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You Need Not Be Paranoid To Fear RFID
An anonymous reader writes "A story at the Boston Globe covers extensive privacy abuses involving RFID." From the article: "Why is this so scary? Because so many of us pay for our purchases with credit or debit cards, which contain our names, addresses, and other sensitive information. Now imagine a store with RFID chips embedded in every product. At checkout time, the digital code in each item is associated with our credit card data. From now on, that particular pair of shoes or carton of cigarettes is associated with you. Even if you throw them away, the RFID chips will survive. Indeed, Albrecht and McIntyre learned that the phone company BellSouth Corp. had applied for a patent on a system for scanning RFID tags in trash, and using the data to study the shopping patterns of individual consumers." I think they may be going a little overboard with their stance, but it's always interesting to talk about.
The only problem I see here is that not everything is microwave safe.
How do oyu microwave your brand new microwave?
What happens when your steel toe capped boots go in there?
Will the fabric on your GFs dress screw up if you you zap it?
Will the DVD you just bought be playable or writable?
thats just a few thoughts, but microwaving should be safe... YMMV
liqbase
The Good News:
1) BellSouth is a huge company that can't figure out what to do about PTSN loses, much less how to deploy RFID scanners.
2) This is just a patent to be added to their war chest. Every large company is likely to be sued, so they need methods to fight back. Patents are often the most cost effective manner, since getting them is cheaper than mounting any defense against of a real lawsuit.
Already the scenes from 2002s movie Minority Report, where your retinas are scanned and "personalised" advertising is beamed at you, seems quaint. Now we know you'll be RFID scanned, and up-sold on the shoes you're wearing, as the brand, size and age of your shoes will be instantly known. And cash won't help, because RFID chips will be in that too.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I mean really. Right now, anyone can go through my garbage and recyclabes and see:
- what my spending habits are like (empty product boxes along with the other trash)
- what my diet is like
- what my consumption rate is
- what my interests are (above mentioned product boxes, tossed junk mail, etc)
- what my personal timeline is like (how much trash is developed at various times)
- samples of my dna (various personal care item cast offs, hair, finger nails, etc)
- samples of my finger prints
and lord knows what else. Really, all we're really talking about here for the average person is that they can do several of the above without getting really messy and stinky.
Sure - in theory all that's possible. However, when the world's largest retailer (Wal-Mart) will be disabling them at checkout you can bet others will follow. The market will take care of itself. Look - people thought barcodes were going to do the same thing and now you wouldn't do without 'em (everything from UPS to all the food in your kitchen).
Personally I would like to have it in some items. Books and DVD's could be quickly added to my delicious library (currently I scan the barcode), I could manage the inventory in my kitchen much better (which would integrate well with recipe software) and it would be great if I could just put my wine on the racks in my cellar and not have to track it manually.
Take off your tinfoil hat and put on your thinking cap. Let's figure out how to take advantage of a great technology and figure out how to make it safe.
Don't leave that empty pack of smokes at the bar. They'll show up at the crime scene later.
No, because
Barcodes do not identify the individual item.
Barcodes cannot be remotely scanned without the owner noticing.
Barcodes are usually on the packaging material and not on the product.
Like with Google ads, if I have to live with ads, I much prefer directed ones with at least some research behind them than undirected ones.
Google doesn't connect me with my credit card number and name. It also does this up front, not going around to your house and going through your garbage.
Although it seems simple to me, pay cash, don't give any stores your name, phone number or postcode. If they insist, lie or stop shopping there.
and when the notes have RFID chips in them???
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Since RFID tags are so useful to corporations, I see any "RFID Killer" being classified as illegal as soon as it hiss the market.
After all, it could be used to steal items from a store, or interfere with the RFID chips that people DON'T want deactivated!!!
It'll be classified as a burglary tool or something worse in short order, if there aren't aspects of such a devise that aren't already illegal.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Use coins. I already do anyway. The authorities must think I have a massive gambling habit, but really I'm just going into amusement arcades to change serial-numbered notes for unnumbered coins. Coins, being made of metal, cannot have RFID devices embedded in them. Radio waves will not travel through anything that conducts electricity {this is a fundamental limitation of the universe and cannot be overcome by invention}. If you are really paranoid, you can test each coin for conductivity in several places using a simple home-built device {a store-bought AVO may have been rigged}.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
the point is, why the fuck should we have to go to all the trouble of frying chips just to stop people aquiring my information without my consent.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I (and lots of others) have no problems remembering to pick up a liter or two of milk on the way home from work, and this is without having to have some chip installed in my refrigerator, recycling bin, garbage can, whatever...
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
His organization has a code of ethics
In other words, the RFID maker claims to have a code of ethics, but doesn't want to be held to that code.
That smells to me like his code of ethics is going straight out of the window the instant it suits him.
This whole thread is bullshit! it's based on the nonsense in the original post that said something like "your cc no. will be written to the RFID tag and forever be associated w/ that product." what a load of crap! Do you REALLY think something like that will fly? RFID is a self-broadcasting barcode. it speeds things up b/c an RFID reader can scan a wholebuncha items just by close proximity to the items rather than physically pointing each barcode at a laser. yes RFID tags enable each item to have a unique s/n rather than just the generic UPC code that barcodes allow. if there is anywhere that that unique s/n will be forever ass'd w/ your cc. no. it is in the retailer's Db, NOT on the individual RFID chip itself. Once the retailer has sold you a pair of $12 indonesian shoes why in the hell would they want to maintain the individual s/n for that item? i don't think so. most likely they are only interested in the generic identification that you purchased a size 10, brown, pointy-toe slip on. they will aggregate this info to determine buying PATTERNS in general. that's how they make money. no one is going to be making money by tracking your ratty-assed shoe after it's been to the goodwill store. therefore IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN. you can take the tin-foil hats off now.
Here's a short list of things that you might not want everyone knowing:
All of these things can be used against you by your employer or insurance company.
You only think you want targeted ads. Imagine your wife getting ads for the wrong brand of tampon at just the right time. That's how invasive and awful your phone company's snooping can be. The grocery store comes close right now. The targeting works as intended and is as annoying as hell because the stupid coupons are always for the wrong brand.
Finally, ask yourself what snooping through your garbage has to do with phone service. Is this why federal, state and local laws protect incumbent phone providers from competition? BellSouth, thank you for a new low.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
All this chatter is about potential abuses of RFID by nasty corporations. I imagine that their are areas in the government simply drueling over the possibilities ... that bullet was purchased at KMart in Osh Kosh on October 19th at 7:22pm by ...
And what about the IRS, and the state governments. I am sure the state of Massachusetts, which never leaves any revenue stream untapped, is intrigued by the possibility of being able to "capture" all those lost sales taxes from people shopping outside the state (neighboring NH has no sales tax and the parking lots in the malls are always filled with cars with Mass plates). Imagine getting a retro-active sales tax bill with an itemized list of everything you bought.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
If your two file theory is true, then I think the easiest way to solve this is: mandate by law that the 'second file' (obviously some different legal terminology could be used here) be available to the consumer for free. These companies are obviously making a lot of money off the residue of our consumer lives, so this wouldn't affect their revenue stream. But I would love to have a record of every transaction I make, if only because I'm not the world's greatest bookkeeper. Then I would see some actual value from providing this information to retailers, rather than feeling f*&ked over when asked for it.
And if people become upset about how much information truly is stored, then public outcry may see some changes made. As long as the information collection is effectively invisible, then it will be difficult to get the public excited about this.
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In X-Windows the client serves YOU!
It's just another case of Americans' short-sightedness, where the fact that some inconvenience in the short term would lead to significant benefits in the long term (in this case, lowered US currency production expenses, in non-trivial amounts) is completely irrelevant, and stating otherwise supports terrorism | Communism | Socialism | the Liberals | the hippies | $randomUnAmericanGroup.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
=> Automatic searches at the airport when a scan of your luggage turns results that deviate from the norm?
RFID aside, this already happens. I forgot to take off my belt before going through the metal detector. Somehow that flagged me for them to do the full body pat-down and going through my stuff. They claimed to 'discover' chemicals on my baggage handle. The 'traces' of whatever on my shoes led them to ask me if I was recently on a farm (I had been in a park, though). They took my name and address. Hoo-fucking-ray, I bet they made their quota. Hope they realize they're missing real drug traffickers.
You would be surprised who would care. Many businesses ask for permission to run a credit report on applicants before hiring them. They will then pay a fair amount of money to get a fairly detailed report that tells them a lot more about you than you might be comfortable with them knowing. By the same token, once they have that permission, they never need to ask for it again. Performance at work dropping off? Let's run another detailed report and see what's going on in his life outside of work, before we decide how to approach this. I have even known (particularly unpleasant) women who would run a detailed credit report on a guy before deciding if they wanted to get serious with him! I also know several people who rent properties they own, and you would be amazed at the detail they can (and do) get before deciding if they want to rent you a house. I have a friend who lived at my apartment for quite some time, simply because a good job, plenty of money, and a clean-cut appearance wasn't enough to get him over some irregularities on his credit report. He couldn't rent an apartment in any decent part of town, he couldn't buy a house, he couldn't stay in a hotel (no credit card for them to hold). He was a grown man forced for years to live with friends, simply because of his credit report. If that isn't ruining someone's life, then I don't know what is. Sure, if you own a house in the suburbs, never plan on moving, have a stable job, and plenty of money in the bank, I suppose you can be cavalier about how everyone is being paranoid. But if your life is at all out of the norm, then the amount of information being tracked about up can actually cause some very real problems in a society that is evermore leaning towards treating a credit score as an indication of how good a person you are.
Oh look, an Anonymous Coward who has absolutely no concept of statistics. Modded up to +3 too. Impressive and/or sad.
RFID on EVERYTHING means that anomalies like that become less and less significant. Cross-reference enough data and you can spot patterns without having the faintest idea why they're there. (There's actually a famous psychiatric test based on this principle, though the name escapes me. Basically, it's a bunch of crazyass questions designed to give the shrink a statistical probability that you're suffering from a mental disease. The individual answers themselves are irrelevant; only the statistical whole counts. Thus, the potential for an individual to purposefully alter his answers is in effect built into the final percentages--there's really no way to cheat.)
You've missed the point completely. How often do you send shoes to someone living 3,000 miles away? Do you think Nike or Reebok care about the handful of people who've done such a thing? Marketing people only care about the fat, juicy center of the bell curve. Yeah, there are also those niche markets at the edges, but the instant you change your focus to that niche, then it becomes the center of the bell curve.
On the whole this isn't all terribly evil so long as it's used for relatively non-obnoxious advertisements, but the potential for abuse by insurance agencies, banks, law enforcement, etc. is very, very high. If you're not in the statistical norm for the targeted advertisement, who cares? You ignore the ad. But if you're far out of the statistical norm for "law abiding citizen" and the local PD finds out, you can bet your ass you'll be hounded until the day you die (or move to a saner country.) It won't matter if you're an exception; it won't matter if there's only a 55% chance you're a criminal. They'll do it because it's efficient. It'll be like racial profiling except it will apply to every single minority conceivable, from Yanni fans to gays to diehard otakus to atheists. Your difficultly in the world will be inversely related to your conformity. Stray too far out of the norm and your insurance rates will skyrocket, you credit rating will plunge, and cops will look at you that much harder next time they've got an unsolved crime on their hands.
It's not bizzare; it's not even inherently evil. Living by statistics is just an efficient way of doing things. The problem is that greater efficiency is bought with something far more precious; individuality. For now, I can ignore the ads, but for heaven's sake let's not get complacent.
Another reason to get back on the gold standard. Not only can't the gov't screw with the value of money by practicing inflation, but RFID can't work either.
Constitutionally Correct
Here's the problem though. We moved away from the gold standard long ago. Now, when inflation happens, the value of a coin can become less than the value to make said coin. With paper, the value doesn't really inflate that much. Paper is renewable, we don't have to find another mine to produce it cheaply. It's easy to put out new currency and make changes, as opposed to retooling a minting press. Paper is economically more feasible (and just happens to be lighter to carry).
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
The reason they don't achieve widespread use is because merchants pull them out of circulation, rather than giving them out as change. Why do they do this? Perceived inconvenience, the idea that employees will mistake their value, etc. The solution? Remove alternatives (as the parent suggested), or offer them at a discount (e.g., 100 dollar coins for $99).
All of this theorizing about customers not liking them is just so much self-serving bilge.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."