Streamlining and Testing RFID Technology

Multiple readers have written to let us know that an experiment at the upcoming Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference will use RFID to track the movements of at least 1,500 registrants for the duration of the conference. Those movements will be transmitted onto screens which "show in real-time where people go, with whom they associate, for how long and how often." The system will also be used for games which involve manipulation of the available data. Meanwhile, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a method for testing large quantities of RFID tags, which may serve to greatly speed distribution.

Comments

How appropriate...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

privacy, rfid, security, technology (tagging beta)

For once "tagging beta" is appropriate. B-)

That's EASY...

[Jane Q. Public]

At random intervals, pick a stranger and offer to swap tags. You could even devise rules for doing this in groups...

Games could be invented involving your favorite randomizers (dice, coins, chicken bones, shots of whisky) to spice up the action. Sounds like fun to me.

Re:That's EASY...

[QuantumG]

Not if they are implanted.

And are programmed to explode if removed.

Cool

[duckInferno]

but will it show everybody's hunger, bladder, entertainment and relationship status bars as well?

Re:dammit

[plover]

There goes my plan of hanging out at the bar while my video presentation is running at the booth.

Hardly. I bet HOPE is going to be a circus of people hiding RFID tags on each other, unsuspecting passers-by, luggage carts, equipment crates, laptops, and probably in capsules hidden in hamburger buns in the buffet. I expect very few tags to remain on their originally intended targets.

Disconcerting

[lawpoop]

There's nothing that bugs me more with nascent technology than RFID. I don't mind it in products -- it would be great to inventory a warehouse, or, say a refrigerator, in minutes. Theoretically, I wouldn't mind RFIDs in identification cards, if it weren't so darned close to the skin. What really concerns me is RFID implants.

It reminds me of the tattooing of numbers on Jews during the holocaust, for the Third Reich to track them and 'dispose' of them. I'm not a Christian, but the whole "mark of the beast" stuff raises my hackles. It just seems way too open to abuse for any totalitarian-minded politician. At first it's just for medical records, then it's for routine identification stops... finally, there's some computer screen somewhere in a mountain showing the movement of every American citizen.

I don't know, I just have a very visceral reaction against the idea of an RFID implant. I have a phobia of needs; that might have something to do with it. If it really came down to the point where you had to have an RFID implant to participate in society, I don't know what I would do. I really don't. I might just drop out at that point, try to live in a cabin somewhere.

What do other geeks think? Am I being paranoid?

Re:Disconcerting

[plover]

Are you opposed in every case, or just "forced" implantation? I can think of several scenarios:

• Required to enter secure room at work - (I believe this is in use in some places today)
• Optional to enter secure room at work, with the alternative being a time-consuming strong password, a card swipe and a retinal scan
• Optional as part of criminal home monitoring - either remain in jail or stay at home with an implant kept near the bedside monitor, instead of an ankle bracelet
• Required to hold a particular job, such as prison guard
• Voluntary temporary implant to hold credit information while you're partying on nude beaches (I heard some bars in Ibiza have done this, but I don't get out much!)
• U.S. Army soldier, as an optional replacement for the Common Access Card - they get filled with vaccinations and all kinds of other stuff today, and are essentially treated as paid property of Uncle Sam.
• As a voluntary part of a lifesaving medical treatment -- perhaps the tag is swallowed and followed through your GI tract, or perhaps it's implanted and used to monitor a medical condition?
• As a required part of a lifesaving medical treatment, where your only access to obtain treatment is to consent to implanted RFID?

I'm just wondering what your tolerance is. A similar question is: do you carry a cell phone? They're more trackable than an RFID chip. RFID is still limited to less than about 100 meters under perfect conditions. Or do you have to carry an RFID access card for work? Again, not a big difference in "trackability".

As far as health, RFID is a low power technology, and active chips emit only a minute fraction of that power. The only real exposure you get is from RFID readers, not RFID chips. And you can't really avoid the readers unless you don't walk through the doors at stores with anti-shoplifting antennas.

Anyway, I think the Xtian Right would rise up before they'd accept mandatory implants, so you'd probably have some strong allies there.

Re:Disconcerting

[zappepcs]

I agree, and the only place that I've EVER seen where RFID technology on people is appropriate is aboard a Federation starship or space station. Outside of a military situation... well, NATCH! Not worth the effort.

Think of this in what I like to call the 'failure mode analysis':

Your company (100-250 people) uses RFID tags. A fire breaks out. All but 7 people's RFID are accounted for. The FD goes in to the burning building to get them ... 2 firemen die. All 7 were in the parking lot watching at the time.

It's absolutely no good for tracking terrorists.. they won't wear them and you won't have sensors to pick up the individuals that don't have RFID tags. This applies to any building currently in existence.

You decide to tag everyone in a town of 3700 people for an experiment. After an estimated 430 million dollar installation of equipment, the sum total of what you know will be that people get paid on thursday and go to the bar. Walmart is busy on the weekends, and the guy you found cheating is suing you for illegal disclosure of personal information.

Now, say you have a valid use for this, such as security in your data center, or so you think. Only people who have embedded chips can access the data center. There is a car crash, one tech dies, two are in hospital. Now your backup system is down over the weekend, and you can't even buy access to the data center. Yes, that might be a stretch, but I did say 'failure mode analysis'.

Now, if you want to tag your milking cows to keep track of them, make sure they are getting milked, vaccinated, etc. That is useful. If you want to make sure that all the deliveries to your distribution center reach their intended end user space.. that also is good.

Tagging people has a *VERY* limited use, no matter how cool it might seem. I'm always willing to be proved wrong though.

At the conference, it might be cool to have anonymous RFID tracking to see what kind of data it would provide, but linking it to an individual would be wrong. If you want to see how the traffic flows through the booths, it would work but then so would cameras and video analysis software... hmmm I'm willing to bet that the video analysis would be much easier to implement, less intrusive, and much more reliable as there would be no swapping of tags, no RF interference issues, no expensive system to install for tracking etc.

So, somebody tell me what I've gotten wrong here?

Re:Disconcerting

[Awptimus Prime]

U.S. Army soldier, as an optional replacement for the Common Access Card - they get filled with vaccinations and all kinds of other stuff today, and are essentially treated as paid property of Uncle Sam. Putting them on military personnel? Not a chance, it would put your guys at an enormous tactical disadvantage when $50 worth of common electronic components could "light them up" from 100m.

There's probably a few more reasons the government would not be interested in implanting such things in citizens. Cost of operations having to figure out how to install, maintain and monitor everyone. Considering no totalitarian group is doing this now, I think people in current democracies are pretty safe from this.

As mentioned many times in the thread, there's already many other methods of tracking that's already usable by the government when they are interested in you. Hell, we can't even get a few miles of "electronic fence" to work at the border, I really don't see people handing over money for a project of this scale in my lifetime.

For the guy who mentions "all but 7 RFID cards are accounted for" in a burning building and firemen go dying, I highly doubt firemen would go running into a burning building because someone might be in there over employee swipe badges. They tend to go on "Hey, Suzie was on the 2nd floor! I think she's still inside! We can't find her!" instead of waiting for the NT admin to run into said burning building, log into a Win2k machine that's off the network and audit who has come and gone from the building since the fire started.