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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.
...tattoo everybody with a bar-code...
Look, if you want to be that stupid, as long as it only affects you, go right ahead. But don't bother anyone else with it, thanks. Yet there's the rub: Before you know it, it's become de rigeur and everyone is expected to follow, something I'll never do voluntarily. So force it is going to be. I object to that.
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.
The NSA declined to comment although a muffled "W0000000t!!!!" could be heard in the background.
Requiem for the American Dream
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)
So many things wrong with the very IDEA of this.
An implant is as permanent and as symbolic as a fucking TATTOO. Remember the last people to use tattoos to identify individuals? Read some books and see how that shit turned out for six million people.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
"...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."
And how many people currently shield their smartphones from bluetooth, NFC, WiFi, IR, radio, or GPS? (you know, that technology we use to track things) Obviously the majority of post-Snowden society today has no problem carrying around devices capable of tracking them.
Activated without the users knowledge? Well, only if they didn't take the time to read every page the 37 EULAs they've accepted, along with the other 27 auto-accepted when they activated their new smartphone. I'm certain data is being slurped with every GPS refresh and radio pulse. And it was agreed to by the owner.
Society is so accepting to this that a kids game theme (follow the leader, tag-you're-it) could be tied to the marketing and people would buy it.
Doubly so if Apple did it.
Yes, except⦠that they're easily removed and not visible. But besides that they're totally like tattoos.
This has roughly zero advantage over clipping your ID card (with RFID) to a lanyard you wear at work. I'll leave it to my fellow Slashdotters to list all the disadvantages. So this is just plain stupid and pointless, along with all of the other adjectives others will post.
I know the new "progressive" thing is that we're all interchangeable cells of out defined group, you're "a black" or "a white" or "the rich" or "the poor", but for myself I like a little personal privacy and individual dignity.
Yep, like what the ranchers often do to their calf - branding
I mean, what's next?
Every new born has to be 'chipped', like kittens / puppies?
What NSA/GCHQ did was bad enough and this is much worse !
We might as well chuck that UN Charter of Human Rights out of the window, since human themselves are willing to be branded
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.
We still use CDs. They are compatible with more systems than USB sticks or memory cards.
Work will make you free.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Our company uses a chip in our employee IDs. I get into our Stockholm office by turning around and banging the scanner with my ass--it's just the right height to read the card in my wallet just fine that way. The fact that the corporate logo is pasted across the front of the card scanner just makes it all the more heartwarming.
We use a separate fob for the outside door (we share the building with several other firms). That works just fine, too, and people seldom if ever come to the office without their house and/or car keys.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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 get into our Stockholm office by turning around and banging the scanner with my ass
TWERK TO ENTER WORK
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"We've". Or "we have". NOT "we of".
This type of illiteracy is relatively new (to me). I've seen it a lot in the last few months, never before that. Is this something they're teaching in schools now?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Try getting an MRI with an implant. The last one I had on my head and neck for my acoustic neuroma, the technician told me to remove my wedding ring because it might vibrate. Right on the form it asks "do you have an implant?"
"Could be worse...could be raining." Igor
I used to work at a company who installed access control systems but I wasn't shy about doing that when visiting customers sites. I did it once in an elevator because I was carrying a large box. The look of surprise on the woman's face in the elevator was priceless. She asked me how I did that and I replied "It's the new model we're experimenting with. It sniffs your butt like a dog to see if it should give you access." She could not stop laughing all the way up to her floor.