Chemical, Printable RFIDs 285
Syre writes "The RFID Journal says that CrossID, an Israeli startup, has developed an RFID system that can be printed using an inkjet printer. The 'nanometric' RFID system uses tiny particles of chemicals with varying degrees of magnetism that resonate when bombarded with electromagnetic waves from a reader. Since the system uses up to 70 different chemicals, each chemical is assigned its own position in a 70-digit binary number. 'Previously, there has been no way to protect paper documents,' says Moshe Glickstein, CrossID cofounder. 'We have created the first firewall for paper documents.' The big advantage is that the tag can be printed on just about anything. 'It's as easy to create as a printed bar code. And we can print in invisible mode for extra security. Printing the tags cost less than 1 cent each.' Their FAQ
says that 'CrossID can be read from quite a long distance'. No word on whether it can be user-disabled..."
+z: Funny? (Score:5, Insightful)
Living in the country that tried to introduce CAPPS and CAPPS II [eff.org] and did pass PATRIOT [eff.org] but thankfully not TIA [epic.org] or PATRIOT II [eff.org], or am I just the only one that could see the government trying to do this?
User-disable... (Score:2, Insightful)
At what point should this be illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
What a wonderful Democracy that would leave us with.
Firewall eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whats to prevent people from copying it out by hand? So it has an "invisible" mode... visible or not, if there are chemicals, it can be read... Any hackers out there with biochemistry or chemical engineering degrees? Heh...
It does raise an interesting point though, these folks could very well become the microsoft of the photocopying world. Whats to stop them from making this sort of printing mandatory for copyright sake? Assuming they managed to get that in line, I cant imagine what'd happen to Xerox stocks when people are no longer able to freely photocopy.
I think I speak for everyone when I say, 'I refuse to live in a world without freedom to steal other people's intellectual property!'.
Seems easily defeated (Score:3, Insightful)
Getting through building exits (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Built Into the Bar Code (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? What's a realistic scenario where this could be abused?
Let me define realistic:
1.) Not something that'd be against the law.
2.) Not something that would be way too expensive to implement.
3.) Not something that a company wouldn't want exposed. (I.e. They'd be exposed if they started calling people and saying "I'll tell the world you bought a porn DVD if you don't come to our sale on Saturday.")
I'm not trying to bust your chops here, I just haven't heard anything but really extreme examples that are borderline science fiction.
Re:Getting through building exits (Score:2, Insightful)
Welcome citizen, do not lose your ID card, we will be watching.
My Vote (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Firewall eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the biggest hassles in that environment is making sure that the documents have been stored properly at the end of the day (locked in special cabinets), and disposed of properly. Add scanners at the copier and trash areas, and you have an effective way of detecting an attempt to improperly dispose of documents.
Line the secure document repository with a blocking material, and you only need to have someone walk down the aisle of cubicles with a scanner at the end of the day, or wherever uncleared personnel are present (especially if you can code the document paper to the dozens of clearance types)
Inventory parts used for specific projects, add scanners, and this could reduce the cost of implementing a SCIF by thousands.
Live by the electron, die by the electron (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Getting through building exits (Score:2, Insightful)
Your idea:
"If we see B, D (0101) try to leave the building, stop it." *Spritz* "Oh, 1111 can leave, no problem."
My idea:
"A is fine and just an indicator. B is 'Make sure the person doesn't have any big bags'. C is 'Search the person for illegal documents'. D is 'shoot on sight'."
Then 1010 (Search the person for illegal document removal) becomes *Spritz!* 1111... and that could be painful.
So, what if bit 56 means "The object this is on has a value of at least $100." and bit 57 has a value "The object this is on is sensitive intelligence" in the company? Spraying extra alarm tags doesn't help.
Of course, at that point, it also becomes a question of "What if this Snickers Bar uses bit 56 to mean 'expires in January'?" and you happen to carry that into work?
Re:Currency protection? (Score:4, Insightful)
Scissors become a circumvention device? (Score:2, Insightful)
Crazy world.
Allergies? (Score:3, Insightful)
Never again (Score:0, Insightful)
Would you like that RFID printed on your left forearm, or your right forearm?
MICR and mixing (Score:2, Insightful)
Firstly, this doesn't seem that different than the MICR numbers on checks and we already have that, only now it works over greater distances.
Secondly, I would think that you could do this with two types of ink rather than 70 by having the printer mix the inks in varying proportions before blowing it onto the paper. If you have one ink with a very low resonant frequency and another very high, you could create a printing that resonates at any frequency in between by mixing the inks in the appropriate proportion. Also, I would think that the amount of ink on the paper might affect the resonant frequency as well, so you could just print darker to get a lower frequency.
But I'm not a physicist and I could be wrong.
Perpetual Identification (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tattoos (Score:5, Insightful)
Too late.
[billboardsofthepast.com]
It's the original spam.
[hamiltonbond.com]
Everyone is into it.
[infoutdoor.com]
It's so pervasive that
[emc-outofhome.com]
you don't even notice any more.
[graffiti.org]
But some people are predictably taking artistic advantage
[nytimes.com]
and some are merely advancing the art predictably
[classicbillboard.com.my]
Maybe it'd be more obvious
[duke.edu]
if you could sell the old ones on eBay.
Re:Built Into the Bar Code (Score:4, Insightful)
2) You get audited because you were scanned near an anti-war rally.
3) At your job interview, you are asked what movie you saw last week at the theater that was showing an action flick and a politically unpopular movie.
Ever visit a friend who is a druggie?
Ever visit a friend who is gay?
Ever interview for a job while you still had one?
Freedom of movment and freedom of association are very precious. When you can be tracked at all times and constantly live under the threat of being "categorized" by having your movements tracked, you give up a very important fundamental freedom.
Re:Getting through building exits (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Built Into the Bar Code (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably similar to how you'd do it on a website.
The first time that person buys something with a credit or debit card, their name is matched up to every unique RFID on their person. After that, you could identify them any time they visit your store, just like using cookies to track when repeat customers come to your website.
Unlike cookies, there would be nothing to prevent a retailer from tracking the IDs of merchandise from other stores. Every time the same person goes into the store of the retailer that's tracking them with *any* of the ID'd items they've had in there before, the systems there can re-inventory them and add all of the new tags it picks up to the database.
If this hypothetical location was a grocery store or some other frequently-visited place, I could see building up a fairly accurate profile.
e.g. Ben Lincoln is 25, wears wears veggie combat boots [vegetarian-shoes.co.uk], carries an umbrella from Nordstrom [nordstrom.com], buys a lot of soda pop - but nothing with caffeine in it, buys alcohol occassionally, other food shopping habits (etc.), probably has braces since he buys special floss at the drug store upstairs and then brings it into our store, probably is a gamer since we scanned him with Metroid Zero Mission (which he bought during the day and had in his shoulder bag from a defunct local manufacturer) awhile ago, probably is a sci-fi reader since we also scanned him with an Alastair Reynolds book at the same time, et cetera.
Once I've bought anything there, all they have to do is look for any of those IDs and can be pretty sure it's me. There would probably need to be some sort of pruning logic in case I gave my umbrella away or whatever (so that whoever ends up with it doesn't end up triggering additions to my profile if they visit the store), but it's not like the data they collect needs to be 100% accurate anyway.
I don't know if any retailer has plans for a system like this, but I could see it being pretty straightforward to design.
Firewall, shmirewall (Score:1, Insightful)
That is, until someone sticks his documents in a metal-lined folder or briefcase and walks away with them undetected.
Re:this is huge! (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not the problem.... (Score:4, Insightful)
True - there will be ways of detecting these... but consider blending legitimate and illegitimate purposes. You know that you have a RFID in your computer, your watch or the medical-entitlement tattoo that tells the ambulance crew to treat you (hey - that's capitalism), but how do you confirm who accesses this information. It's only a number that the chip emits. Now how do you know that the RFID in your car that you use to allow the police to return it to you when nicked, is not also scanned by the FBI, the taxman and the insurance company for other monitoring purposes?
I can see that different users of RFID might pool resources for monitoring (share recievers and transmitters) just like mobile phone providers share network bandwidth.
My point is that its not the detecting of these numbers (IDs) that matters, but the access to the database that contains that number. Of course, you could just avoid carrying any RFID tags altogether, but unless you can persuade the rest of society to join you, you'll have problems.
Re:user-disableable? (Score:3, Insightful)