Posted on 03/24/2008 6:27:41 AM PDT by BGHater
Nox Defense creates chips (and even RFID Dust) for tracking property and people
An employee looking to steal confidential information from his employer sneaks into what should be a secure back room after hours. He pulls charts and files from a top-level financial meeting and slides them into his briefcase before heading back out.
What the insider doesn't know is that his shoes picked up hundreds of tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) chips that had been scattered across the floor. As he passes by an RFID reader near the front door of his office building, security will be alerted that he had accessed a secure area. The evidence is all over the soles of his shoes.
Sound a little like a scene from a James Bond movie? It's not.
Nox Defense, an arm of SimplyRFID Inc., said it has created an invisible perimeter-defense system designed to track things and people in real time -- all without their knowledge. The system that is made up of several technological pieces -- RFID chips the size of grains of sand and an RFID and video camera surveillance system.
"The key to an effective surveillance system is intelligence in the equipment itself," said Carl Brown, president of Nox Defense. "It does no good to install a thousand video cameras if a thousand people have to watch them all day. ... Everybody is doing surveillance nowadays everywhere. They just don't have a setup that tells them what is important video to look at. RFID technology will tell you when something was moved, where it was moved, and then you can check the corresponding video."
Brown explained that the RFID chips, or spy chips, are perfect for what he calls clandestine surveillance. The RFID readers can be hidden in an office building or warehouse, and the RFID tags can be placed on company products or property -- even on employee name tags or ID badges. Thieves, intruders and even personnel see nothing of the tracking system.
If an employee in the warehouse walks off with a plasma TV or loads seven instead of five computers into the delivery truck, it can be tracked with the RFID technology. And since the RFID chips will tell security what time the equipment was moved, the company can check the digital video archives for that time and that section of the warehouse.
The Nox RFID readers and the digital video cameras are all tied into software that tracks the data feeds and allows security to quickly call up, for instance, all the video shot that day of a particular employee or of the video taken of the area where certain products are stored, explained Brown. The software creates data files of the RFID and video data.
"RFID is perfect for that because it's very inexpensive," said Brown. "RFID tags right now are under 20 cents a tag for passive tags. The technology is cheap enough that you can tag lots and lots of items for a fairly low cost. If you tried to watch every person, you couldn't. But with RFID, you can keep an eye on every single item as it moves through the building -- where it went, when it went there and who was moving it. We've got the tag, we know where it is, and there's the video of the person doing it."
The RFID Dust that Nox Defense also sells is actually made up of tiny RFID chips -- each about the size of a grain of sand, according to Brown. They can be scattered on a floor, so when someone walks through a room, entryway or warehouse, the tags will stick to their shoes or pants cuffs. When they walk past an RFID reader, it will be able to tell where they've been.
"We use it for positive ID. I could have a reader at the exit to tell where you've been in my building," said Brown. "Imagine you're working [with the government] in a drug lord's house in Columbia. You sprinkle it on the floor boards. It gets on their shoes. When they come through customs, there could be RFID readers on the floor mats. It would show that you had been in this drug lord's house. With this, you can figure out which place they visited and what RFID dust stuck to their shoes. It creates data points for you to make decisions. "
Brown also said that someone from airport security could drop a tiny RFID tag into someone's bag or attach it to the bag. "I can't carry around something really obvious to mark the bag, but I can drop a tiny tag into the bag and then we'll be able to see where it goes," he added. "If I'm a CIA guy operating in Columbia, and I put a tag in a bag and it ends up in New York, that information might be useful to me."
He noted that the FBI is one of his company's dozen or so customers. The FBI did not return calls to comment on whether or not it is using the technology or how it might be using it.
When asked about privacy issues or someone using the surveillance technology for malicious intent, Brown said that isn't a concern.
"We're all pretty trackable to begin with. Anyone who has a cell phone can be tracked. If you have a cell, you're giving off a signal at all times," he added. "The thing about it is if you're living a clean life, there's nothing this stuff is really going to do to you. If you're not doing anything illegal, this isn't going to catch you. Is RFID going to catch you stealing? Absolutely it will."
"We're all pretty trackable to begin with. Anyone who has a cell phone can be tracked. If you have a cell, you're giving off a signal at all times," he added. "The thing about it is if you're living a clean life, there's nothing this stuff is really going to do to you. If you're not doing anything illegal, this isn't going to catch you. Is RFID going to catch you stealing? Absolutely it will." '
Makes sense.
What a load of crap. Anyone who goes into that room is going to pick the stuff up. I’m guessing that those people go to the bathroom, if you use the same bathroom, then you now have those on your shoes as well because some will fall off, and you will pick some up. No YOU are in trouble. Makes perfect sense to me.
Mr Brown's family must have been named Braun about 150 years ago.
Li’l plastic booties over my shoes, no problem!
Li’l plastic booties over my shoes, no problem!
So if you’re going to steal things from your employer, carry a dustbuster into the ubersecret room where the financial reports are kept in unlocked cabinets?
When asked about fears that the chickens would be eaten, then fox replied that isn't a concern.
Spoken either as a person ignorant of history, or as a person looking to make a quick buck off of a future tyranical government.
People who hold to this philosophy fail to realize that liberty is not a natural state for a country, and must be constantly maintained by vigilance and an understanding of how these encroachments, while innocent on the surface, could be used to squelch that liberty.
Some would call that paranoia. I call it prudence.
Sandy Burgler put the stuff in his socks. Does it check socks (not the cat) too? /snicker
Good point, but then again Drudge has yet another piece this morning about confidential personal info on a stolen laptop.
Who puts this stuff on an unsecured laptop, or any laptop, for that matter.
Prosecution should follow.
Companies would rather reimburse people to use their own cellphones. If they do have corp issued pda's and laptops they rarely invest in the ability to remotely wipe (erase) the devices at any given moment. There is so much proprietary info floating around that we will continue to hear stuff like this until companies get a hold of it.
“Anyone who goes into that room is going to pick the stuff up.”
Yes, and anyone with authorized access will inevitably contaminate other areas, unless they are totally restricted to that room. The only other solutions would be for them to go through a decontamination process on every exit, or to change the chips to those of a different radiofrequency every time the room is unoccupied, as at night. I’m sure the geniuses at Nox Defense sales already thought of this.
The obvious solution is counter-surveillance technology.
RFID detection, to know if you are “dirty”.
RFID neutralization, that will fry its electronics.
RFID impersonation, that clones selected RFID patterns.
This is just the lowest level, because surveillance is very reliant on data accuracy. If there is any way to corrupt any of its data, it can distort and corrupt good data as well.
“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches does not.”
It is actually very easy to do this. As a basic example, when you subscribe to a magazine, select a fake name for the addressee at your residence:
http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/
Be sure to keep a list of all the “fake people” you use, just for your own amusement.
You will start to see a funny phenomenon. Junk mail addressed to the fake person. This is because the magazine sold its subscriber database to a company that in turn sold that name to the junk mailer. And a bunch of other companies.
Any wonder why magazine subscriptions are cheaper?
Importantly, government databases will pick up on the fake names as well, buying the information from the mailing list dealer. The fake person will be added to their databases as a real person who lives at your residence.
And if you do this on a regular basis, using lots of fake names, pretty soon it looks like dozens of unrelated people live with you. Your real name starts to look like a fake to those who keep dossiers.
It really fouls the surveillance systems.
There are all sorts of ways to plug bogus information into surveillance systems. And even without intentionally adding bad information, most people would be amazed at how inaccurate these databases can be. And their data checking is pitifully inadequate.
Some of the most highly used sources for information are from retailers, from grocery store discount chips which not only give your name, address, phone, and associate them with your credit cards, but also shows your buying patterns.
*
Veterinary records have a wealth of data, as do driver’s licenses, posted information on the Internet (some of which can be found by simply “ego surfing” Google), and official records that are open to the public.
People can have an almost unique RFID signature, with different tags in their shoes, socks, pants, belt, shirts, wallet, watch, etc. Very slim odds that people with just two or three RFID tags will match all three. It can be almost like DNA.
Surprisingly, the US mint is not yet putting RFID chips in paper currency, yet, even though it is being done with the Euro. The real reason is probably because RFIDs are usually very simple and easy to fake.
But, as usual, there will be a way around that as well.
BUMP to your idea about fake names.
When I moved to South Carolina four years ago I started with a “clean” address; ie: it had not existed before.
I’ve had a blast playing with fake names. I track them as you suggested. I can see trends, when mailing lists are sold, who they are sold to, inc. It really is fascinating. And, every so often, I actually receive something of value :)
There used to be a Ice Crean Restaurant called Farrells that was famous for selling it’s “birthday” listings (free ice cream on your birthday) which were more valuable than just names as it included birthday/date information.. the names always made it to Selective Service...
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