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Help a Journalist With An NFC Chip Implant Violate His Own Privacy and Security
An anonymous reader writes: His wife thinks he's crazy, but this guy got an NFC chip implanted in his arm, where it will stay for at least a year. He's inviting everyone to come up with uses for it. Especially ones that violate his privacy and security. There must be something better to do than getting into the office or unlocking your work PC.
He says, "The chip we are using is the xNTi, an NFC type 2 NTAG216, which is about the size of a grain of rice and is manufactured by the Dutch semiconductor company NXP, maker of the NFC chip for the new iPhone. It is a glass transponder with an operating frequency of 13.56MHz, developed for mass-market applications such as retail, gaming and consumer electronics. ... The chip's storage capacity is pretty limited, the UID (unique identifier) is 7 bytes, while the read/write memory is 888 bytes. It can be secured with a 32-bit password and can be overwritten about 100,000 times, by which point the memory will be quite worn. Data transmission takes place at a baud rate of 106 kbit/s and the chip is readable up to 10 centimeters, though it is possible to boost that distance."
He says, "The chip we are using is the xNTi, an NFC type 2 NTAG216, which is about the size of a grain of rice and is manufactured by the Dutch semiconductor company NXP, maker of the NFC chip for the new iPhone. It is a glass transponder with an operating frequency of 13.56MHz, developed for mass-market applications such as retail, gaming and consumer electronics. ... The chip's storage capacity is pretty limited, the UID (unique identifier) is 7 bytes, while the read/write memory is 888 bytes. It can be secured with a 32-bit password and can be overwritten about 100,000 times, by which point the memory will be quite worn. Data transmission takes place at a baud rate of 106 kbit/s and the chip is readable up to 10 centimeters, though it is possible to boost that distance."
A libertarian state would pass laws banning people from having the freedom to implant themselves with an RFID? What a totalitarian distopian libertarian world you long for.
Learn to love Alaska
Hell, even Obama and Nancy Pelosi probably wouldn't approve of gov't implanting chips on citizens.
Hell, who needs implants when people voluntarily carry around Android and/or iOS devices everywhere they go?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
A chip embedded in your arm is meaningless without context. Take for example, an Holocaust survivor with a tattooed number on his arm. Or take a person with a safety tattoo listing all the things he's deadly allergic to. Neither of those things are the same as a journalist being tattooed with a meaningless number on his arm.
If those ten volunteers were really serious about testing the technology in a negative light, they should just spent some time as prisoners in a real prison where everything gets tracked and counted by NFC readers at the very least. The Type II tag itself has such a small amount of memory, it can't really be used for any serious authentication outside of a closed loop system like a prison environment.
At best outside of prison use, this NFC tag could link to a shortened url, or contain such information as a Twitter handle, or a LinkedIn user name.
Actually, Rand was almost exactly in the middle of the generation that paid for Social Security twice. The first benefits began in 1940. The first generation of retirees were paid directly out of the treasury. The actual SS taxes that Rand paid went into the "trust fund," which was later loaned out to other government agencies, to pay for war mostly.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
The fake Libertarians in the Republican party may have other ideas, I wouldn't know.
Sure you do. You've heard of the Iraq War, right? The principle of minimal government ceases to apply when it's a cause you happen to like, such as pre-emptive war or corporate subsidies.