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Australia's Geekiest Man
An anonymous reader writes "Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick? Computerworld has a story up about the outgoing Linux Australia group president's hacked home, in which just about anything from watering the lawn, to opening his blinds, or checking the mail can be controlled through a software environment. Jonathan Oxer is an electronics and coding whiz who apparently has an RIFD tag implanted in his arm that opens his front door, and his front gate is hooked up with gigabit Ethernet — able to tell him when someone enters the property or send him a virtual email or sms to say he has real mail. Apparently the iPod Touch has just inspired him to begin linking all his little hardware hacks together into the one single, software controlled handheld touch device. I wonder if Steve Jobs ever thought the Touch would end up being used this way?"
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
How long until this gets hacked?
What exactly is a virtual email? Can the system send him one when he gets a real email too?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Pretty cool. I wouldn't worry about people hacking it too much though since it isn't exactly a common thing just yet. :) I should point out though, that the link goes to the 2nd page of the article rather than the first. :o
Weaksauce as they say...
Just as an FYI for anyone considering this, implanted RFID have been known to cause a high incidence of cancer around the implantation area. There's research showing it in animal models, I found out after my pet had to have his RFID tracker replaced (they use this in pets to let vet offices identify your pet if it gets lost).
Apparently the body doesn't like certain subcutaneous implanted foreign objects and cancerous growths build around it.
The other issue I would like to point out is that putting RFID chips into people and treating them as cattle has for some time been a dream of the uber wealthy elite classes. This tracks back to the eugenics movement to present day. See Aaron Russo's documentary "America: Freedom to Fascism".
As such, I would not be in a hurry to usher in the era of slave I mean people tracking.
Liberty.
I was always curious why futurists and cyborg fanboys get RFID chips implanted underneath their skin. What's wrong with just wearing one on a ring or perhaps a chain around your neck? Maybe both for multiple redundancy. Does it really happen THAT often you go to the pub for a few pints and comeback so drunk you've lost all your possessions? Does that slim probability warrant tagging yourself like cattle?
What sort of emergency do you have in mind? No home security will deter a determined malicious threat from entering, but a gadgetted up house you could fully control with a device that fits in your pocket, could create enough of a distraction to escape.
>>Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick?>>
I can think of a number of reasons.
1. You can give your key to a trusted associate, for example to housesit or run an errand for you. Giving your arm to a trusted associate is computationally intensive, destructive, and irreversible.
2. You can, for the cost of less than one hour's salary, revoke the key tied to a compromised lock, and then issue a new key. If unforseen circumstances should cause the RFID lock to require revoking, well, bad news bears...
3. Key/lock devices are well understood, hardly ever fail due to them having few moving parts which are almost never in operation, and are robust against almost all unforseen environmental conditions (i.e. power outage). Arm/RFID reader interfaces are poorly understood, by necessity have to be polling constantly, and are dependent on several fragile systems to maintain the key requirements that you be let into your house promptly any time you desire and that unauthorized users be rejected 100% of the time.
4. You have designs of ever having a romantic relationship. ("Honey, I know preparations for the wedding have been a bit busy, but we'll have to schedule your surgery sometime this week...")
5. A diligent attacker attempting to compromise your lock/key interface has no reason to attempt to compromise your shoulder/arm interface with a hacksaw.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Known? Implanting "subcutaneous foreign objects" might cause cancer, see the quote below. And the research done on mice indicates it typically happens in one percent or two.
"It's important to emphasize that those studies are not necessarily sufficient to view these implants as known hazards. The data suggest that the devices foster cancer by causing inflammation of the tissues that encapsulate them. There is a large amount of scientific literature linking cancer and inflammation (the National Cancer Institute has some information on the matter). RFID tags turn out not to be the only form of animal tagging that causes cancer through inflammation; standard metallic ear tags can do so as well. That paper also notes that there have been a number of case reports where human prosthetic implants have induced cancers in the surrounding tissues.", taken from Ars Technica
Perhaps it's the world's way of telling you that you should get a job and live normal hours like the rest of us - then you won't be up when the Australian stories get posted.
I'm a doctor, and I haven't heard anything about what you claim. Think about it, we put pacemakers and defibrillaters in people all the time, and there is no appreciable increase in cancer around these implantation sites.
As far as the body is concerned, it would see a little pellet lined with a coating. Many pacemaker housings are titanium, so if this is metal-lined, I do not see any possible way this could cause cancer being the low level radio emitter it is. I'd be happy to review any reputable journal articles if you can link, but a quick medline search does not reveal support to your claim.
and were planning to sell it to China.
The system contains everything you could imagine: in-house tracking system, motion detectors, remote messaging control and web-interface administration, integration with all electronic household appliances for whatever control you could think of doing, including but not limited to gardening and feeding your dogs.
He even got VC supports to build the actual products; but then, I asked him one question: "what about power outage, which happen so frequently in China?"
He thought briefly and said "We could include an fuel-powered, emergency backup power supply for my system."
"Well, when there's a power outage, those house appliances cease to function as well..."
He then thought more deeply and said "Then we must kick in a bigger fuel-powered, emergency backup power supply for the entire house!"
He's now selling household fuel-powered emergency backup power supplies and really good at it.
For all those who are about to make wisecracks about this dude, by all means go ahead.
Just pause for a moment and admit to yourself that you were thinking what language *you* would be scripting the curtains with.
Everyone knows that damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. -Pope Pius XI
Got an implant.... now that shows you're into it.... or at least it's into you!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Every time I read a story about people implating RFID tags into themselves as a means of "keyless entry", it always reminds me of that scene in Demolition Man where Wesley Snipes pulls out the warden's eyball so he can get past the retinal scanner in the Cryoprison.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
My understanding of "RFID" tags is that since they are powered by the energy broadcast by the reader, the tags themselves can't do very much in terms of computation. As a result, they are limited to parroting back a static serial number (though a long one, or part of it) that's determined when the tag is manufactured.
//in infrared ink//. Sure, you'd need fancy infrared optics to read it - but why the hell would you take that chance?
This means that the tags themselves cannot do any encryption at all.
If this is the case, why the hell would anybody want to use it to gain secure access to anything when anybody nearby the tag with an RFID reader can read the serial number and spoof the tag?
This would be like writing your credit card number on the front of your shirt -
Is my understanding flawed, here? Are there newer RFID tags that actually can do crypto (and are people like those in TFA using them)? I may be wrong in any number of ways, so I'm looking for some more solid info.
From TFA: "He has a young family that live in a seemingly normal home in suburban Melbourne." Sucks to make assumptions, doesn't it?
But we have geekier people.
Like, say, Andrew Tridgall who at a recent event (linux.conf.au 2008), instead of socialising decided to reverse engineer the Sony eBook reader.
Although the blog post with photos of how he put the RFID in himself was one of the most distrubing things I've ever seen on the internet (I guess because I've worked with him).
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
I mean a N800 runs Linux out of the box and has most of the bits and pieces already available for the remote control uses he describes. And, being not only a Linux geek, but a Linux geek motivated enough to hobble together his own house, he should recognize that the Touch's strength is in doing the small number of factory-approved tasks, but doing them really well, while the N800 excels in doing whatever you want, provided you can figure out how to do it. I'm just saying, it's a better fit.
But when you look at home automation like that, do you ask yourself "how much time a day does he spend installing and maitaining his automatics?"
"I would guess most of us are in the hope/dreams stage"
I for one am well past the "take the cheque and fuck off" stage, I've survived the "working single dad" stage and the "middle age disco heart attack" stage. I think the "indifferent old fart" stage is next, I'd ask dad but he's in the "surprised to be alive" stage and mostly just grins like a child.
Go away, I don't have a lawn!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Is there a reason why the summary doesn't link to the full interview?
No, I said the OP claimed a HUGE percentage got cancer when in fact they don't. Secondly there was no research done on humans, and mice are not humans.
The fact that 1-2% could even possibly get cancer does not mean 30-60 million people will get it. Science is a bit more advanced than that. I'm not giving you any credit for your math skills. In fact it's probably unlikely they will get cancer at all from this "potential" threat. You are just making outrageous claims from no evidence what so ever.
I would take those odds, they're really quite good, but I don't want to be tagged none the less.
"Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick?
RFID tags and proximity cards (like on some cars) are not a good replacement for a key. They do not behave the same way.
We have a modern key-less system at the local swimming pool. Keys have been replaced with a wristband with a single button about the size of a UK 5pence piece (a dime in the US I think). Most of the time they work well. But when the conductance isn't quite right (usually the surfaces are too wet) they don't work. In a swimming pool and the changing rooms, the chances of things being too wet, is er, rather high. A different pool I go to uses real keys. I never, ever have a problem opening a locker at that pool. The key does what it is meant to do, that is, be a key, not a clever, technology over-engineered replacement for a key that requires operator intervention by the key creators to fix malfunctions.
We have a lecturer (professor?) here in the UK that does stupid stuff like this all the time. Gets him in the media. I'm sure he loves it. Really, really sad. Why don't people use their creativity a bit more usefully?
Even without having met him, there's one thing I can tell you about this gentleman with absolute certainty: He does not number among his friends anybody with a warped sense of humour and knowledge of the term "induction field".
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Does that help the gate open/close faster?
This is still MY basement !
Your mother
If MIX where a ternary (base three) computer, how many tits would there be per byte.
I wouldnt implant myself with any of thoe things either - I'd get someone else to implant them in me.
The iPhone and the iPod touch are both excellent devices for controlling a house. Now we need USB or Wi-Fi enabled thermostats, garage door openers, door locks, etc. X-10 was a cool idea for its time, but it's showing its age.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Why have a key to open your front door when you can have an RFID tag implanted in your arm that will do the trick?"
/joke
Because you'd like to attract women at some point?
stuff |
but you could just have a regular old key as backup. It's just a theory, though. Like evolution.
And gravity.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Kevin Warwick (aka Captain Cyborg) did this years ago. Having a chip implanted for the purpose of opening doors etc.
I have proof that my girlfriend is wrong.
I am not Australia's geekiest man!
www.purevolume.com/martyd
Shhhhh! Do you really want to give the movie studios any ideas and then have to sit through "Home Alone Version 4.0"?
So... his ideal situation (which he hasn't actually manage to achieve yet) is to do something that the security systems in most apartment buildings have been doing for decades.