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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.
The NSA declined to comment although a muffled "W0000000t!!!!" could be heard in the background.
Requiem for the American Dream
Your objection has been noted, and will be ignored when the time comes. You're strongly advised to think your position over, to rationally analyze your fears and to understand that change is inevitable so you might as well embrace it. The consequences of some misgiven "rebellion" would be... Unpleasant to you and your family.
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.