http://cryptome.org/rfid-docs.htm Privacy activists are playing hardball with the RFID promoters. ================= BEGIN QUOTED MATERIAL =================== Yesterday, the Center's Director Kevin Ashton claimed openness in a Boston Globe interview: "We don't have anything to hide, and we're very open with what we do." This was in response to CASPIAN's disclosing a security hole on the Auto-ID Center website (www.autoidcenter.org) that permitted access to embarrassing and confidential documents. See http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/189/business/PR_plan_riles_foes_of_produc t_tracking+.shtml "We're very pleased that the Center is open to sharing information about its activities," said CASPIAN Founder and Director Katherine Albrecht. "This is what we have been calling for all along. Now we'd like to see them prove it." CASPIAN is challenging Ashton's claim by issuing 3 basic questions about the Center's current trials, including trials where Gillette Mach 3 razors are silently tagged and tracked at selected Wal-Mart stores. 1. What products are currently being tagged with RFID devices as part of the Auto-ID Center trials? What products have been involved in past trials? 2. Where can consumers see the RFID trials underway? Please provide specific store location information. 3. Where can consumers get details about what information is being collected when they purchase tagged items during these trials? For example, are consumers being tracked, videotaped, or photographed? ================= END OF QUOTED MATERIAL =================== I particularly like this little presentation: http://cryptome.org/rfid/communications.pdf21 responses total.
Shut up, russ.
What's the context for this? What's an RFID?
"Radio Frequency IDentification" - same thing as the little ID chip implanted in pets, it's a tiny little transceiver which has some small amount of information which can be read by a nearby sensor (within a few feet). There's a discussion on Slashdot from a day or two ago.
RFID tags can be embedded in almost anything. They are tiny radio transmitters containing various information. Paper certificates, tyres, jeans .... almost anything can be embedded with them. Even humans!!! It is used to track and gather information. Think of it as a replacement for bar codes. The issue here is privacy. Can I be tracked if I buy Levi's jeans tagged with a RFID??? Does the vendor need to inform the customer if a product is tagged with RFID?? Right now, its not so much of a problem bcoz the use of RFID tags is still in its infancy and for getting any information from a RFID tag, you need to be within a feet or so of the tag. But what when these tags grow powerful enough to transmit radio waves to, say, hundreds of meters?? Scores of questions related to privacy. In my opinion, its not that this technology wasn't available earlier but such technologies are now available at such a low cost that it is viable to implement them on a large scale. Web servers and tiny web- surfing add-on tools gather private information and send them to corporates all the time. Your windows PC itself may gather and send any information to Microsoft (despite assurances from M$ that they do not do so, but then who knows??). No no, this is not a M$ bashing post, but I am just giving an example. Another example is Amazon. It tracks what all things you've bought from them. Do you want an anonymous tech support engineer at amazon to find out all that information?? At your workplace, your network administrator can track almost everything you do on the internet. Sites you visit, posts you make to message boards (like grex), read your email etc etc. Is that ok with you?? Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystem, suggests that in this digital era privacy is dead and people get over this issue. Thats one opinion.
Here's a good introduction to what RFID tags are and how they work: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/31461.html This kind of technology has been used by some railroads for a while now -- they call it AEI, for Automatic Equipment Identification. An RFID tag is installed on each rail car. As it goes over the hump in a hump yard, it's scanned by a reader next to the tracks, and the information is used by the hump yard's computer to throw switches and route the car to the right classification track. (A hump yard, if you're not familiar with the term, is an automatic railroad switch yard with an artificial hill at one end. A train is backed over the hill and each car is cut loose at the crest. It then rolls downhill into the yard, its speed is trimmed by brakes in the tracks, and it's routed into the right classification track by computer where inertia causes it to couple itself onto the train being built on that track.)
Think about it for a moment. If a store can read RFID tags at a distance of 3 feet, it means that they can scan everything that goes through their doors. If you carry a bag of something with an RFID tag in it into their store, they can track you as you walk around. If you buy *clothes* with RFID tags in them and they are not deactivated, they can connect the purchase record to your name and then track you everywhere you go for as long as you own them. RFID is being sold on the basis of convenience, but it holds out the possibility of creating a surveillance society that Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong would have envied. Your government is buying commercial records of all your movements and transactions, but isn't telling you what it's doing when it's making policy. What's wrong with this picture?
Ah, so it's basically like the HID cards I used to use to get into my office, or on a longer distance scale, like the FastTrak things used to pay bridge tolls without stopping?
Right. Trading distance for minaturization, basically. As a few people suggested on Slashdot, you could put things in the microwave for a few seconds to burn out the tags. Would work on most clothing, although electronics wouldn't fare too well.
Hmmm ... these tags can communicate upto a distance of 250 feet????!!!! Now thats scary!! http://www.capocci.gr/065.htm "High frequency Systems, operating in the ultrahigh frequency band from 500 megahertz to 2.5 gigahertz, are more applicable in the automobile and trucking industries. These tags often can communicate with readers at a distance greater than 250 feet while moving at speeds more than 150 miles an hour."
Re #8: Any risk to the microwave?
Not really. I nuke CDRs quite often, and then there's the time I meant to use the timer function and instead had the microwave running empty for a couple minutes.
I've nuked CDs on a few occasions. The only damage so far has been a smell that persisted for a day or so when I nuked one too long. CD in a microwave, propped up on a cardboard box for better visibility: http://www.gull.us/photos/misc/cd.jpg
Ok. I have to ask. Why would you want to nuke a CD?
See the photo. :)
Security, or perhaps for legal reasons (burning a copy of something to test a new burner, then nuking the copy)
Heh. I guess I dont have anything on CD that is so sensitive I worry that someone might go through my trash to get it. I just throw them out when I am done with them. ;)
I break mine in half if I consider anything on them confidential. I suppose a super-sluth could get something off them, but who would try? By the way - that's all good plastic. Are they recyclable?
Re #13: Because it looks cool. :) Incidentally, have you ever noticed that those expensive music CDs shatter easily, but you can bend a cheap AOL CD almost double before it snaps?
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I know nothing about it, but there are lots of kinds of "quality" in plastics. One plastic might be more brittle, but won't decay much with age. If I were making AOL disks, I would be keeping cost per as low as possible, and I wouldn't mind a bit if the plastic degraded so they weren't usable in two years. Who will want a two-year old AOL disk? For music CD's I'd care a lot more about how long it lasts and how well it holds up to scuffs, scratches, and high temperatures. If I can get high marks on those factors by making the disk a bit more brittle, I'd consider that a good deal.
My guess is that the music discs use a harder but more brittle plastic, for scratch resistance purposes. Hardness and brittleness usually go together.
You have several choices: