Posted on 01/21/2006 12:24:36 AM PST by goron
Technology tracks goods, now people IDENTIFICATION: Inventory is one thing, but uses that can monitor shoppers, too, stir cries of Big Brother.
12:12 AM PST on Friday, January 20, 2006
By DOUGLAS QUAN and JOHN WELSH / The Press-Enterprise
For years, pet owners have been implanting tiny radio transmitters in their pets in case their animals get lost.
David Bauman / The Press-Enterprise The pet ID microchip was one of the earlier uses of radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology
Now, radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology is being considered for library books, driver licenses and passports -- even implanting in humans. It has sparked Big Brother fears and concerns that identity thieves could abuse the technology.
RFID tags consist of a computer chip with an antenna. A reader scans the tag from a distance and transmits data from the tag to a computer.
The devices are revolutionizing the way everyday tasks are performed. Big-box stores and libraries use them to track inventory and to speed things up at the checkout line. RFID tags can carry more data than bar codes and magnetic strips, and an RFID reader can handle multiple tags at once.
The technology could also save lives. Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton is about to start a pilot project to implant the microchips under the skin of selected patients who have conditions, such as Alzheimer's disease, that may not allow them communicate with doctors and nurses in an emergency.
Related Interactive: Radio-Frequency Identification technology explained
Privacy groups, however, worry that strangers with hand-held readers could skim personal information off the devices, inventory people's store purchases and the library books they borrow, and track people's movements, like blips on a radar screen.
"Skimming, inventorying and tracking, all of them, give strangers a chance to see who you are, what you have and what you are doing, and you do not have much control over it," said Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit consumer-advocacy group.
The technology's advocates said such fears are overblown. Government and businesses have taken steps to keep information private, through encryption and other safeguards, they said.
"I think people have a general visceral reaction that they're being spied upon. But there's a lot less capability to track people's movements and what they're doing through RFID than people automatically assume," said Anita Campbell, editor of The RFID Weblog, a Web site that seeks to educate business executives about the technology.
"If I were a bad guy, I'd probably look into hacking into an online database or pick their pocket and get their credit card," Campbell said.
However, Douglas Thomas, a USC associate professor of communication who specializes in new technologies, said consumers more than ever need to be vigilant about how their information is being used.
"It used to be follow the money. Now it's follow the data," Thomas said.
"There are zero safeguards. We are living de facto in a surveillance society. There's no doubt about it," he said.
It's Everywhere
RFID technology is everywhere.
It's widely used in identification badges. The FasTrak electronic highway-toll collection system in California uses the technology to read data from transponders placed in vehicles.
Last year, Wal-Mart's top 100 suppliers began attaching RFID tags to case and pallet shipments to help the company keep track of inventory from the warehouse to the store. The company said out-of-stock items were replenished three times faster using the new technology. About 200 more suppliers are scheduled to be on board this year.
The U.S. Defense Department uses RFID to monitor the location of ammunition.
At least one Riverside-area grocery store has experimented with using the technology in shopping carts to track where shoppers go in the store and how much time they spend there, said Herb Sorensen, president of Sorensen and Associates, an Oregon-based shopping research company. Sorensen declined to identify the store.
Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula is considering installing RFID tags in some of its gaming chips within six months to a year, said Larry Miranda, the casino's vice president of table-game operations.
Readers embedded in the table could track how much a player is betting and losing or winning, Miranda said. The casino tracks this information to determine whether to offer the players bonuses, such as complimentary dinners or rooms.
David Bauman / The Press-Enterprise A veterinarian injects a data-storing microchip under the skin of a 3-year-old male cat at the Riverside City-County Animal Shelter. If the animal ever becomes lost, the microchip will help locate his owner.
A handful of new or renovated libraries in Rubidoux, Woodcrest, Home Gardens, Temecula and Ontario are planning to attach RFID tags to every book. At library self-checkout stations, one scan by an RFID reader will take in every book in a stack.
The technology also enables a library's staff to sort books more easily. An employee can scan an entire shelf with a reader and determine whether any books are out of place.
"If you can take staff off routine tasks ... that's more of an advantage to the public," said Riverside County Librarian Nancy Johnson.
The University of California system has invested heavily in RFID technology, said Jennifer Ward, a UC spokeswoman.
At UC Riverside, students use cards with RFID tags to access residence halls and parking lots. At UC Merced, students can or soon will be able to use their cards to make purchases at the bookstore and cafeteria, to check out library books and to gain access to facilities.
Library and school officials said personal information is not stored on the cards. Instead, a random number is encoded in each RFID chip. That number links to personal information that is stored in a secure database.
RFID tags can cost a few cents to more than $20 each depending on the radio frequency used, the amount of memory provided and design of the packaging.
Tracking People
Last year, Mexico's attorney general and 160 of his employees allowed chips to be implanted in their arms so they could have a secure way to gain access to certain areas of their building.
Chip manufacturer VeriChip markets wearable and implantable chips that can provide quick information about patients in hospitals. The chips are useful in preventing infant abductions and baby switching, and they can alert a long-term care home when a resident has wandered away.
More than 60 hospitals across the country, including Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, have agreed to adopt the technology in their emergency department, the company said.
Arrowhead's pilot program will begin soon and involve about 50 patients. A chip will be implanted between the elbow and shoulder of each of the patients. The hospital is targeting patients, such as those who have had a stroke or have Alzheimer's disease, who may not be able to convey critical information to doctors when they're taken to the hospital.
"It's almost like a tag in the supermarket," said Dr. Dev Gnanadev, the center's medical director.
About 900 hospitals across North America offer VeriChip's ankle bracelet for babies, the company said. If a baby wearing the device is taken out of a specific area, an alarm is triggered.
The device was credited with thwarting an attempt to abduct a baby last year at a North Carolina hospital.
The technology's human-tracking potential doesn't stop at the hospital door. Now, there's talk about putting it in U.S. passports and driver licenses as a way to combat the counterfeiting of the documents.
By October, the U.S. State Department plans to issue new electronic passports with embedded RFID chips to everyone who applies for a passport, officials say.
Critics are worried because personal information, such as names, nationality and dates of birth, will be stored directly on the RFID chips. They also fear it will enable terrorists to track U.S. citizens abroad.
But Janelle Hironimus, a State Department spokeswoman, said the only way to gain access to the data is to open the passport and scan the information. She said the reader device has to be within about 4 inches of the tag.
Anti-skimming material has been added to the front cover and spine of the passport to reduce the threat of skimming from distances greater than 4 inches.
Still, that has done little to quell fears about embedding identification materials on RFID tags.
"My daughter is 14, and she's going to have a driver's license in two years," said the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Tien. "It will have her name, height, date of birth. Do I want everyone to have that? If all that data is on our driver's licenses, people are going to suck that out."
Tien isn't just concerned about identity theft. He's worried that people will be able to create detailed profiles of consumers based on their retail transactions.
What happens if an ID tag is embedded in a Nordstrom bomber jacket, or a pair of jeans, or medicines, or a home-pregnancy kit?
"You may not care that someone knows you wear Levis size-8 jeans," Tien said. "But, gee, those medications are for HIV or bipolar disorder. Or that bra size is not your wife's, is it?"
Whether it's books about gays or the Bible or Osama bin Laden, it would not be hard for someone to build a list of someone else's reading preferences, Tien said.
"The point is, the things you carry around with you can be very revealing about a person that you may not want the rest of the world to know," Tien said.
The final threat is tracking, Tien said. Imagine a scenario similar to a movie scene with dots moving across a radar screen, Tien said.
"What RFID does is makes you that dot," Tien said.
Suppose shopping malls begin installing RFID readers, at the entrance to the mall, in front of stores, in bathrooms, he said. If there are RFID tags on your clothes or on your ID, it's conceivable your movements through the mall could be traced -- where you shopped and for how long, he said. Who's to say that sort of information isn't being swapped with other businesses, Tien asked.
Senator's Bill
State Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, wants a three-year moratorium on RFID on personal identification cards. He also wants anyone caught using RFID readers to steal someone's personal information to be punished criminally.
Simitian said he was moved to action after the RFID debate exploded about a year ago in a tiny Northern California town. Elementary-school students in Sutter were forced to wear new badges that contained RFID tags as a way to track attendance. Parents protested, and the program was scrapped.
The High-Tech Trust Coalition, an ad hoc consortium of businesses and trade associations, is opposed to the Simitian's bill. It said the proposed law is an overly broad assault on the technology.
The bill moved through the Assembly with bipartisan support but stalled in September. Simitian said he has made some minor changes to the bill and is optimistic that it will pass this year.
The lawmaker is unaware of any cases in California of someone accessing an individual's personal information by skimming it with an RFID reader, said Rei Onishi, a Simitian legislative aide who specializes in technology.
Simitian's legislation is in anticipation of those potential pirates in the age of identity theft. Last year, researchers managed to crack a major fuel company's speed-pass system to illustrate that such information can be stolen, Onishi said.
Simitian's bill does not deal with RFID in the business sector, such as Wal-Mart using it to track its pallets. He said he wants to see how well the privacy protections work before RFID goes on people's licenses.
Simitian, the son of a computer programmer and a past Silicon Valley legislator of the year, also considers himself a privacy-rights advocate.
Suppose you went to an anti-war rally at UC Riverside, Simitian said.
If someone skimmed information, they could create a list, he said.
The same could happen at a gun show at a county fairground, Simitian said. Law enforcement could say there are concerns about unlawful gun sales and then set up their RFID readers.
"All of a sudden, you're on a list, and you don't know it," Simitian said.
Reach Douglas Quan at (951) 368-9479 or dquan@pe.com
Reach John Welsh at (951) 368-9474 or jwelsh@pe.com
This public service announcement will run for about ten pings or until whenever I get bored posting it. :)
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Direct deposit, ATM, online banking, credit card, passport, drivers license, medical records, SSN, IRS, federal employer tracking, parent location (child support), criminal history, library, weapons registration, bridge/road toll, consumer preferences...
Time for me to start a serious garden & get my hunting skills on in 2006.
L
For now.
Making a coast-to-coast phone call used to be tough, too, waaay back before direct-dial.
The computer in your car used to only operate the ignition, too, not tell where you are, or record black box parameters.
If this really gets rolling for tracking people, there is no limit to the abuses which will be conjured up for it, nor the capabilities which will be built in.
Thieves will no longer steal your wallet and car keys, instead they'll just cut off your hand/arm/skin your forehead, whatever...
The sad part is that some people will be clamoring for this to feel "safe".
Pigs will fly through a blizzard in hell before I clamor for an RFID implant.
Of course all this information that is gleaned from us by retailers would never be put into a database and sold to say credit card companies. Also, any information they get would be solely used to benefit the customer and not for engaging in high tech price gouging schemes. WRONG.
Let's see.....Alcohol, razor blade, gauze, adhesive tape, large band aid. No problem, but it might sting a little.
Mark of the Beast Ping!
Muuahahaha
What people don't realize, is that they are already being watched. Cell phones, personal computers, and the like are all monitoring devices. People just don't realize it yet. Company cell phones are being used to monitor employees. I explained this to my boss (Because he likes to do a lot of personal things on state time) and he could not fathom it. He looked at me with such a puzzled look on his face. I explained to him that when he is making phone calls or receiving phone calls on the state issued phone, they know where he is and who is calling him.
Next should come, GPS devices on the state trucks without bosses knowing.
The device obtains energy from the transmitter in order to respond - a transmitter of sufficient power can burn out the tiny circuits in the RFID chip and render it dead.
Interesting... I wonder if it is legal?
That's funny. And don't forget the personal information that can be obtained from google.
bfl
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