Posted on 08/04/2011 6:32:41 AM PDT by marktwain
When the story recently broke that Chiappa Firearms was going to start installing RFID chips in all their guns, I had deep misgivings. When I read the PR broadside from their publicists at MKS, I cringed. Like most shooters, I don’t want anyone to have even the theoretical technical ability to point a Tricorder or an RF scanner at me and know exactly what I’m packing, where it was made, and how much I paid for it.
I didn’t think any gunmaker would be so foolish as to set me up like Will Smith’s character in Enemy Of The State, so I called Chiappa’s president Ron Norton for clarification.
Norton has always been a pretty stand-up guy with us here at TTAG. He didn’t mind when we documented our trigger fatigue with the original Rhino, and he didn’t even get mad when we dissed its replacement for not hitting the primers hard enough. He’s even looking for a 5″ Rhino to send us for fun and games testing and evaluation. (It looks like a Klingon battle axe, so bring it on!)
He called me his afternoon, and he wanted to clear a few things up about the RFID story.
Here’s the skinny:
* Yes, Chiappa will be tagging all their firearms with RFID chips next year. They’re doing this to help them keep track of their inventory, save time and money during the manufacturing process, and comply with onerous Italian and European firearms-transfer reporting regulations.
* Chiappa has a very distributed manufacturing process, with lots of parts (frames, barrels, cylinders, etc.) being shipped to and from several off-site subcontractors during fabrication. Each time a frame goes from one factory to another, Italian law requires more paperwork than the ATFE wants for an FFL transfer here at home.
* If you can inventory a whole crate of guns and components by waving a scanner at it, this speeds up the process by half an hour and lowers manufacturing costs.
* No, the RFID chips won’t be hidden inside the frames. The final implementation is still undecided, but the chips will be labeled and attached for easy removal at or before the point of sale. Norton believes the RFID chips will be embedded in a tamper-evident plastic tag (think: zip-tie) to be snipped off by the retailer or the end purchaser.
If this is how it gets implemented, this works for me. don’t care what McDonalds, Honda, or Chiappa do to keep track of their stuff while they make it and move it around. Once it becomes my stuff, however, it’s my business and nobody else’s.
Every car has a VIN, and it’s a crime in most states to remove it. Difference?
Well, potentially, an unremovable RFID tag could make effective CCW a thing of the past. Also, I’m not sure how hackable they are, but you can think of some of the implications of that.
One of my credit cards has a small #40 hole drilled in it, in the exact location where the chip used to be.
Probably most of the other things I receive with RFID chips in them will suffer a similar “accident”
(Don't know if something has a RFID chip in it? Go to a gas station - Exxon for example - that has some kind of Fast Pass capability. Wave the item around in front of the Fast Pass pad. If the pump puts up a message like, “there is a problem reading your card, please go inside” there is a RFID chip in the item but they don't ‘talk’ the same language. After a suitable ‘accident’ occurs, try it again and make sure you receive no response at all from the pump.)
1. Your car is not Constitutionally protected.
2. Large numbers of the Democrat party have not been working for decades to take away your car.
3. Your VIN cannot be read at a distance. It is a serial number, just like the serial number on a firearm. It is not a chip.
4. You don't carry your car concealed, or worry that thieves might use a scanner to discover where you hid your car in your house.
(1) Requiring a car to have a VIN is more analogous to requiring the part of a firearm which has been allocated the "gunnyness" (in the case of a handgun, the frame) to have a serial number. There are already laws requiring that, so this is not only different, but also excess, in relation to the VIN comparison. More analogous to this requirement would be the requirement to have a license plate, except for the differences stated in (4), and there are those of us who find THAT requirement infringing as well, so even that analogy would fail with some people anyway.
(2) VIN's are for practical purposes, concealable. They're obviously placed in a location where they can be read, but during the vast majority of the time, you could obscure them and no one would complain. I don't believe I've ever even seen a LE officer check it during a traffic stop. They check it when they do smog, and you need to show it to register your car, at least when you move to a new state, but that's about it. With RFID, the chip is often accessible under situations you cannot control, and without your knowledge that it's been accessed.
(3) Owning a car isn't a Constitutional right; owning a gun is. This argument will resonate with many conservatives but I don't particularly care for it. The structure of the Constitution is such that ALL rights are PRESUMED to be ours unless the document says otherwise, and to move the burden from the guys the document was intended to keep in check to us, is a VAST loss of power to us. Not a good plan, and more work for the good guys. Just say no. While not explicitly laid down in the Constitution, the "right to travel" has long been acknowledged and the predominant means of travel today is by car, so the right to own, or at least operate a car, is certainly implied. Nevertheless, the right to be armed is one of the LISTED rights, so it's fair to assume that it was one of the rights the founders found vital and/or one that they thought most likely to be infringed upon. So the right to own and carry guns is obviously well established, moreso than a right to own a vehicle.
(4) EVERYBODY has a car. It's so ubiquitous that the likelihood that some government or criminal actor will single you out for some bad deed is very low. The same doesn't apply to guns.
I'm not in 100% agreement on this one. Read my reason #3.
You make very good points.
The U.S. Ag Dept has been trying to mandatoryly regulate RFID for our live stock but had to put it in remission until the political climate becomes more favorable. It’s callid NAIS (National Animal Identification System). They did get a few states to implement it (Wisconsin for one).
I work for an RFID Tag manufacturer. I guess that makes me one of the bad guys. So thought maybe some facts would help in the discussion.
1) RFID Tags can be divided into “passive” and “active” tags. Active tags have batteries. This is what is used in bridge “Fast Pass” systems for toll taking, etc. Passive tags get their energy from radio signal that is talking to them. (Hint - if you have an adequate RF shield - the tag isn’t going to talk!)
2) RFID tags aren’t terribly secure. Their real function is typically as a programmable serial number. Thus the description where it will be part of the packaging not the weapon makes sense. In this case it isn’t any more sinister than a UPC code printed on the side of the package. Most of these tags CAN be hacked fairly simply. The fact is that to make them cheaply, then can’t have much electronics on them dedicated to security.
There are lots of ways to disable a passive RFID device. The easiest is to block the RF from the chip. You can put aluminum foil over the antenna/chip - or any metal impregnated covering. The drill works! Just cutting one lead of the antenna would likely do it.
RFID as a technology isn’t inherently bad - it has many MANY useful applications in industry and the military just to help in accounting of inventories. The manufacture in question seems to only be applying it in this manner. So - what’s the problem?
“Every car has a VIN, and it’s a crime in most states to remove it. Difference?”
Remove the REID from any firearm, then call the ATF and tell them what you did, their reaction, zilch. Now remove the serial number (VIN) from any firearm, then call the ATF and tell them what you did. That difference will quickly come to have great meaning in your life
“The U.S. Ag Dept has been trying to mandatoryly regulate RFID for our live stock”
If it’s in an ear tag, I don’t mind. Buried under the skin is a different story. We did have one of our dogs “chipped” because in her younger days she was an escape artist and would wonder off and then forget how to get home.
There is another article on this already extant - and I just read the original press release. They were planning on putting the RFID tag in the handle.
There are also some mis-statements about the technology in his article. A strong enough RF field can allow reading of a tag from several meters away - not just 2 or 3 inches. Tags can be MODIFIED at 2 to 3 inch distances. They need more energy to actually write the on-board memories, so require close proximity to the power source. Even that could be done at 1 to 2 meters. Reading them can typically be done at the 10-100m range!
Likely the device can be disabled easily - any metal in the vicinity of the RFID tag will likely suck up enough of the power source to make the tag in-effective! Example - tags laying directly on a metal surface can’t gather enough energy to turn on.
Thank you for taking the time to post. One of the many things that I love about freerepublic is the large numbers of subject matter experts who are willing to take the time to educate those who do not have their expertise.
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