RFID Tags in Law Enforcement

RFID tags seem to be the flavor of the month for law enforcement officials in the tracking of individuals both foreign and domestic. pin_gween writes "In an effort to speed up entry to the US, The Dept. of Homeland Security has begun a trial using RFID tags in certain visitors' papers. The tag is embedded in paperwork and "chip readers note the entry or exit of visitors who pass by and transmit that information to a government-maintained database." In addition, Saeed al-Sahaf writes "Security officials gathered Monday at a Canadian border crossing to mark the first test of this radio RFID system" Relatedly LexNaturalis writes "Wired News has an article about England testing RFID chips in license plates that can transmit VINs and other data to appropriate receivers. According to the article, the United States will be 'closely watching the British trial as they contemplate initiating their own tests of the plates, which incorporate radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags to make vehicles electronically trackable.' Naturally privacy advocates are decrying the move by stating that unlike electronic toll passes, these new plates will not be anonymous." We mentioned the concept of tracking visitors via RFID in July.

Comments

Re:More useful on the actual person

[crimethinker]

Ah, but then you're violating their civil rights, so says the namby-pamby branch of politics. You see, the fact that all 19 of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Middle-Eastern should never be factored into who gets searched at the airport and who doesn't, because we all know that a 70-year-old white female American citizen is just as likely to be a terrorist as a 20-year-old arab male who's here on a student visa. Bend over, granny, while we get the gloves and K-Y.

Check out the latest news from one of the bombing suspects in the UK (the second, failed attack) claiming that it's really OK because the bomb wasn't designed to kill anyone, just scare them. Too bad the UK pussed out long ago and abolished the death penalty, because they used to do it in style, what with those drawing-and-quarterings.

-paul

Re:Vehicle Tracking?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

What's more worrysome is, people seem to have forgotten that most of the 9/11 terrorists had valid passports. With this new measure in place, they'd have valid RFID-enabled passport and a chance to pass security faster, so they're a little less jet-lagged when they arrive at the hotel.

I'm really beginning to wonder why nobody points out the fact that all these security measures just aren't any use to catch determined terrorists. My personal conviction is that companies who market those "anti-terrorism" devices are making a fat buck out of the whole deal, and they share the proceeds with the politicians who approve of these things. It disgusts me more and more each time I look at it...

Re:Why extra RFID?

[EvilMagnus]

Or is there some limiting law that visitor must have his/her visa with him/her all times when moving outdoors that I missed?

I'm pretty sure there is such a law - if you're a Nonimmigrant, you're supposed to carry positive ID at all times - and they pretty much say that's your passport. Of course, the vast majority of nonimmigrant visa holders don't do this, but some friends of mine were given a hard time by INS agents when they returned from a short pleasure flight in Cessna in MA - met at the ramp by Immigration, who demanded to see their passports! (despite the fact that they never left US airspace, or came close to doing so).

Re:RFID range

[MajroMax]

RFID range is dependant on the sensitivity of the receiver, so even though they only put out a small signal, RFIDs have a theoretical infinite range.

No it's not. According to the Shannon-Hartley theorem, there's a theoretical maximum transfer rate at a given bandwidth and noise floor.

The bandwidth of an RFID response is, of course, constant. By contrast (and ignoring entirely that RFIDs are passively powered) the relative signal strength of the RFID at the receiver decays approximately with the square of the distance.

Given some information content I and noise floor N, there's a minimum signal to noise ratio for the RFID bandwidth such that the RFID's information can be (mostly) completely recovered. This necessarily implies a maximum range on receipt.

Of course, beyond this range you could still recover some portion of the information. You'd then need to fire the RFID many times to, statistically, recover the entire thing. This of course requires infinite refires, and thus infinite time, at infinite range. Which is beyond the realm of plausibility and utility.

It has *no* privacy problems: the gov't says so.

[geekotourist]

From a post from the last time Slashdot covered this story:

The Department of Homeland Security has a Privacy Assessment of this program. Guess what? It has no privacy implications.

• The information can only be shared with "...other agencies at the federal, state, local, foreign, or tribal level, who are lawfully engaged in collecting law enforcement information (whether civil or criminal) and national security intelligence information and/or who are investigating, prosecuting, enforcing, or implementing civil and/or criminal laws, related rules, regulations, or orders." "The Privacy Act SORNs for the systems on which US-VISIT draws provide notice as to the conditions of disclosure and routine uses for the information collected by US-VISIT. Any disclosure by DHS must be compatible with the purpose for which the information was collected."
• The tag only contains an unencrypted number, and only the very limited number of groups above would have access to the information.
• The tag can't be used to ID someone as a visitor because the DHS has contemplated this problem. Thus problem solved... "it is contemplated that the unencrypted RFID tag number will not be structured in such a way that it can be used to identify the individual as a non-immigrant."(pg 15)How exactly? Will everyone soon be carrying an RFID, so the visitor won't stand out?
• And of course it can't be used for surveillance, as "There is also a low risk that the RFID tag could be used to conduct surreptitious locational surveillance of an individual; i.e., to use the presence of the tag to follow an individual as he or she moves about in the U.S. However, ensuring that RFID tag numbers do not exhibit properties that can be readily attributed to US-VISIT and using a limited radio frequency range effectively mitigates this risk. The design process is also taking into account methods of reducing eavesdropping and skimming possibilities." (pg 15). Reducing the "possibilities" by sticking their fingers into their ears and singing "La la la" each time a new tech groups shows them ever longer read ranges.
• And most importantly it doesn't affect US Citizens, because the document doesn't mention them. Never mind that every traveler in the car must be identified in order to separate the residents and citizens from visitors (by definition). They'll now know who you're associating with as you travel.

As I said last time...

I'm now going to "contemplate" that being asked for "your papers, please" and being tracked every time I enter and leave my country, that there is no more "If" in "If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free." doesn't change our rights (4th Amendment anyone? it says "Persons") in the US. Whooohoo, I'm ever so much safer! [btw, that's one of the best essays on why privacy is a necessary and fundamental right in a free society. He warns Canadians not to give up what the U.S. has already lost. Worth reading.]

Nexus Pass

[RobinH]

I cross the US/Canadian border regularly, and use a special "commuter" lane called the nexus lane (both ways - it's a cooperative program between both countries). In that lane, there is an RFID reader and we are all issued plastic cards with RFID chips in them. You just drive up, the RFID reader reads the chip in the card, a camera takes a picture of your license plate and does character recognition on it, then compares it to the database to make sure it matches one of the vehicles assigned to that card, and then a border guard makes sure the picture on the card matches you. I think this program started in 2002 or something.

So, this is not new to me.