Slashdot Mirror
Richard Stallman Accosted For Tinfoil Hat
ndansmith writes "Bruce Perens posts in his blog about an amusing encounter between Richard Stallman and United Nations security at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis. It seems that RFID technology, which Stallman opposes for privacy reasons, was used in the identification badges for the conference. From the blog: 'You can't give Richard a visible RF ID strip without expecting him to protest. Richard acquired an entire roll of aluminum foil and wore his foil-shielded pass prominently.' During a keynote speech, Stallman also passed around the tinfoil for other to use as well. It seems that UN security was not amused, however, as they would not let him leave the room for some time." What makes this even funnier, of course, is that tin foil hats won't stop them.
nice, he makes a big ostentatious show of covering up his RFID strip with foil so "they" can't get at him, and of course all that happens is "they" make a big show of harassing him.
Fucking hilarious.
I take exception to many things that RMS says and does, but I'm with him 100% on this one. Way to go, Richard!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
For months as this RFID contraversy has progressed, people on the 'dot have said, "well, you can always block it with a piece of foil if you don't want to be tracked".
Well, guess what? As predicted by a quick examination of human nature, they WON'T let you block your tracking devices. You will not have a choice as to when and where you will be tracked. This is just the very beginning, the closing of the gate, of our World Prison.
Tell me why again we have to have tracking devices embedded on our persons? I seem to have missed the reasoning. Terrorism?
I'm going to be flamed for this so I'll post AC.
I respect RMS. He's contributed a lot to the FOSS movement (but no, sorry, what I run is Linux). Several of his writings are thought-provoking. But on the other hand, we all want to see Linux become mainstream. Is this the image we want corporations to have about FOSS? One of its leaders childishly and purposefully gets in trouble with UN security for shielding his pass in aluminium foil. A movement led by immature pranksters. Is that the image we want?
I always wonder what youin the West would do in the face of true evil. Soil your panties and faint, I imagine.
Perhaps you'll find that "true evil" can turn wusses into heroes. We sit on our fat asses, because we can.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
If we hired smart security people, overall we'd be more secure.
I have my Washoe County, Nevada, work card for security guard work in my wallet. When are you going to step up to the plate and be one of those smarter security guards?
Fill the void!
--Mike--
bullshit. I think the UN is terrible, and not because anything they do or don't do, but HOW they do it. They're slow, inefficient, and make things FAR more costly than necessary. I agree, the UN does some useful things, but I honestly think it would be better for everyone to create a new worldwide committee meant for the things it does. The UN is really just meant to be a security and peacekeeping committee, and it's not even any good at that.
Remember kids, tin foil doesn't work, so use LeadHat.
Stallman did something completely appropriate. It made a point. It made a valid point. It made the point effectively by attracting attention and publicity. It did not hurt anybody. It caused the barest minimum of disruption and inconvenience.
It has probably brought the matter to the attention of U.N. officials who honestly didn't know or understand the problems with RFID, and regardless of their visible behavior I am sure that it educated the security people as well. I don't know whether this in itself will change policy, but I'd bet a nickel that behind the scenes there have been some discussions and briefings.
Now, the U.N. security people did as close to the right thing as you can imagine them doing. You can't expect them to make an instant technical analysis of the situation. The facts they were presented with were: a) the badges are being used for security, to make sure that only authorized people attend; b) Stallman was conspiciously doing something or other with the badges; c) they had no way of knowing whether it was any kind of security threat, but at least the possibility existed. Screwing around with a security pass is suspicious, even if you don't know what exactly to suspect, and even if in this case it was innocent.
They didn't arrest him. They didn't beat him up. They created the barest minimum of disruption and inconvenience to Stallman and to the meeting.
I say Stallman was effective, on a matter that has some real society importance. And I say the security guards' response was measured and sensible.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
That was in 1997. STFU until you pay your debts, deadbeat.
mentioning the child rapes
Seriously, STFU.
Most infamous of which is the gang rape of a japanese schoolgirl in the 90's, which so outraged the population that the base is being relocated.
You can't take the sky from me...
Actually, beeing an electrical engineer,
Okay, maybe you can explain something I've been trying to figure out for a while.
If you wrap any RF transmitting device in tin OR aluminum foil, you are going to completely shield the device and no RF will get in or out because the foil would act as a farady cage.
This doesn't fit with what I learned in college physics, yet I hear it all the time. From what I learned, a Faraday cage should prevent RF energy from entering the cage, but not from leaving it.
As I recall, a Faraday cage works because of Gauss' law, which tells us the net flux through any closed, conducting surface is dependent only upon charges inside the surface. Charges/fields outside of a closed conducting surface have no effect inside the surface. So if you place a conductive wrapper in an EM field (like, say, the field that powers a passive RFID or contactless smart card), what essentially happens is that the field induces a current in the wrapper, flowing around the enclosed volume, rather than passing through. That makes sense to me.
But, according to Gauss' law, a charge inside a closed surface *does* produce a net flux out through the surface. So a transmitter *inside* the foil wrapper will be able to pass a signal through the wrapper with no problem. I think the shape of the conductor will alter the shape of the field somewhat... I'm not sure.
So, is there something other than Gauss' law at work in a Faraday cage? Why is it that a conductive surface will block interior fields? Or will it?
In this particular case, preventing exterior fields from reaching the RFID is sufficient because the RFID has no power source of its own. What if it did, though? Would the aluminum foil actually do any good? Also, I know from practical experience that placing a conductive layer just on one side of a contactless smart card will render it inoperative. It doesn't even matter if the tinfoil is between the card and reader. Anyone know why that might be? Does the conductor just "smear" the signal enough that communication is no longer possible? Or is there something else going on?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Why exactly should we be carrying 25% of the total cost of the UN?
I'll bet that there is no reason we should pay 25%. We are one of 185 countries. We are one of I believe 7 on the permanent security council. The US I doubt has 25% of world economic output either, so I can't determine any other reason other than "the US should pay". Nice logic.
I don't get the sense of entitlement people have. What's your country paying?
Hmh, quite odd considering that all RFID-type ID badges I have used require usually going real near the reader. You can just require to keep photo IDs visible at all times and have them "scanned" without your knowledge too.
When all you having going for you is fashion sense and group herd rituals, then fashion sense and group herd rituals is everything (to you).
Too bad the point you're trying to make doesn't make any sense. Why would anyone cover a non-RFID badge with tinfoil? There aren't any radio waves to block.
I have no doubt that if his driver's license used RFID, RMS would cover that too. The reason is that RFID is fundamentally different than a normal ID, because when a normal ID is in your pocket other people can't read it. When a RFID is in your pocket, other people still can. If you can't understand that difference, perhaps someone other than RMS is the moron, eh?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Asking people to call it "GNU/Linux" is not a distinction. It's marketing. He wants his organization to receive credit for the contributions they made that made Linux development possible.
The Linux kernel couldn't have been developed without GNU tools, but you don't call something developed under Windows with Microsoft tools "MS-whatever" do you?
Although the GNU tools are still a healthy part of this complete Operating System, it's just rude to assume that everything that isn't part of the Linux kernel is GNU. KDE isn't GNU. The YUM package maintainer is not GNU. Most of the GUI system management tools are not GNU. Apache is not GNU. The drivers and kernel are not GNU. It's not the case that the bulk of your typical distribution is Linus' kernel wrapped around nothing but GNU software.
What does this have to do with wrapping foil around his RFID tag? Well, it's all about drawing attention to him and his organization. The things he does are not about being "right" (aluminum foil isn't necessarily going to have an effect on RFID) as they are to get exposure for GNU and the FSF.
Stallman _is_ the great person behind free software.
the BSDs are good, but they aren't as good at building a community sense.
The GPL is great at giving developers a way to share their software, but keeping a leverage against badly behaved distributors.
You know I have seen the UN "go in" and "do stuff" in former Yugoslavia. There is no oil or anything else ther. There were just people dying. It was scary as I lived in Hungary (Norht border from there) and we were happy about the UN going in and to provide peace keeping efforts.
You might question if they were late or whatever, but they went there and without political or monetary interest. The US was there (in fact they used HU airfields for their runs).
My point: the UN does stuff, they help where they can, they feed the hungry.
My father worked for years on industry development for the U.N. (as an electrical engineer and economist with aluminium industry) in places like Mozambique and other places that you probably do not see in your average passport. Many places where there were armored vehicles parked on the corner with angry uneducated people shooting at anyone at sight.
I know for a fact that the UN does a lot and there are supporters who go where they can and die if they have to for a cause.
What do you want? More uncontrolled power so anyone can jsut run-down a country for oil? Or the UN should run into Zimbabwe and have a UN version of black hawk dawn (I know it was Somalia), without support for other big countries because they only want more oil or only want nuclear power for themselves?