Adam Savage Revises Claim of Lawyer-Bullying On RFID Show 301
Nick writes "A few weeks ago a video of a talk given by Adam Savage of the television show MythBusters spread across the internet (including a mention on Slashdot.) On the video, Savage stated that the show was unable to produce an episode about previously known RFID vulnerabilities due to a conference call to Texas Instruments that unexpectedly included several credit card companies' legal counsel. TI (via a spokesperson talking with cnet.com) stated that only one lawyer was on the call and that the majority of the people on the call were product managers from the Smart Card Alliance (SCA) invited by TI to speak. Then Savage (via a Discovery Communications statement) reaffirmed that he was not on the call himself and that the decision was not made by Discovery or their advertising sales department but rather MythBuster's production company, Beyond Productions."
Re:so (Score:5, Informative)
legal counsel = cancer - they show up everywhere (Score:5, Informative)
Its not the first time... (Score:5, Informative)
Like the time they were testing all the various myths involved in beating alcohol tests (Breathalyzer, etc) and were very careful to word their statements to say that no one method managed to beat all the different tests, and never specifying which methods beat which tests. Or the time they tested the fuel efficiency of drafting behind a big rig truck and spent most of the episode hamming up the potential dangers of tailgating.
To be fair though, in those cases it was more about Safety (translate Liability) as they could heavily damage road safety and Law Enforcement's ability to police it. Its like how in most fiction Ive seen, they always misquote the proportions of charcoal, sulfur, and salt peter that go into gunpowder, so the young and/or stupid won't go out and blow off fingers.
OK, we get it (Score:4, Informative)
The decision was made by the Mythbuster staff in much the same way a man with a gun directed at him volunteers.
Anyone see "Wrong Trousers?" Gromit puts down the bat when feathers points the gun.
(Instant karma for using Wallace & Gromit!)
Re:so (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Retraction? heh (Score:4, Informative)
>Discovery didn't make the decision, they just presented the choice to the production company to either not produce the show, or take a long walk off a short pier.
Beyond Productions is an independent Australian company and sells sometimes different versions to the UK and other countries (which also don't have the 'don't try this at home' stuff and where you can say things like 'sperm' on TV), they could very well do it in this case as well.
Different network, same torrent.
Re:so (Score:3, Informative)
You are delirious. Amex makes (that's income to shareholders) about $250 million dollars a *month*:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AXP [yahoo.com]
Mastercard makes about $30 million a month:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MA [yahoo.com]
The ownership of Discovery is sort of opaque:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Communications [wikipedia.org]
But some numbers are available (this holding company does not represent 100% of the Discovery channel and related operations):
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=DISCA [yahoo.com]
(they lost money on about $700 million in revenues)
Beyond Productions is a little more open:
http://www.beyond.com.au/corporate/reports.html [beyond.com.au]
http://www.beyond.com.au/pdf/bil2008_accounts.pdf [beyond.com.au]
The made about $5 million (Australian dollars) last year.
The credit card companies are not going to enter into a protracted legal battle with significant PR consequences chasing after a few tens of millions of dollars.
Re:of course it did (Score:3, Informative)
It's harder to dispute fraudulent charges [kiplinger.com] on a debit card.
Re:Gutless (Score:3, Informative)
>attempt to fly the same path as pentagon plane (Including being in ground effect for 1km before hitting the building),
Gotta say, when you're in ground effect, the problem isn't the flying, but the opposite: you can't get the dumb plane on the ground. It just floats merrily along. But if there's something that sticks up in your way, boy howdy there's no problem running into it (like, say, the runway edge lights.)
RFID credit cards (Score:4, Informative)
Really? You've never seen a MasterCard with PayPass [wikipedia.org]? My bank replaced my old debit card with one over two years ago.
Granted, the only place I've seen that accepted PayPass was at a Sheetz, and it didn't seem to work. But they're definitely out there.
Re:RFID credit cards (Score:2, Informative)
Re:so (Score:4, Informative)
They won't can Adam. Where would they find someone who's simultaneously so devious and so ignorant of scientific fact?
They tried to un-stupid the show a little when they brought in Grant, who actually seems to have passed a science class at some time in his past, but even he seems to have lost the ability to keep them from walking straight into unphysical presumptions.
All that production budget and they can't spend a few minutes a week phoning a real scientist to ask if their ideas to prove/disprove the myths aren't just more myths? They only seem to spend on "explosives experts", but that's their insurance company talking. I guess the insurance company cares if someone gets blown up, but not if someone gets stupider thinking it's being made smarter.
Still. The show is too much fun to stop watching.
Re:so (Score:1, Informative)
What actually happened was Discovery asked them to say "Genetic Legacy" and Jamie refused You can find the quote on this page: http://mythbusters-wiki.discovery.com/page/Jamie+Hyneman+Quotes
Re:so (Score:3, Informative)
I cannot dispute that reference, that's true for active tags. See the reference link, and subsequent quote:
September 26, 2006 - Passive RFID Tagging Update
The Department of Defense remains committed to the implementation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology as outlined in our July 30, 2004 policy memorandum. Since the publication of this initial policy memorandum, ongoing technology developments, updated IT investment strategies, and business process improvements within the DoD have clarified passive RFID requirements within the Department. The DoD July 30, 2004 RFID Policy stated that passive RFID tagging by DoD suppliers would apply to all locations worldwide. The term "all locations" in the July 30, 2004 policy refers to all major receiving locations across the world. The DoD is investing in appropriate passive RFID infrastructure in all locations that are deemed major receiving locations; the majority of those locations are already called out in the current DFARS clause. The DoD requirement will expand to tactical locations as those locations become RFID-enabled. The DoD will not require suppliers to apply passive RFID tags to the unit pack of UID items during the 2007 calendar year. The Department will continue to evaluate the appropriate time frame to begin tagging at the unit pack level for UID items and will promulgate this requirement in advance of future issuances.
In the passive RFID deployments, there's nothing changing in the signature. Essentially, you only need the know the scanner signal and the RFID response. If a scanner signal is captured without any RFID feedback, you have the clean signal (1st pass). Then, with a valid RFID, you have the response you want to mimic. Tiers of this may be applied, still passively, but essentially the logic is the same.
I believe the US government is attempting to keep things secure by using specialized scanners, and probably complex modulations and tiered signals to perform this. Again, I must reiterate: This is security from not knowing the mechanics, not actually from presenting the challenger with a problem they cannot solve within limited time. The scanner tech is fixed once the RFID chips are in flight.
Thus, reverse engineering them has unlimited time- and if I had to guess, will arrive to the world via a former contracted supplier going bankrupt and liquidating assets, or perhaps someone stealing one. Either way, its only a matter of time before the RFID layer is worth nothing more than the falsified signature, or magic paper, etc, of a passport.
Re:so (Score:2, Informative)
Re:so (Score:4, Informative)
That was the ep where they tested boxers Vs briefs if I remember right.
Actually it was cooler than that. They were testing a myth about a woman in the Civil War that supposedly got impregnated by a bullet that hit her and which had previously hit the family jewels of some poor bastard.
They actually set up this rig downrange with (you guessed it) ballistics gel. Halfway downrange they had a bag of "genetic material" (semen) in the line of fire. They had a marksman fire through the bag and into the ballistics gel. Then they tried to find "genetic material" with a microscope.
They busted the myth as I recall.
Re:so (Score:4, Informative)
For the record, I do work for a merchant service provider (aka - a credit card processor). In the many years I have been here, we have never offered a point-of-sale system that supports contactless payment (RFID), and I have never seen a credit card that had an RFID (other than in commercials).
My bank tried to get me to use one some time ago. They claimed it was "more secure" but they also tried to charge me an extra $50/year for the privilege of having it, and I couldn't see any change to the laws that made them responsible for money mysteriously disappearing from my account. As far as I was concerned, if they wanted to run a "more secure" system (without commenting about whether it was actually more secure), they shouldn't have been offering it to consumers as an optional extra.
Re:so (Score:4, Informative)
I think you mean "made them less responsible." I thought consumers are protected from all charges beyond the first $50 in the case of fraud. [ftc.gov] (Scroll to bottom.)
So, $50/year is a total ripoff unless you get defrauded more than once a year. It's basically guaranteeing you lose that $50 bucks annually, even if you never experience any fraud. Nice.
Re:so (Score:3, Informative)
I think you're overstating that. They're talking about a logistics system for simplifying tracking of material, similar to slapping a bar-code sticker on it, that works when you have a whole truckful of stuff to check-in to a location and don't want to unload it first. That doesn't need any more security than the bar-code or even a printed box label would.
For secure applications they will have defined a secured system and if it is RFID then it will be a secured system using RFID as a transport for the properly encrypted data, with a means to defeat risks created by the obvious openness of that transmission. They're the DoD. They do that stuff for a living to keep from dying.
Your credit-card company, however, is just stupid enough to put sensitive data on a chip on a credit card with dumb encryption and allow it to be stolen, replicated, and used by anyone with a walkie-talkie and a speak-n-spell, then call it a "security device". Then jack up your annual fee and reduce your minimum monthly payment to make you pay for it. They do that stuff for a living because you think credit is cash.
Re:so (Score:5, Informative)
Only if you don't understand how the quota system works. Once you fill your quota, you can lease quota from less successful fishing boats. That's why they do the crab count. It's not a mad dash like it was in the first season but it's still a race. Once the quotas are leased to another vessel they're theirs to harvest, but it's not as cut and dried as you think. In fact I believe one of the vessels was doing so poorly this year they ended up leasing their quota out and cutting their season short this last season.
Re:Its not the first time... (Score:3, Informative)
The one that got me was the completely non-representative red light camera tests. They had cooperation for law enforcement but weren't given any details on the equipment they were using so we have NO IDEA if the tests were representative of anything you'd see on the street. I know for a fact that they use many different kind of cameras with wildly varying specs in these red light cameras. I also know for a fact that some red light cameras can be easily blinded by glare, I've seen the photos.
Re:so (Score:4, Informative)
You are incorrect, but probably not in the way you imagined: the passports do use RFID, but not to confer advantages to the owner. If that were the case, then they'd make it optional and charge extra for it! Instead, RFID in passports confers liabilities to the owner and advantages to the government: it allows the government to surreptitiously track the owner more easily.
Re:batshit my butt (Score:5, Informative)
Are you saying there were no bodies, or were you saying there were two?
Allyn E. Kilsheimer, CEO of KCE Structural Engineers (a company involved in providing emergency engineering and post-collapse assistance) said "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts." [popularmechanics.com]
Of course, once you reach the level of batshitness you've achieved, you can simply ignore his testimony by saying "they got to him too!"
And I'm sure you simply don't accept the claim that the remains of 184 people were identified [dcmilitary.com]; surely "they" got to all 102 DNA analysts, sample processors, logistics staff, and administrative personnel at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. It's a DOD facility, after all.
Are you saying there was no debris from the plane? That's simply incorrect; hell, you can even see photos of a bunch of it at this batshit conspiracy site [0catch.com]. And photos of the plane debris inside the building (where, in answer to your question about the lawn, most of it ended up, in agreement with conservation of momentum) can be seen at this somewhat less batshit crazy site [rense.com]. And some more photos here [abovetopsecret.com]. And more photos, with amazingly detailed analysis, here [aerospaceweb.org]
But I'm sure "they" got to the owners of all of those sites.
757. If you can't get that much right after being corrected, I don't see any point in talking to you further.
Like most of the plane, the tail and wings got shredded, and ended up inside the building. As Mete Sozen, a structural engineer who studied the impact in computer simulation, put it, "At that speed, the plane itself is like a sausage skin. It doesn't have much strength and virtually crumbles on impact." [bbc.co.uk]
It's like shooting an aluminum foil origami crane out of an air cannon at high speed, through a stack of steel cheese graters, and then demanding "where's the crane's tail? There must be a trick!"
Into a building? One as hardened as the part of the Pentagon that was hit? Please, name me one similar crash.
Oh, and by the way, regarding your original question about simulating the piloting of the crash, see this [aerospaceweb.org]:
Re:so (Score:3, Informative)
Agreed, in spades. That balance is hard to get right, judging by how other attempts have fared. If you ever had a chance to check out Patent Bending [wikipedia.org] , you can see a perfect example of the same idea gone wrong.
The premise of the show is actually pretty promising: dig up old patents that never went anywhere and attempt to build them for real, to see if the ideas work. Then try to improve on them, if possible.
The problem is that the "grounded guy" is a milquetoast whose building instincts aren't quite there; the "wacky guy" is completely useless, even as comedy relief; and a third "serious guy" who they pull in from time to time knows what he's doing but has no tolerance at all for the crap coming from the other two, thus coming off as curt and/or angry.
It's a Canadian show, though, so maybe some enterprising and more competent American outfit will pick up the concept and run with it.