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Thread: RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere: beginning of end?

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    Default RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere: beginning of end?

    I think it's an oldy, but why I wonder there is not much discussion in mass media?

    from: http://www.spychips.com/rfid_overview.html

    "In 5-10 years, whole new ways of doing things will emerge and gradually become commonplace. Expect big changes." [1] - MIT's Auto-ID Center

    Supermarket cards and retail surveillance devices are merely the opening volley of the marketers' war against consumers. If consumers fail to oppose these practices now, our long-term prospects may look like something from a dystopian science fiction novel.

    A new consumer goods tracking system called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is poised to enter all of our lives, with profound implications for consumer privacy. RFID couples radio frequency (RF) identification technology with highly miniaturized computers that enable products to be identified and tracked at any point along the supply chain. [2]
    The system could be applied to almost any physical item, from ballpoint pens to toothpaste, which would carry their own unique information in the form of an embedded chip. [3] The chip sends out an identification signal allowing it to communicate with reader devices and other products embedded with similar chips. [4]

    Analysts envision a time when the system will be used to identify and track every item produced on the planet. [5]


    A number for every item on the planet

    RFID employs a numbering scheme called EPC (for "electronic product code") which can provide a unique ID for any physical object in the world. [6] The EPC is intended to replace the UPC bar code used on products today. [7]

    Unlike the bar code, however, the EPC goes beyond identifying product categories--it actually assigns a unique number to every single item that rolls off a manufacturing line. [8] For example, each pack of cigarettes, individual can of soda, light bulb or package of razor blades produced would be uniquely identifiable through its own EPC number. [9]

    Once assigned, this number is transmitted by a radio frequency ID tag (RFID) in or on the product. The cost of a passive RFID tag is currently between $0.20 and $0.80. -K.A. 9/04] are "somewhere between the size of a grain of sand and a speck of dust." [12] They are to be built directly into food, clothes, drugs, or auto-parts during the manufacturing process. [13]

    Receiver or reader devices are used to pick up the signal transmitted by the RFID tag. Proponents envision a pervasive global network of millions of receivers along the entire supply chain -- in airports, seaports, highways, distribution centers, warehouses, retail stores, and in the home. [14] This would allow for seamless, continuous identification and tracking of physical items as they move from one place to another, [15] enabling companies to determine the whereabouts of all their products at all times.

    The ultimate goal is for RFID to create a "physically linked world" [18] in which every item on the planet is numbered, identified, catalogued, and tracked. And the technology exists to make this a reality.

    The implications of RFID

    Though many RFID proponents appear focused on inventory and supply chain efficiency, others are developing financial and consumer applications that, if adopted, will have chilling effects on consumers' ability to escape the oppressive surveillance of manufacturers, retailers, and marketers. Of course, government and law enforcement will be quick to use the technology to keep tabs on citizens, as well.

    The European Central Bank is quietly working to embed RFID tags in the fibers of Euro banknotes by 2005. The tag would allow money to carry its own history by recording information about where it has been, thus giving governments and law enforcement agencies a means to literally "follow the money" in every transaction. If and when RFID devices are embedded in banknotes, the anonymity that cash affords in consumer transactions will be eliminated.

    Now that shopper cards have whetted their appetite for data, marketers are no longer content to know who buys what, when, where, and how. As incredible as it may seem, they are now planning ways to monitor consumers' use of products within their very homes. RFID tags coupled with indoor receivers installed in shelves, floors, and doorways, [31] could provide a degree of omniscience about consumer behavior that staggers the imagination.

    Marketers aren't the only ones who want to watch what you do in your home. Enter again the health surveillance connection. Some have suggested that pill bottles in medicine cabinets be tagged with RFID devices to allow doctors to remotely monitor patient compliance with prescriptions. [33]

    While developers claim that RFID technology will create "order and balance" in a chaotic world, [34] even the center's executive director, Kevin Ashton, acknowledges there's a "Brave New World" feel to the technology. [35] He admits, for example, that people might balk at the thought of police using RFID to scan the contents of a car's trunk without needing to open it. [36] The Center's co-director, Sanjay E. Sarma, has already begun planning strategies to counter the public backlash he expects the system will encounter.


    the original article can be found on http://www.spychips.com/documents/Al...Denver-Law.pdf

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    Default Re: RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere: beginning of end?

    And the next step is Microchipping people:

    from http://www.antichips.com/:

    The VeriChip Corporation is planning to inject numbered microchips into 200 Alzheimer's patients in the near future. This plan raises serious ethical questions. Is it appropriate to use the most vulnerable members of society for invasive medical research? Should the company be allowed to implant microchips into people whose mental impairments mean they cannot give fully informed consent?

    Microchipping people as if they were dogs or laboratory animals is dehumanizing. It violates their physical integrity and their dignity. And for millions of people around the globe, receiving a numbered mark is also one of the most serious religious violations a person can commit. This is not an act to be taken lightly.

    Injecting an implant into another person's flesh without that person's full consent is violent and as invasive as rape.

    from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19904543/:

    High-tech helper or Big Brother?

    To some, the microchip was a wondrous invention — a high-tech helper that could increase security at nuclear plants and military bases, help authorities identify wandering Alzheimer’s patients, allow consumers to buy their groceries, literally, with the wave of a chipped hand.

    To others, the notion of tagging people was Orwellian, a departure from centuries of history and tradition in which people had the right to go and do as they pleased without being tracked, unless they were harming someone else.

    Chipping, these critics said, might start with Alzheimer’s patients or Army Rangers, but would eventually be suggested for convicts, then parolees, then sex offenders, then illegal aliens — until one day, a majority of Americans, falling into one category or another, would find themselves electronically tagged.

    Microchips are now fixed to car windshields as toll-paying devices, on “contactless” payment cards (Chase’s “Blink,” or MasterCard’s “PayPass”). They’re embedded in Michelin tires, library books, passports and, unbeknownst to many consumers, on a host of individual items at Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

    But CityWatcher.com employees weren’t appliances or pets: They were people, made scannable.

    “It was scary that a government contractor that specialized in putting surveillance cameras on city streets was the first to incorporate this technology in the workplace,” says Liz McIntyre, co-author of “Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID.”

    Darks, the CityWatcher.com executive, said his employees volunteered to be chipped. “You would think that we were going around putting chips in people by force,” he told a reporter, “and that’s not the case at all.”

    Yet, within days of the company’s announcement, civil libertarians and Christian conservatives joined to excoriate the microchip’s implantation in people.

    “Ultimately,” says Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate who specializes in consumer education and RFID technology, “the fear is that the government or your employer might someday say, ’Take a chip or starve.”’

    Some critics saw the implants as the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy that describes an age of evil in which humans are forced to take the “Mark of the Beast” on their bodies, to buy or sell anything. Others saw it as a big step toward the creation of a Big-Brother society.

    'Surveillance society'

    We’re really on the verge of creating a surveillance society in America, where every movement, every action — some would even claim, our very thoughts — will be tracked, monitored, recorded and correlated,” says Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C.

    In design, the tag is simple: A medical-grade glass capsule holds a silicon computer chip, a copper antenna and a “capacitor” that transmits data stored on the chip when prompted by an electromagnetic reader.

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    Default Re: RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere: beginning of end?

    continued on http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19904543/:

    Implantations are quick, relatively simple procedures. After a local anesthetic is administered, a large-gauge, hypodermic needle injects the chip under the skin on the back of the arm, midway between the elbow and the shoulder.

    John Halamka, an emergency physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston got chipped two years ago, “so that if I was ever in an accident, and arrived unconscious or incoherent at an emergency ward, doctors could identify me and access my medical history quickly.” (A chipped person’s medical profile can be continuously updated, since the information is stored on a database accessed via the Internet.)

    continued on http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19904543/page/2/:

    But it’s also clear to Halamka that there are consequences to having an implanted identifier. “My friends have commented to me that I’m ’marked’ for life, that I’ve lost my anonymity. And to be honest, I think they’re right.”

    Indeed, as microchip proponents and detractors readily agree, Americans’ mistrust of microchips and technologies like RFID runs deep. Many wonder:

    Do the current chips have global positioning transceivers that would allow the government to pinpoint a person’s exact location, 24-7? (No; the technology doesn’t yet exist.)

    But could a tech-savvy stalker rig scanners to video cameras and film somebody each time they entered or left the house? (Quite easily, though not cheaply. Currently, readers cost $300 and up.)

    What’s the average lifespan of a microchip? (About 10-15 years.) What if you get tired of it before then — can it be easily, painlessly removed? (Short answer: No.)

    How about thieves? Could they make their own readers, aim them at unsuspecting individuals, and surreptitiously pluck people’s IDs out of their arms? (Yes. There’s even a name for it — “spoofing.”)

    The company that makes implantable microchips for humans, VeriChip Corp., of Delray Beach, Fla., concedes that’s a problem — even as it markets its radio tag and its portal scanner as imperatives for high-security buildings, such as nuclear power plants.

    “To grab information from radio frequency products with a scanning device is not hard to do,” Scott Silverman, the company’s chief executive, says. However, “the chip itself only contains a unique, 16-digit identification number. The relevant information is stored on a database.”

    VeriChip Corp., whose parent company has been selling radio tags for animals for more than a decade, has sold 7,000 microchips worldwide, of which about 2,000 have been implanted in humans.

    Tagging the 'high risk' patient
    The company’s present push: tagging of “high-risk” patients — diabetics and people with heart conditions or Alzheimer’s disease.

    In an emergency, hospital staff could wave a reader over a patient’s arm, get an ID number, and then, via the Internet, enter a company database and pull up the person’s identity and medical history.

    To doctors, a “starter kit” — complete with 10 hypodermic syringes, 10 VeriChips and a reader — costs $1,400. To patients, a microchip implant means a $200, out-of-pocket expense to their physician. Presently, chip implants aren’t covered by insurance companies, Medicare or Medicaid.

    For almost two years, the company has been offering hospitals free scanners, but acceptance has been limited. According to the company, 515 hospitals have pledged to take part in the VeriMed network, yet only 100 have actually been equipped and trained to use the system.

    Some wonder why they should abandon noninvasive tags such as MedicAlert, a low-tech bracelet that warns paramedics if patients have serious allergies or a chronic medical condition.
    “Having these things under your skin instead of in your back pocket — it’s just not clear to me why it’s worth the inconvenience,” says Westhues.

    Silverman responds that an implanted chip is “guaranteed to be with you. It’s not a medical arm bracelet that you can take off if you don’t like the way it looks...”

    In fact, microchips can be removed from the body — but it’s not like removing a splinter.
    The capsules can migrate around the body or bury themselves deep in the arm. When that happens, a sensor X-ray and monitors are needed to locate the chip, and a plastic surgeon must cut away scar tissue that forms around the chip.

    The relative permanence is a big reason why Marc Rotenberg, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is suspicious about the motives of the company, which charges $20 a year for customers to keep one its database a record of blood type, allergies, medications, driver’s license data and living-will directives. For $80 a year, it will keep an individual’s full medical history.

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    Default Re: RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere: beginning of end?

    You better beleive that I'll be getting one when it gets cheaper, and if I have children, they will too. I am not anonymous already - if you ever work anywhere where they have your ssn, you are "in the system".

    I hope this becomes widespread. Abductions will go down. You can have peice of mind that your living will, allergies, etc will be on file with an unbiased party. You can find your kids who are missing/kidnapped/lost and know if something happens to them in the meantime, they'll be treated at a hospital correctly.

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    Default Re: RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere: beginning of end?

    Agreed that the de-facto situation re surveillance cameras in big cities, the DNA databases being constructed etc. have pretty much already crossed the Orwellian 'line'. RFID isn't any more 'intrusive'. Plus, some states are already experimenting with GPS tracking for collection of road taxes and tracking of gov't vehicles too, with some discussions already underway in state legislatures that future new cars for sale in certain states will be required to have GPS tracking.

    Might as well take advantage of the positives that RFID and GPS have to offer, because there doesn't seem to be much chance this technology can be avoided.

    Of course this will be very bad news for illegal immigrants, for civil service employees used to goofing off most of the day, and potentially for strip club customers. It all boils down to WHO will have authorized access to this data, and how easy it is to crack the system.

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    Default Re: RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere: beginning of end?

    ...666
    "Peter, did you take Stewie to a strip-club? He smells like sweat and fear." - Lois and Stewie (Family Guy) ... "Through early morning fog I see, Visions of the things to be, The pains that are withheld for me, I realize and I can see..."

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    Default Re: RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere: beginning of end?

    It's scary that many people would agree to lose their personal freedom for a promise they will be looked after. It's just a PROMISE after all. As soon as your freedom is lost, you are one step away from becoming a slave.
    Agree it's 666.

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    Default Re: RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere: beginning of end?

    Quote Originally Posted by Adelina View Post
    It's scary that many people would agree to lose their personal freedom for a promise they will be looked after. It's just a PROMISE after all. As soon as your freedom is lost, you are one step away from becoming a slave.
    Agree it's 666.
    I can't remember the exact quote, and not sure of from whom - Ben Franklin? "Those who would trade their freedom for a little security deserve neither."

    This kind of activity has finally convinced me average people are going to be forced to "arm themselves to the teeth." Otherwise, you'll have fascists telling you when and how you can visit the doctor. Or banning the smoking of cigarettes on a nation-wide basis. As a lifelong non-smoker, I don't have to care about the second one, but if someone attempts to force me to go to the doctor, I'm probably going to have some psychological problems, induced by being forced to go to the doctor. So I'll be forced to find a lawyer and sue someone or some entity.

    And the hackers might have a field day with this one,

    http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/...hatrfid_1.html

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    Default Re: RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere: beginning of end?

    Oh fuck yea the hackers are going to have a field day.

    What better way to be anonymous than to be someone else?

    California recently passed a law protecting employee's of companies that want required RFID implanting. There is some hope.

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    Default Re: RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere: beginning of end?

    VeriChip Corporation Makes First Sale in Switzerland

    8:30a ET September 26, 2007 (Business Wire)

    "VeriChip Corporation (NASDAQ:CHIP), a provider of RFID systems for healthcare and patient-related needs, announced today that its wholly owned subsidiary, Xmark Corporation, has made its first sale in Switzerland.

    Xmark's ProtecPoint wander prevention system is being installed at Stiftung Schloss Turbenthal, a center for the deaf and elderly in Gehorlosendorf, near Zurich. The system is to be installed by Xmark's dealer Avatech AG. The ProtecPoint system provides cost-effective protection for wander-prone individuals, and is part of Xmark's suite of RFID solutions to locate and protect people in indoor environments.

    "Xmark continues to expand in overseas markets, building on our industry leading position in North America," said Daniel A. Gunther, President and CEO of Xmark. "We look forward to working with Avatech on future opportunities in Switzerland."

    About Xmark

    Based in Ottawa, Ontario, Xmark is a wholly owned subsidiary of VeriChip Corporation. For over 25 years, Xmark Corporation has provided Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) solutions to identify, locate, and protect people and assets in healthcare environments. Its market-leading infant protection, wander prevention, personal duress, and asset tracking applications are trusted by over 5,000 healthcare institutions worldwide to keep individuals safe.

    Xmark products are installed and serviced through an international network of authorized dealers, backed by a dedicated technical services department at Xmark. All aspects of Xmark's business are certified to the ISO 9001 quality standard.

    About VeriChip

    VeriChip Corporation, headquartered in Delray Beach, Florida, develops, markets and sells radio frequency identification, or RFID, systems used to identify, locate and protect people and assets. VeriChip's goal is to become the leading provider of RFID systems for people in the healthcare industry. In addition, VeriChip recently began marketing its VeriMed(TM) Patient Identification System, a passive RFID system for rapidly and accurately identifying people who arrive in an emergency room and are unable to communicate. This system uses the first human-implantable passive RFID microchip, the implantable VeriChip(TM), cleared for medical use in October 2004 by the United States Food and Drug Administration."

    Scary.

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    Default Re: RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere: beginning of end?

    Walmart is getting grief from it's suppliers on these things.

    Nobody else uses them.

    This could be a mountain outta a mole hill when it is all said and done. A few government documents (which have identification numbers on them anyhow) and that's all folks.

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