teething problems, but today's barcode tickers are not 100% successful either. I've been stranded without luggage at two destinations in a year, both times I had to buy a set of clothes on arrival. In one case it took 4 weeks for my luggage to make it home.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Well, if your halftime show costume has some sort of RFID system controlling its closures, you may want to check for interference during rehearsals. Or at least wear nipple jewelry.
Also, not giving Tom Brady the ball with a minute left seems like a sensible precaution, RFID or no.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
RFID Luggage Tracking at Jacksonville Airport.. what is is all about? Is it good, or is it whack?
The Airport Authority is spending between $200,000 and $300,000 on the devices, Snowden said. The authority is trying to recoup that money through state and federal grants and by eliminating some of the 30 part-time, temporary workers that reroute lost bags.
Granted, 29 is "some" of 30 workers if that's what they mean... but it's also sounding they aren't planning to eliminate all the workers who route bags... just some of the ones who are temporarily employed to deal with lost bags...
Of course, I've been temporarily employed for 3 years now...
Why does slashdot think RFID tags. National ID cards, e-voting, et cetera are "news for nerds."
News for nerds is stuff about cool science, toys, and computers, not this paranoid "it's 1984, man!" bullshit.
There's not a chance it will actually be done in time for the superbowl. Town planners came up with all sorts of improvements that would be complete before the Superbowl. Almost every single one of them has been postponed or cancelled.
I have no idea how Jacksonville expect to have a successful superbowl. Thier downtown area is tiny, their main downtown attraction "the Landing" is desserted every night of the week, the hotels aren't great, their are three good restaurants in town (Bebe's, The Pom, and Bistro Aix, if you're heading to the SuperBowl), and each seats about 20 people.
I have a feeling this superbowl is going to be a disaster for Duval county.
No thanks. Ill avoid any flights that connect thru that city.
I will take my money elsewhere.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only known exception to this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs."
"Moving to an untested system... paying for it by firing the baggage handlers"
Almost sounds like their outsourcing the baggage handling it to India.
Give me a break. Given your agruments you should immediately stop using the internet because "it is not a secure system". Move along people, there's nothing to see here.
All your base are belong to us!
Will there be interference?
Honestly, you alone are the reason why I don't read Slashdot any more.
Then how do you know that he wrote that?
...is not like the luggage will grow feets and go away by itself, like this one.
[-1, Flamebait]
It's what it looks like to me.
Wait a minute, *my* country's military is down there, too.
This is embarassing.
AC on.
Not exactly-- your analogy doesn't quite hold up.
To create a stretched but more accurate analogy, imagine we already have a tested, secure internet-like network, but we're going to fire all the administrators and switch over to a brand new network we've never tested that can be jammed at will by a single guy in a van. And then we're going to rely on it to match thousands of people to their baggage.
The transition is probably a good idea in the long run, but firing the baggage handlers now seems a tad premature.
..well, that's why I lost my suitcase the last time .. It didn't have a baggage tag (barcode) and therefore didn't get on the plane at all. Not putting any other tag on the bag would have resulted in the excact same disapearnce..
..
I did get my bag back, after a week, because I was able to describe it and it's contents
Sorry, the scanners aren't able to locate your bag. But they have found the 3-pack of underwear you bought at Wal-Mart last week.
Actually I'm wondering why it's needed as well. If memory serves some airports (Germany?) use a one tub/one piece of luggage system were the tub is tagged, and they track that. It's easier to protect a bar code that's on the tub, than a cheap piece of paper on luggage.
For once, here's a system that I think RFID is really meant for.
The problem with barcodes is that they have to be scanned. They're passive, and it takes time to stop, grab a scanner, and hit the barcode.
The biggest cause of misrouted bags is time crunches -- somebody rushing to get the bag onto a flight, not stopping to find a scanner to scan in, misreading the three letter code, and throwing it onto the wrong belt, cart, or into the wrong plane.
Ideally, you'd have RFID boxes on the belts, the carts -- and in the cargo doors (for narrowbodies) and the LD-3 loading station (for widebodies.) that's programmed to know what flight(s) are invovled, and sets off an alarm when a tag doesn't match. So, if they're rushing, and they read "LAS" (McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas), the beeper on the cargo door goes off, they look again, and see that, no, it is really "LAX" (Los Angeles International), and *not* put the bag on the Las Vegas flight.
Even if the LAX flight has already left, this is a better answer. It is far easier to fix the "Bag Didn't Make The Flight" error (you put the bag on the next flight) than it is to fix the "Bag Went On The Wrong Fight" error, since there may not be a direct flight from the bag's current destination and the bag's correct destination.
This particular error is quite common -- esp. when someone has been working one of the two flights, and gets a bag for the other. They see "L" and "A" and, having seen "S" for the last hour, don't bother to parse the "X" at the end.
As to privacy concerns? As long as the tag is on the bag for one trip only, it is no worse than barcode. Indeed, your nametag often gives away *more* privacy information than your trip tag -- and it is always there. (Get one of those tags you have to open up, and if you are employed, put your work address on the bag.)
Another issue -- a bag is loaded onto a plane, but the passenger isn't onboard. Nowadays, this means that they have to pull the bag. Right now, this means wading through a loaded bay or container to find it. With a handled RFID box, you can at least get close to the bag quickly.
This is an application where a well build RFID system could make a very real improvment in luggage handling -- for both the passengers and airlines.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Denver International Airport had an automated luggage system that actually depended on doing just this. Once it was not able to be easily checked, the system could only handle about 1/3 the load. That of course lead to the nightmare of doubling the costs of DIA (thanx to Ex-auditor Web, he killed back-ups to the baggage and train system; Then elected for denver mayor 3 times; Does not speak well for denverites) from 2.5 to 4.?. If other airports implement this, it will make it possible to bring in a fully automated system back into DIA as well as hopefully other airports. Yeah, many of the baggage handlers will be shifted, but this is the time to do it. Many were laid off after 9/11, and the airlines are only now starting to come back. If airports do this, it will allow the airlines to lower costs, improve handling of baggage, and not lay off any more employees.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This was the first post of this question. Whoever modded down, obviously has a grudge against macandrew. Please note it accordingly.
their are three good restaurants in town
It's a shame that I'm out of mod points, because this is the exact type of comment that needs to be modded down. The poster clearly hasn't ever been to Jacksonville.
If you're Rincewind the Luggage tracks you!
I'll still have to connect in atlanta anywhere I go right? yaaaaay
"Moving to an untested system... paying for it by firing the baggage handlers who could help you recover from problems if the system proves to have bugs... what could go wrong?"
We'd still be living in caves with attitudes like this. Or is their a different agenda invoving paranoia of of being tracked by guys wearing sunglasses and driving plain looking sedans.
RFID Tracking bracelet for everyone entering or leaving an Airport, or Sporting Complex.
"The authority is trying to recoup that money through state and federal grants and by eliminating some of the 30 part-time, temporary workers that reroute lost bags."
Maybe using this technology could lead to cheaper RFID tags.
fact is, if rfid are to be effective for baggage trackeing, it has to be introduced on every airport in the world. Or at least on the big hubs. Otherwise it is passenger/tax payer's money thrown out of the window.
The whole baggage tracking relies nowadays on the barcode on the bag tag (which is basically the number of the airline - 4 digits - and the bag number - 8 digits), and a very complex message passing based machinery. So if only jacksonville has rfid, these are hopeless unusefull on the baggage sortation system in singapore, frankfurt or chicago. because they rely only on what is printed on the bag tag.
Granted this would probably be an act of terrorisim
Uh, HOW? Disabling a few RFID tags doesn't threaten anyone at all in any way. "Ooooh, I'm so scared, I'm terrified, someone might disable my airline's luggage tracking system!" .. get real.
Vandalism, yes, terrorism, puh-lease. Terrorism is when you put bombs in the luggage and blow people up.
Anyway, what's the worst that would happen if you did do this? People would have to spend an hour or two manually re-sorting the luggage. Big f*cking whoop. The most "terrifying" part would be that your flight might be delayed for an hour or two. And that happens every day at airports all over the world.
will be installed this fall in time for the Super Bowl.
great... just what we need. more public money wasted on some stupid sporting event. sheesh.
But I dont want to pay for a RFID tag. I pay the airlines they should do their job. As regards using RFID or Barcode I DONT CARE.... my bag getting where it is going, is all i care about.
Everybody here pretty much expects it to be a disaster.
There is NO nightlife -- the whole city more or less shuts down around 8PM, there are more police here than any other city I've ever been to (and they're quite a bit more aggressive than anywhere else), the First Baptist Church owns the downtown area (almost literally), and most of the stuff acaben says above is true (with the minor exception that Bistro Aix seats more like 70 or 80).
Speaking as a resident, Jax is pretty much the biggest "little redneck town" in the country.
Not a troll. I'm still living here, and it really is a dump.
never been to the beaches have you
The problem with barcodes is that they have to be scanned. They're passive, and it takes time to stop, grab a scanner, and hit the barcode.
Actually, the bags don't ever stop moving. I worked on the team that put in one of the first automated baggage handling systems at the Pittsburgh Int'l Airport in the early 90's.
They zip by the scanning stations at about 20mph. The scanning station is a ring of six or so laser scanners around the belt, including the bottom. There's a gap of several inches between two rolling belts just so that barcode tags can be scanned from underneath. Farther down the belt, after the ID lookup has had time to succeed, the bag is kicked (quite hard) onto another belt if necessary. Of course, tags can still become damaged to the point that they don't read properly, and at that point they do go to a misread station, where some human will attempt to scan it manually, and replace the tag if necessary (and possible).
Replacing the barcodes with RFID tags seems likely to happen to me, for simple economic reasons. Compared to the cost of putting in the original system, it should be cheap, as you can reuse the belts and kicking apparatus, and probably much of the software. If the statistics are correct, and the read rate really goes from 85% to 99%, the switch will pay for itself in no time. PAWOBs (Passengers Arriving WithOut Bags) cost a major airline many tens of thousands of $s PER DAY.