You Need Not Be Paranoid To Fear RFID 509
An anonymous reader writes "A story at the Boston Globe covers extensive privacy abuses involving RFID." From the article: "Why is this so scary? Because so many of us pay for our purchases with credit or debit cards, which contain our names, addresses, and other sensitive information. Now imagine a store with RFID chips embedded in every product. At checkout time, the digital code in each item is associated with our credit card data. From now on, that particular pair of shoes or carton of cigarettes is associated with you. Even if you throw them away, the RFID chips will survive. Indeed, Albrecht and McIntyre learned that the phone company BellSouth Corp. had applied for a patent on a system for scanning RFID tags in trash, and using the data to study the shopping patterns of individual consumers." I think they may be going a little overboard with their stance, but it's always interesting to talk about.
Re:Just put them in your microwave (Score:5, Insightful)
How do oyu microwave your brand new microwave?
What happens when your steel toe capped boots go in there?
Will the fabric on your GFs dress screw up if you you zap it?
Will the DVD you just bought be playable or writable?
thats just a few thoughts, but microwaving should be safe... YMMV
Patent War Chest (Score:5, Insightful)
1) BellSouth is a huge company that can't figure out what to do about PTSN loses, much less how to deploy RFID scanners.
2) This is just a patent to be added to their war chest. Every large company is likely to be sued, so they need methods to fight back. Patents are often the most cost effective manner, since getting them is cheaper than mounting any defense against of a real lawsuit.
You don't have to be paranoid - but it helps (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally, who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
- what my spending habits are like (empty product boxes along with the other trash)
- what my diet is like
- what my consumption rate is
- what my interests are (above mentioned product boxes, tossed junk mail, etc)
- what my personal timeline is like (how much trash is developed at various times)
- samples of my dna (various personal care item cast offs, hair, finger nails, etc)
- samples of my finger prints
and lord knows what else. Really, all we're really talking about here for the average person is that they can do several of the above without getting really messy and stinky.
We've been over this before (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I would like to have it in some items. Books and DVD's could be quickly added to my delicious library [delicious-monster.com] (currently I scan the barcode), I could manage the inventory in my kitchen much better (which would integrate well with recipe software) and it would be great if I could just put my wine on the racks in my cellar and not have to track it manually.
Take off your tinfoil hat and put on your thinking cap. Let's figure out how to take advantage of a great technology and figure out how to make it safe.
Need a portable tag shredder (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Associated credit cards with products? (Score:3, Insightful)
Barcodes do not identify the individual item.
Barcodes cannot be remotely scanned without the owner noticing.
Barcodes are usually on the packaging material and not on the product.
Re:Shopping patterns (Score:3, Insightful)
Google doesn't connect me with my credit card number and name. It also does this up front, not going around to your house and going through your garbage.
Although it seems simple to me, pay cash, don't give any stores your name, phone number or postcode. If they insist, lie or stop shopping there.
Re:Just put them in your microwave (Score:5, Insightful)
and when the notes have RFID chips in them???
DMCA voilation?? (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, it could be used to steal items from a store, or interfere with the RFID chips that people DON'T want deactivated!!!
It'll be classified as a burglary tool or something worse in short order, if there aren't aspects of such a devise that aren't already illegal.
Re:Just put them in your microwave (Score:3, Insightful)
the point (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Unwanted Advertising? (Score:4, Insightful)
I (and lots of others) have no problems remembering to pick up a liter or two of milk on the way home from work, and this is without having to have some chip installed in my refrigerator, recycling bin, garbage can, whatever...
Re:Generally, who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
With RFID, the process is completely automatized and takes less than half a second. You can integrate a reader in the garbage collection chain (or even in the garbage collection trucks) and get all that information at an industrial scale -- i.e. big-brotherize everyone.
Generally, who cares? Well I do.
Chilling effect (Score:5, Insightful)
His organization has a code of ethics
In other words, the RFID maker claims to have a code of ethics, but doesn't want to be held to that code.
That smells to me like his code of ethics is going straight out of the window the instant it suits him.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Generally, who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not saying anyone would actually do that, but it is certainly feasible from a technological point of view.
It has always been possible to gather personal information about someone, if you have sufficient resources. Secret services all over the world do it routinely. The scary part is that such information could soon be available to anyone (large corporations anyway) for a couple of bucks.
Re:Mistaken Identity! (Score:0, Insightful)
Some things you might want to keep private. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a short list of things that you might not want everyone knowing:
All of these things can be used against you by your employer or insurance company.
You only think you want targeted ads. Imagine your wife getting ads for the wrong brand of tampon at just the right time. That's how invasive and awful your phone company's snooping can be. The grocery store comes close right now. The targeting works as intended and is as annoying as hell because the stupid coupons are always for the wrong brand.
Finally, ask yourself what snooping through your garbage has to do with phone service. Is this why federal, state and local laws protect incumbent phone providers from competition? BellSouth, thank you for a new low.
Let's not forget the government (Score:2, Insightful)
And what about the IRS, and the state governments. I am sure the state of Massachusetts, which never leaves any revenue stream untapped, is intrigued by the possibility of being able to "capture" all those lost sales taxes from people shopping outside the state (neighboring NH has no sales tax and the parking lots in the malls are always filled with cars with Mass plates). Imagine getting a retro-active sales tax bill with an itemized list of everything you bought.
Re:You should be more paranoid (Score:4, Insightful)
And if people become upset about how much information truly is stored, then public outcry may see some changes made. As long as the information collection is effectively invisible, then it will be difficult to get the public excited about this.
Re:Just put them in your microwave (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just another case of Americans' short-sightedness, where the fact that some inconvenience in the short term would lead to significant benefits in the long term (in this case, lowered US currency production expenses, in non-trivial amounts) is completely irrelevant, and stating otherwise supports terrorism | Communism | Socialism | the Liberals | the hippies | $randomUnAmericanGroup.
Re:Ubiquity (Score:1, Insightful)
RFID aside, this already happens. I forgot to take off my belt before going through the metal detector. Somehow that flagged me for them to do the full body pat-down and going through my stuff. They claimed to 'discover' chemicals on my baggage handle. The 'traces' of whatever on my shoes led them to ask me if I was recently on a farm (I had been in a park, though). They took my name and address. Hoo-fucking-ray, I bet they made their quota. Hope they realize they're missing real drug traffickers.
Re:Some things you might want to keep private. (Score:5, Insightful)
In the near future, your neighbor, the blogger, might just decide you need to be put in your place by posting what his Acme RFID-Max SuperScanner can find next time you're away. And the Internet Wayback machine and Google may ensure that it is never difficult to retrieve or forgotten.
The best way to secure sensitive data is to NOT enable its collection in the first place. Unless you actually want a society where everyone is afraid to deviate from the community's blandest common denominator.
Re:Paranoia is egotism (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Generally, who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or they could simply drag your bin onto public property and take their time.
Or they could dump your bin out and take the trash with them.
I know you don't sit in your yard guarding your trash all day.
Re:Calm Down: You're Being Paranoid (Score:5, Insightful)
RFID on EVERYTHING means that anomalies like that become less and less significant. Cross-reference enough data and you can spot patterns without having the faintest idea why they're there. (There's actually a famous psychiatric test based on this principle, though the name escapes me. Basically, it's a bunch of crazyass questions designed to give the shrink a statistical probability that you're suffering from a mental disease. The individual answers themselves are irrelevant; only the statistical whole counts. Thus, the potential for an individual to purposefully alter his answers is in effect built into the final percentages--there's really no way to cheat.)
You've missed the point completely. How often do you send shoes to someone living 3,000 miles away? Do you think Nike or Reebok care about the handful of people who've done such a thing? Marketing people only care about the fat, juicy center of the bell curve. Yeah, there are also those niche markets at the edges, but the instant you change your focus to that niche, then it becomes the center of the bell curve.
On the whole this isn't all terribly evil so long as it's used for relatively non-obnoxious advertisements, but the potential for abuse by insurance agencies, banks, law enforcement, etc. is very, very high. If you're not in the statistical norm for the targeted advertisement, who cares? You ignore the ad. But if you're far out of the statistical norm for "law abiding citizen" and the local PD finds out, you can bet your ass you'll be hounded until the day you die (or move to a saner country.) It won't matter if you're an exception; it won't matter if there's only a 55% chance you're a criminal. They'll do it because it's efficient. It'll be like racial profiling except it will apply to every single minority conceivable, from Yanni fans to gays to diehard otakus to atheists. Your difficultly in the world will be inversely related to your conformity. Stray too far out of the norm and your insurance rates will skyrocket, you credit rating will plunge, and cops will look at you that much harder next time they've got an unsolved crime on their hands.
It's not bizzare; it's not even inherently evil. Living by statistics is just an efficient way of doing things. The problem is that greater efficiency is bought with something far more precious; individuality. For now, I can ignore the ads, but for heaven's sake let's not get complacent.
Re:Generally, who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
- what my spending habits are like
- what my diet is like
- what my consumption rate is
- what my interests are
- what my personal timeline is like
- samples of my dna
- samples of my finger prints
The point is, people don't do these things because it's not worth it. Now it is.
Re:Some things you might want to keep private. (Score:4, Insightful)
There was recently a case in my state where a fellow slipped and fell in a store and ended up needing to sue for medical treatment. It seemed like a pretty clear-cut case, but the store was trying to weasel out of responsibility and decided to pull up his "customer loyalty card" info and tried to use a defense implying that the guy was a drunkard based upon his alcohol purchases -- on the public record in court! Anyway, it didn't save their case and the guy won. And as I recall, he bought a lot for hosted parties and the like, and didn't drink much of it himself but irregardless he should never have been put in a position to defned his purchases let alone even needing to explain himself.
Anyway, it was the first time I actually saw the media show concern about all this personal data collection. And that was just with a store card. I stopped using all my store loyalty cards after that expose. RFID seems more insidious if anyone (think: lawyers) can scan your car, house, or trash trying to establish patterns for whatever reason. The old 'I have nothing to hide' argument doesn't mean we should allow any of this, because it will be abused. No one should have to actively think or worry about how their shopping purchases might look to uninvolved RFID observers after the fact, especially when it can be so easily twisted against you.
hard money (Score:2, Insightful)
Another reason to get back on the gold standard. Not only can't the gov't screw with the value of money by practicing inflation, but RFID can't work either.
Re:We've been over this before (Score:2, Insightful)
You're missing key differences here:
1) Scope of Identification
Bar codes identify a type of product
RFID identifies a unique item.
2) Size and Stealth
Bar codes are fairly large and obvious
RFID chips have already shrunk down to the size of a grain of sand
3) Scanning Requirements
Bar codes must be visible with line-of-sight with the barcode reader
RFID requires only proximity, no line-of-sight with the chip required
From what little I've read, RFID scanners are already sensitive enough to pick up tags from 30 feet away, and the technology is still in its infancy.
I don't have any problem with the use of it by informed choice, but I have no doubts that there will be abuse of the system (as there is with any system). I had to tell the cashier at Target the other day that she missed scanning an item, I have little doubt that disabling RFID tags will be overlooked as well.
And the information is easily correlated. Just driving through the Toll Booth on I-95 with your EZ-Pass RFID toll-paying-gizmo could trivially be linked with picking up the responding tags of all your RFID-enabled property in the car that can get a signal out and associating it with you personally.
The state could make all kinds of money selling off that information to marketers, and considering the cash-strapped condition of many states, I doubt "ethics" would interfere with anything that could increase revenues.
You can make all the crazy projections you want as to abuses, and they still probably will pale with what actually happens in real life.
Just don't walk into your sin-preventing RFID-scanning church door with those smokes, flask and that copy of Big 'uns under your jacket...
- Brian
Re:Just put them in your microwave (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Some things you might want to keep private. (Score:4, Insightful)
So do many insurance companies. Which, of course, was his point.
There's no way to know WHEN you used a condom....
Unless each one were individually tagged. Next morning out goes the garbage with a couple of condoms in it. But never mind that. Purchasing records show Tom Jones picking up a 10-pack of Trojans on the way home from work on Monday. Friday night he purchases another. That alone tells us a hell of a lot about Tom's sex life, even if we don't know exactly when each condom did duty.
You CAN'T penalize someone for seeking treatment for a disease/disorder in the US. The ADA makes it a civil rights violation to do so.
But I can easily imagine drug companies bedding down with insurance firms to subtly pressure their customers into seeking the right brand of treatment. And in the real world it's only a violation if you get caught. Remember, age- and race-discrimination are also civil rights violations. Doesn't change the fact that it happens a hundred thousand times a day in the U.S., and 99.44% of the time it's damn near impossible to prove.
Unless of course you believe your employer/the government is going to follow you home and scan your books while you're out.
Ah, then you've forgotten the flap over Amazon.com's "purchasing circles" back in '99. Do employers care about what their employees read? Damn straight they do. Just ask the Microsoftees who found themselves in deep doo-doo when Microsoft discovered they had been purchasing anti-MS books.
Only a couple of years ago RFID tags couldn't be read from more than a few inches away. Today it's 30 feet. Within a few years it will be possible to inventory your entire house in a couple of seconds from inside a moving vehicle. Insurance companies would love to know what's sitting inside your medicine cabinet or fridge. Legal or not, I expect in the near future drive-by scannings will become part of the standard background check all insurance companies and employers do.
Or forget insurance companies. I imagine even those of us who have nothing to hide are happier living in a country where police can't just come barging in our doors on a whim. There's a reason police need subpoenas for anything that's not in plain sight. But we're now entering a world where police can search our homes from the comfort of their squad cars, where every police-wielded radar gun has a built-in RFID scanner, and "plain sight" just may include anything in the EMF range.
Lee Kaiwen
the real reason for dollar coin failure (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason they don't achieve widespread use is because merchants pull them out of circulation, rather than giving them out as change. Why do they do this? Perceived inconvenience, the idea that employees will mistake their value, etc. The solution? Remove alternatives (as the parent suggested), or offer them at a discount (e.g., 100 dollar coins for $99).
All of this theorizing about customers not liking them is just so much self-serving bilge.
Re:Some things you might want to keep private. (Score:2, Insightful)
However, I can also see the dark side. I've lived in neiborhoods where you're asked to leave if you don't cut your grass a certain way. RFID would be a godsend to the busybodies that live in these places. Just think, they could kick you out for buying generic food. Of course I can choose not to live in such places. I currently avoid them if I know about them in advance. However, I can see other problems.
1. Alcohol. You say good because If you engage in a risky behavior, your insurance premium should be higher. You go on to say that premiums might be lower for those who drink in moderation. What about those places where alcohol is illegal? What if you have children? Have you heard the garbage taught in schools concerning alcohol?
2. Birth Control. You say There's no way to know WHEN you used a condom, so this is impossible. What does it matter if anyone knows you used them? The fact that you have them can cause all sorts of problems. Many religious groups would like to see birth control made illegal. The examples are only silly if you exclude all of the silly people out there. Thinking back to high school, I wonder how many girls carried condoms. I wonder if people would have considered them sluts if everyone knew they were on birth control. It kind of discourages the use of contraceptives.
I'll pass on three. Though I don't want everone knowing what perscriptions are on my body, thieves don't need RFID to find out what is in my garbage.
4. Books You say More ridiculous alarmist thinking... I'm not too worried about my employer knowing what books I read. Actually, I'd be more interested in knowing what books my employer read. However, I can certainly see getting nasty anonymous letters in the mail based on my reading habits. When you expand this to movies and games, I might even end up in jail or having my children taken away. I have violent games in my house. My daughter loves to watch me play Halo. However, she's not allowed in the game room when I'm playing Doom III.
On my way to work this morning, there was a news story on the radio about a couple that had been arrested for watching porn. They confiscated the TV and DVD player. The police had received a complaint about the TV being too loud. Just think, with RFID, the police won't need a complaint to dictate how you live your life in the privacy of your own home.