Slashdot Mirror
RFID Not Just for Kids
dritan writes "News.com is reporting that a theme park in Florida is tagging all members of your group when you enter. The park has kiosks throughout the park that let you find the other members of your group in "real time." The park's web site makes it seem that you will only be able to find members of your group, instead of seeing everyone in the park. Slashdot has previously reported about tagging kids with RFID in order to keep track of them."
Great, there goes my plan to leave my crazy no-good kids behind.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
... slashdotters will spot the magic phrase "RFID", and remember that this is something the hivemind has told them they're against. They will proceed to explain why a private entity using RFID tags -- entirely on its own property -- to track and locate lost children is an appalling infringement of their civil liberties.
This should be good.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
To me, this sounds more like a boon in marketing research than a breach in privacy. After all, theme parks have guards & cameras everywhere these days.
link you to any vandalism or trouble making.
:)
They can pin point your location so lets say a little boy and a "older man" magicly end up in the same toilet cubicle..... well then
Could be very useful for this kinda thing
I like muppets.
Am I the only one who is gets a bit freaked out by theme parks?
Sure, there is this nice image of happiness and friendliness.. but it's also obviously fake and false. (Even as a 7-year old at disneyland, I felt it)
At the same time, there are guards and surveillance cameras everywhere, not to mention the rigorous safety measures.
It's like being inside a Soviet propaganda movie or something.
And that was before they started tagging people. I can't say I'm surprized.
For a theme park, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. One of my least favorite things about theme parks is the potential to lose the rest of your party - resulting in much tedious wandering around. sure, you can call or SMS, but this seems like a genuinely good feature.
Can the park individually track where you are? probably, but it's their right to do so - you've voluntarily entered their private property after all, and paid for the privilege. Can they track your preferences within the park? probably.
will they store any personal identifiers? there's the rub. if their database links your RFID tag to the visa card number you paid with, THEN we're talking problems, and of course the article doesn't make it clear if this can happen or not...
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
move on, nothing to see here
Not bad of an idea. Maybe they'll have some pad you swipe your tag near and it'll show your party on the screen. Can you use it to buy stuff too? How about stealing someone else's tag and getting crap w/ it?
Nope... I didn't read the article.
It's going to be a huge problem when these people wander near the sharks with frickin' RFID-tracking laser beams attached to their heads.
paintball
OK, I not a die-hard libertarian, but this seems like a good idea. This is not the same as tracking someone's movements all the time, as a theme park is ostensibly not the real world. It should stop kids from being getting lost; and it would save school and youth organisation groups from having to hammer around in those big chain gangs with flags, etc.
You've probably noticed that people's noses get bigger as they get older. That's because old people are huge liars.
Dude! Where's my Ki...
Woah. Gnarly.
Thanks Mouseman.
How am I supposed to have any fun if I can't accidentally get separated from the wife?
paintball
Wow! Now you can find your other family members via a tracking system. Next thing you know the government will be using it to "track" you in airports, grocery stores, masterbating in the bathroom, etc. In Mexico they are implanting RFID tags into goverment officical to track them in case of kidnapping. "Experts" say that there is nothing to fear. Yeah, right. My paranoid buddy said a few years ago that the dreaded U.N. black helicopters could fly over your house and scan it to see how much money you had in it. Now that's possible; The EU is putting RFID tags in it's money. Also, within 5 years, EVERYTHING you can buy will have the damn tags on it.
I hate to sound like an apocalypse nut, but within 15 years it will be capable of one individual (i.e. antichrist) to control/track just about everyone on the planet, including money and food.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Slashdot says the park is tagging everybody, but the article says it's issuing tags to everyone. So is the park really 'tagging' everyone as they enter? Like what happens to cows?
Anyway, unless it's mandatory, it should be okay. It's pretty close to being watched by CC cameras when you wonder around a department store.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
RFID is IMO not inherently "evil". It is a tool, like a screwdriver. Now, a screwdriver can be used to turn screws, or it can be plunged into someone's head. RFID is fine with me, as long as:
1. I know it's being used
2. I'm not required to use it
3. I can turn it off
Admission: $50
Lunch: $20
Knowing your party landed in Alabama: priceless.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Hopefully they have enough monitors around...nothing like waiting in a 20min line to find out that your party is in the same line, 50 people behind you.
"If it sucks without butter, it still sucks with butter, only creamier." - AC
I wonder when workplaces will start using rfid in security badges to monitor start and finish times, lunch breaks, toilet breaks etc..
generic
I'd like to see posters in this discussion indicate if they have kids or not. I'm going to guess that those who post "not over my dead body/evil CIA tracking device/civil liberties being eroded by govt." are the single adults who've never lost a small child they are responsible for in a large, crowded public place.
Get everyone to take off their tag and attach it to the roller coaster cars ... then sit back and watch as park officials panic when they realise that there are 578 people riding around and around.
... as you take a journey through a ride, take off you tag and through it as far as you can into the diaroma ... and watch as park officials try and hunt down the lost kid
... flush a tag down the toilet and then say your kid is lost ... and watch then chase the 'kid' as it 'travels' around the park
Or
Or
Most of these have RFI tags in them. Seems like a good idea to me, for fairly ovious reasons.
Regards,
treefrog
..if you don't like the idea of being tagged and tracked - well, don't go to that park that tag and track you. Problem solved.
Off course, if the US goverment (or any other evil organisation/entity of your choice) started doing this, allowing you to be "found in real time", you might have a reason to scream up about "civil liberties" and whatnot.. but as long as it's private company doing it on their own property you have nothing to say in the matter - except to vote with your dollars and feet. Besides, I like the idea to find the kids when it's time to leave - spendt way to much time tracking down a kid that didn't want to be found because he didn't want to leave one time.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
No big deal. Seems to me, one can just remove it, unless it is required for the attractions. (Still can break the tags, I guess.)
Theme parks are all about control anyway. The better ones have good control which results in a good experience. (That is what you pay for.) The poor ones have not thought everything out resulting in problems. (Which is what you don't pay for.)
It's a good feature. Pay cash if you don't want your prefs tracked to your identity.
Blogging because I can...
This could lead to a cool modern day version of hide and seek. One person is the fugitive, gets hmmm 10 minutes to 'escape' then the others have to use the rfid to track the fugitive down.
Given that both the hunter and the hunted can see each others locations - but only when visiting the booths - then some interesting strategies could come out.
What would be really cool would be if you could tell the park you're doing this and they limit access to the location data to something like 1 minute access every 5 minutes to prevent 'booth squatting'!
Now I'd visit that park.
as long as the technology can't be used by pervs to find kids that are alone... the technology is more of a threat than an aide for groups if it isn't implemented properly...
finding loopholes in this type of system isn't something that you can afford to do after it's been widely put into use.
All the torrents you could want.
Well, at least they aren't implanting it.
Huh? How exactly does this technology turn the visitors of the park in to "serfs"? How does it make them property of the park?
if you hate the idea so much, the solution is simple: Don't go to the frigging park!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
... welcome our new Theme Park Overlords.
With the right controls, I'd welcome this. Whenever my family and friends head to Cedar Point, we always take 2-way radios to keep in touch (emergencies, when its time to eat, etc). They really help out though when you can't find someone at 4 PM where we're all supposed to be meeting for dinner. Well, with these little kiosks, we can leave the radios at home and have one less thing to worry about losing on a ride. Just pop onto a kiosk and see where they're at. Most likly they're STILL in line for (insert newest ride here) and that they're not going anywhere any time soon.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
Since the tags they'll use probably wont contain all the information on you they can possibly gather, this probably isn't that big a deal. They're probably just matched to a group set up in the park database when you enter so you can find each other. Sure they can track you too and provide you with ads and garbage for when they get a new rollercoaster if thats where you spend all your time, but one would like to think that's not the use.
People spend too much time being paranoid of what RFID can be used for in all the wrong ways. If they don't go overboard this isn't a bad idea, because we all hear about the person who had their kid wander off. Imagine if you could just go to a park booth and say hi I'm so and so and my kid just wandered off, they could tell you where the kid was instantly.
Presently here, but not there.
Dollywood's Splash Country in Tennessee does this. For a couple of bucks, you can tag your kid with a radio transponder and one or more of the parents. The tags are paired at rental time. At any kiosk throughout the park, you can hold your transponder up to the scanner and it will show you the location of all other matching transponders on a little video map, as well as the last time it was detected.
I found it *extremely* useful since I could let my daughter ride the waterslides without worrying about how to find her when it was time for lunch or time to go home. Likewise, she could find me quickly and easily if she needed to. I certainly didn't feel that my privacy was being invaded and I wasn't able to track any other users in the park.
Is there potential for abuse? Of course there is, but it's like any other tool. It can be used for good or evil. In this case, I feel there's no evil intent and it helps prevent lost kids.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Now I can beat the crap out of little Jimmy anytime I want too! He can't hide from me anymore. I wonder how well that RFID tag will work after I stuff him in his locker?
Don't worry the above is satire. But it is likely to be used for that sooner or later. The problem with restricting the privacy of the lawabiding people to stop bad things from happening is that the people who want to do the bad things don't give a crap. They will either find a way around it or find a way to use it against you. Meanwhile, you, as a law abiding citizens had more rights removed from you and lost more privacy. All to stop the bad people who are still going to do it to you anyways.
Don't get me wrong here. For kids and stuff, It could be a great tool. I don't think it will stop kidnapping at all whereas the tag can simply be removed, disabled or altered. If someone wants to defeat it, they are going to be able to. It's not going to stop crime. It can however be used for a number of things to help us from day to day. We just have to be aware of those that will try to use this to curtail our freedoms in the mean time.
Remember when you used to make fun of people with cell phones? When you actually had to plan social events and be on time? When you would arrange meeting places in case of seperation?
Guess that was too difficult...
For larger families with older children that are old enough to reasonably be out on their own and where the parents (assuming there are two) will occasionally go different ways to indulge the differing interests of their children, I can see this as being a fairly useful 'enhancement' to the park. There were several times when my family (myself, 15-year-old brother, and parents) went off on our own and then took some time in meeting back up in spite of having arranged doing so earlier where something like this would have been useful- we could have checked and seen, "OK, Matt is still stuck in line at such-and-such ride, we can go wait for him where it lets out." Not saying it's completely good- the already mentioned possibilities of it being used by someone looking for a child to abduct do exist, but hopefully there would be other measures in place (like, decent security, and good parents) to prevent that.
Since the YRO section was originally created it has been posting stories about "technology and your rights". Every story I have read fits that qualification. Every story I have read has met the "news for nerds, stuff that matters" qualification. Every story that I have read has generated interesting discussion among readers of this site who do care about these issues.
So basically what your entire complaint boils down to is the pedantic fact that they could have chosen a better title than YRO. Give it a rest - if you're not interested don't read it. Until then, I will continue to mod down any posts complaining about "relevence" of a story. I don't care whether the poster is intentionally karma-whoring, trolling, or just being off-topic, these posts increase the signal/noise ratio for those who are interested in the story, and thus should be moderated down.
If they are lying, then why is it wrong to raise questions about what their real motives might be?
Because if they aren't lying, it is ok. If they are lying, then everything brought up is acceptable to me so far as well.
If your real objection is being lied to by corporations, your only recourse is to move to your own private island. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but corporations lie all the time, and it isn't illegal (and since corporations have no morals, isn't immoral or unethical either).
As for peace of mind, I suggest that leaving your children unattended (and being encouraged to by the supposed benefits of the system) just because you can track them from afar is bullshit.
Uh, I've not seen anything suggesting that is the reason for the system. I know that parents have fears of losing children. I also know that if you split with a group of adults, it is sometimes hard to meet back up. This helps with both. You don't leave your 3 yr old alone in Mickey Land becuse you can track him. You use the system if you are watching him, get distracted, lose track of him, and are upset because you've lost your child.
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