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Employees In Swedish Office Complex Volunteer For RFID Implants For Access
Lucas123 writes A Swedish office building is enabling corporate tenants to implant RFID chips into employee's hands in order to gain access through security doors and use services such as photocopiers. The employees working at Epicenter, a 15,000-square-foot building in Stockholm, can even pay for lunch with a swipe of their hand. Hannes Sjöblad, founder of Bionyfiken, a Swedish association of Biohackers, said Epicenter is not alone in a movement to experiment with uses for implanted chips that use RFID/NFC technology. There are also several other offices, companies, gyms and education institutions in Stockholm where people access the facilities with implanted chips. Bionyfiken just began a nationwide study using volunteers implanted with RFID/NFC. "It's a small, but indeed fast-growing, fraction which has chosen to try it out." The goal of the Bionyfiken project is to create a user community of at least 100 people with RFID implants who experiment with and help develop possible uses. But, not everyone is convinced it's a good idea.
John Kindervag, a principal security and privacy analyst at Forrester Research, said RFID/NFC chip implants are simply "scary" and pose a major threat to privacy and security. The fact that the NFC can't be shielded like a fob or chip in a credit card can with a sleeve means it can be activated without the user's knowledge, and information can be accessed. "I think it's pretty scary that people would want to do that [implant chips]," Kindervag said.
John Kindervag, a principal security and privacy analyst at Forrester Research, said RFID/NFC chip implants are simply "scary" and pose a major threat to privacy and security. The fact that the NFC can't be shielded like a fob or chip in a credit card can with a sleeve means it can be activated without the user's knowledge, and information can be accessed. "I think it's pretty scary that people would want to do that [implant chips]," Kindervag said.
Isn't it like extremely easy to copy passive NFC/RFID tags? You just record them and replay them.
So in essence this adds nothing to security and only harms privacy. (But I guess that is pretty much the norm everywhere these days.)
Well, at least it might be a bit convenient since the people doesn't need to remember their keys.
Not that it should be an issue, they would probably rather be caught dead than forgetting their smartphone somewhere.
I'm no RFID expert, but it's just used for identification, right? It won't be long until face scanning is good enough that you can identify someone from even further away than the range of an RFID chip. The potential for people cloning the chips seems worse than any sort of privacy/tracking worries.
They've been predicting this technology for decades, based on the 'mark of the beast' being necessary to buy anything
[The Beast] also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. (Rev 13:16,17)
The privacy part is important, but not the only part. It's a bit like biometrics, that aren't replacable and aren't quite private. Of course, you can zap the tag and implant a new one, and keep doing that until your arm rattles. But that doesn't make it a good idea. Personally I already object to tagging pets, because of this, and because of the wireless part. I'd acquiesce to tattooing a number in the ear so that a vet can look up ownership, but that's as far as I'm willing to go. Nobody needs to check ownership from a distance, like with a nicely strong rfid reader on a drone or something. You could easily track me through my pets. If you think that's far-fetched, you'd be wrong: This sort of inference is what "big data" is all about, and it gets used increasingly often.
For humans, it gets increasingly complicated (of course). Humans don't have owners, at least not in name. Yet with this construct, you carry a hard-to-remove identification issued by your place of work. What if you leave? What if that wasn't on the best terms? Even if the government takes over the registration of such tags (and then (ab)uses them for everything from medical to tax purposes, with driver's and other licences thrown into the mix for good measure) you rely entirely on the good will and honesty of some other party to not fuck up the administration.
Beyond that, you can never just leave the work badge at home, like for going out to some kinky party. Maybe you don't want your co-workers to know your weekend-whereabouts, but to keep private you now have to wrap your arm in tin foil. In that sense it's over-engineering. A badge would do pretty well. Or you could use an rfid chip embedded in a ring (such a thing got kickstarted not long ago), which is just the thing for access purposes, doesn't get lost or stolen easily, and doesn't require surgery to remove.
Implanting, like biometrics, is a quest for "security" that actually does far more damage to the subject, this way or that way, than that it gains the system in actual robustness. In that sense, it's snake oil, and it makes you the human into a neat little package to be tracked. A disposable thing. I see this as dehumanising, as entirely missing the point of what it means to be human. So I object.
The employment climate in Sweden if very far from the socialist dream of the 1970's. Today it is very easy to get kicked out on your ass in Sweden. You don't want the implant? Well then you cant do your job, audios! We had a guy fire for saying he liked big breasts and another because he wanted he stipulated vacation during summer (which is his right by law). Sweden has somehow transformed from a democracy with a good employment climate to a dictatorship (we basically have a one party since the "December agreement" last year) with no democracy and zero workers protection.
I hardly ever take my phone with me.
And, being part of the MoD we're told not to have our passes visible in public. RFID/NF is ALWAYS public.