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Embedded Microchips In Virtually Everything
Microsoft CRM recommends a long AP article laying out the nightmare scenario of RFID chips in everything tracking not only things but people. The darker possibilities of a technology capable of enabling ubiquitous surveillance are not news to this community, but it's not so common to see them spelled out for a wider audience. "Microchips with antennas embedded in virtually everything you buy, wear, drive and read, allowing retailers and law enforcement to track consumer items and consumers wherever they go. Much of the radio frequency identification technology that enables objects and people to be tagged and tracked wirelessly already exists and potentially intrusive uses of it are being patented, perfected and deployed... [A director at FTI Consulting] said:] 'It's going to be used in unintended ways by third parties — not just the government, but private investigators, marketers, lawyers building a case against you.'"
I expect that all the new "smart devices" will create a class division within developed countries, those who can program and those who can't. We already have part of it with Best Buy and other computer retailers trying to sell you at least $300 in extra hardware/software/support even though you don't need it yet the uninformed take the bait and end up spending money they don't need. Also, the same thing is happening with computer repair and support, if you don't know whats wrong tech support is more than willing to test every combination and then charge you for the privilege of fixing it along with any other thing that /might/ be wrong.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
Tinfoil hats.
Do you think we wear them because they look cool?
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As soon as RFID chips start appearing in all of our items, the market for devices that destroy them without damaging the article itself will very quickly materialize. Honestly, if I can figure out how to destroy them easily, I may be in on that market.
And then they'll make tougher RFID chips, and we'll make tougher devices to kill them. And this war will escalate just like the Radar vs Radar Detector arms race. What are the cops using now? Negatively modulated phased arrays doppler assisted with frequency hopping? Exactly.
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
The RFID chips have a transmission range of 3cm, thats one freakin' inch. If you have a large antenna, you can get 30cm range (1 foot).
/. journal article on RFID chips and the need to adopt them.
Half the people I know use a key card to access/unlock doors at work. Those things have an RFID chip in them. How close do you have to hold those up to the reader? Yup, 3cm.
If you had a 6' satellite dish mounted on the back of a truck, you could theoretically blast out a signal strong enough to activate the RFID receiver and get it to reflect back a signal to the dish, but the weakness of the return signal is so minute that you still would not be able to hear the return signal past 10' away.
Sorry, but does the government really care if you have any more "hot pockets" in your freezer? These articles are more about scare tactics than reality.
Now, a concern that has been brought up is programmable RFID chips. If your can of Campbell's Tomato soup had a programmable RFID tag then a customer could program it with self replicating code and place it back on the shelf. Then, when the store took inventory and scanned the shelf, the "infected" can of soup would receive the energy pulse and reply not with the information the reader is looking for, but with a reprogramming signal that would "reprogram" the cans of soup around it with the self replicating code. Could you imagine a whole WalMart being quarantined due to an RFID worm outbreak?
It isn't really possible, the return signal from an RFID chip isn't even strong enough to power up an RFID chip next to it, but it is nevertheless fun to think about.
Read my
Joel Helgeson
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I won't buy anything that tracks me, just like i refuse to purchase software the requires it to phone home.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
RFID and related technologies will only continue to push us down the path we are already on. There are cameras all the place, we constantly give up our addresses and credit card numbers, and even our grocery discount cards are tracking our purchases. This isn't going to slow down or let up. The trick will be to understand and govern what is in place, not necessarily slow down the technology changes we're seeing.
There's little in the way of choice left regarding the use of this technology. It's too pervasive, in more sense than one.
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In light of the obviously undesireable implications of having every detail available to any spook with a scanner, I imagine that we'll start seeing systems designed to detect and neutralize the tags. Given that they are designed to respond to scans they shouldn't be too hard to ferret out(until the RFID equivalent of port knocking comes out, of course). Presumably a variety of little arms races will be kicked off, between the cypherpunks and the feds, the counterfeiters and the corporations, etc.
The more interesting question, though, is what the reaction will look like on a social scale. Will RFID tags be routinely removed at point of sale, the way dye tags are, or will they be aggressively integrated into products in an effort to make them tamperproof? Will people at large see neutralizing RFID tags in items you own as a common, sensible, precaution, like shredding important documents, or will that be seen as the sort of thing that only hackers, criminals, and other shady characters would do?
It will also be interesting to see what sorts of uses the vast amount of ambient information will be put to. Obviously, the usual surveillance and marketing stuff will be pretty thick on the ground; but there might be some rather more curious things as well. I can just imagine the horde of social networking gimmicks that will spring up around the ability to detect the consumer goods carried by those around you. It'll be just like Zune Squirting; but ubiquitous!(Does anybody else miss the days when the future was going to have flying cars and robots?)
I demand my constitutional right to invisibility!
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
I agree that rfid is not so scary if you know the details of the implementations. There are many systems already implemented that are a lot tougher to circumvent than these things. The recent Dutch $2B transit system is a great example although I know this article is referring to somewhat different usage scenarios. The knowledge is power as always. http://infiniteadmin.com/
I have read that passive tags can be read from 1 inch to 40 feet.
And Active tags can be read up to a mile or more.
The range all has to do with cost and need.
With all tech reducing cost is only a matter of scale and time.
As with all things its also only a matter of time before malevolent use any tool or technology occurs.
So while I agree that Orwellian references to RFID technology are certainly overblown,
Dismissing the need for caution and prudence with any technology can only lead to big problems in the long run.
As you pointed out so well a soup can worm could shut the doors on a supermarket.
I think that this is a simple example of what could be the tip of a greater iceberg once truely talented indiviuals
start taking advantage of an embedded technology that is only bound to evolve.
Once it become part of the system it will be hard to get rid of.
If you own a cell phone and often carry it with you everywhere you go, you can be tracked. You can even be tracked with your phone turned off. The government has been asking to track people even without sufficient probably cause(and probably doing it illegally since we know about it).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/22/AR2007112201444.html?hpid=topnews
I believe this was mandated in the 1996 Telecommunications Act for all cellular devices and has been implemented long since.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
RFID tags transmit incredibly weak signals. The only power available to them is what the tiny antenna can convert from RF transmitted by the reader. A simple battery-operated transmitter operating at the same output frequency(ies) as the tags can easily interfere with the RFID tags transmission making it impossible for the reader to decode its signal.
Also, reading the tags is really easy (and cheap). I bought a reader for $50 that uses a simple serial interface. I connected it to a PIC microcontroller, wrote some relatively simple software for it, and output IrDA via an IR LED so I can display the data on a Pocket PC.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
They can't track your phone when it's off. It can't be tracked if it's not emitting a radio signal. Maybe you think off means something other than off?
Yeah, sticking RFID encrusted stuff in the microwave is so very hard.
Doing that to disable the RFID chip in something like an iPod or a cellphone would tend to disable more then just the RFID chip.
Now you can be paranoid with style!
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Notable in the comments on this story is what seems to be missing. Deep outrage.
Previous generations of Americans - of all political leanings - would have been deeply offended by the idea that governments, or anyone else for that matter, had the right to snoop into a free citizen's private life unless a judge had determined probable cause, meaning it was likely the person was a criminal where the court would authorize an investigation likely to lead to that citizen losing his freedom or at least some of his property through a court trial and fine.
However, in the last ten years or so, there has been a remarkable change, where what used to be mainstream offense at such an idea is now marginalized as the loony fringe. Television shows have been party to this brainwashing, as they feature law enforcement shows where the federal, state and even local police go into databases and almost instantly know a lot about ones personal life. We watched one the other night where they organized a search party of the locals, and ostensibly to protect the people, took names of each volunteer. Then the TV show has the police and the feds discussing the personal profiles of each volunteer... this one has debt problems, that one has sexual deviancy... none of them convicted criminals, but each forming a detailed profile of that citizen. The show ostensibly was placed in Washington State not East Germany before the wall was torn down.
When I put computer systems into police departments in the 1980's, we were told that the software had to purge and absoletely delete all records on a person arrested if they were not charged, or found not guilty. Hopefully that is still the law. However, what we are seeing with stories like the Microsoft story is a slow process of softening up the public, of dimming public opinion so the ordinary guy in the street figures its normal for the police or corporates to snoop into the private lives of ordinary citizens. This is called a police state folks. Land of the free? Freedom means being left alone until you cross the boundary and break the law. Only in dictatorships, police states and authoritarian regimes do private citizens come under government surveilance.
In such places, life dims.
Reading these sorts of stories, life is dimming now, I fear.
If you are offended by officials or corporations spying on private citizens who have done nothing wrong, you must speak up now, while they are still softening up the rest of us. If you don't think you have the power to do so, look at the open source movement.
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." Samuel Adams
Read the last line again, folks. Then go back and re-read the Microsoft story.
Do you think that the logs from your security system won't be able to tell someone exactly which door you triggered at exactly which date and time? Your movements are being tracked. It's just that right now, nobody cares.
While Christmas shopping with my mom, we purchased our items and left the store. As we were leaving the security system announced that apparently someone had failed to remove the inventory control tag from an item. We looked around to see who was making off with store goods, but just saw normal holiday store traffic. We made our way through the mall and entered another store. We heard that store's security system asking a customer to return to the cashier to have the inventory control tag removed. I remarked that it must be a busy day for shoplifters. We made our way through the store to a side exit near our parking spot. Again the security system tripped. This time, we were the only ones using the entrance, so it was obvious that one of our inventory control tags was the one causing the problem. My point, we were tracked by different stores. Our progress through the mall could have been monitored. We definitely had our photographs taken by the store security cameras. Were it not for the security system announcement giving us the opportunity to have the tag removed, we could have been tracked without our knowledge.
Now there are plenty of places where controlled access points exist: stores, subway stations, airports, sports arenas. If sensors were placed in these places, movements could be tracked from place to place, and from city to city. If they put RFID sensors in cell phones, instead of the radiation sensors they were talking about in another story, someone could track you through crowded streets. Your own phone could give you away.
Right now there are three things protecting us. First and biggest, nobody cares. Second, the systems are not integrated (although my trip through the mall shows that many stores already use the same system). Third, right now we can ditch the RFIDs. They're attached to the shoebox, not the shoes; to the price tag, not the item. Once the RFIDs are embedded in the item, we lose that capacity.
Sure, right now it's just a barcode. But it would not take much to change that barcode to a Universally Unique IDentifier, readable from multiple, integrated systems.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
My favorite quote from the article is:
"Heady forecasts like these energize chip proponents, who insist that RFID will result in enormous savings for businesses. Each year, retailers lose $57 billion from administrative failures, supplier fraud and employee theft, according to a recent survey of 820 retailers by Checkpoint Systems, an RFID manufacturer that specializes in store security devices."
So, a company who makes RFID chips does a study showing the businesses lose $57 Billion every year? That sounds as reliable as some of the Business Software Alliance statements on losses from piracy. To call this self-serving would be an understatement.
What I find so very interesting, and always have, is the "lack" of information being provided by these surveillance systems.
What is more concerning in a secured environment? The 999 objects that you can track visually and with RFID in a given area, or the ONE object you cannot track.
This is what has concerned me from the beginning. If all the sheeples around me are not fighting back and forcefully taking their privacy back, then I will certainly show up like a big red target on the security software that is running.
These software/hardware packages are becoming amazingly sophisticated to the point they analyze behavior of people and objects in the room. AI in the future is not some geeky pie-in-the-sky concept here. Genetic Algorithms, or step evolutionary algorithms are already here and incredibly impressive. Forget fuzzy logic and heuristics, these programs embody all of those methods and constantly improve.
The 100th gen of a Backgammon AI could barely beat a mentally challenged kid moving the pieces randomly. The Billionth Gen regularly defeated world champions. It's been awhile since we heard about the Chess AI machines, but the last I heard it was barely a draw.
So what happens in the future when you represent a big black hole of information walking around? What does that look like on a security interface?
Some rather sophisticated people talk about defeating/hacking/programming/deactivating RFID units around them, some in an automated fashion. Heh Heh.
So what if there was a literal application of that term, Black Hole? Can you imagine what the picture would like if there was a void in the security environment, that was interacting with other objects, AND deactivating/modifying other RFID like devices?
Different way to think about it, since maybe RFID is more of a threat to those that would attack it, then accept it.