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Despite the hype, RFID tags are not a new technology, they have been around for many years, and are used in re-usable tags and transponders (due to the cost) to track pallets, stillages, containers etc around factories, warehouses etc. Due to their cost and size they have never been as widespread as printed barcodes, and despite the hype, are unlikely to ever fully displace barcodes.
From a privacy point of view, a barcode label is much less likely to be read or scanned remotely without a customer being aware of the process than a still active RFID tag on consumer goods.
These EPCs could be used with barcode technology, but they seem to be keen on promoting the potentially more privacy intrusive RFID tags, although the standards bodies which set the rules for barcodes seem to fully support EPCs.
Ultimately, the back-end database systems being proposed for Electronic Product Codes could prove to be far more of a privacy threat to consumers than the RFID tags themselves.
These are not just some academics doing research, they have funding from some of the largest companies. It is only through privacy advocate pressure, that they have had to pay lip service to deactivating or "killing" RFID tags, a concept which was not in their original plans, and which none of the RFID trials so far have demonstrated.
They have not come up with any answers to questions such as:
This technology is in the early stages and consumer privacy pressure could still influence their plans.
People have been worried about the potential health risks of GSM Mobile Phones and Phone Transmitters, which are much more powerful radio energy sources than RFID tag readers.
Are there potential health risks to customers and staff from the hundreds of RFID tag readers in a supermarket full of "intelligent shelves" constantly transmitting, as they read each unique RFID tag in sequence ? Nobody knows, because the trials so far have not yet wired up a whole supermarket with this technology.
The Auto-ID Center and the large supermarkets should be sponsoring and publishing research into possible long term health effects now, not years after the widespread introduction of the technology as happened with the Mobile Phone industry.
Do we really need more electrosmog ?
What are the Shopworkers Trades Unions doing to inform themselves and their members about these potential risks ?
Nobody should be fooled into granting the manufacturers of RFID tags or EPC database technology legal protection from criminal or civil liability for selling products which fail to prevent terrorist attacks or which give false alarms, which some of them are seeking under the dubious so called SAFETY Act (Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act) of 2002 in the USA.
The "personal data" under the DPA also includes simple serial numbers (such as those storred in RFID tags) which can be used as a lookup or cross-reference in another computer (or manual) record or database system.
The Principles of Data Protection need to be complied with, especially those involving the informed consent of the customers.
It will be interesting to see if it is legal for supermarkets etc. to "snoop" on other retailers RFID computer chips or on the RFID computers which have been sold to customers as part of the packaging or even embedded within products themselves.
Many "own brand" goods do not require an RFID tag with an individual serial number in order to be replaced if faulty - consumers could only reasonably have got the item from from an authorised outlet. High value items already have printed or visible serial numbers e.g. motor vehicles, computers etc.
How will the consumer experience of returning a faulty product for a refund or replacement be in any way enhanced by RFID tags which are still active on it ? The shop assistant will still have to handle and inspect the goods for damage etc. so where is the saving in time and effort and therefore cost that a still active RFID tag will produce?
The difficulties with making an RFID tag equivalent to a proof of purchase receipt with price transaction details, or to act as a warranty document, are huge, and open to obvious frauds.
If someone steals an item which is still actively RFID tagged and returns it to shop or retailer for a refund or in part exchange for other goods, then either they will no longer have to produce a separate proof of purchase receipt, or the shop will be tempted to start demanding personal identification documents before they exchange faulty goods.
Such products already have product barcodes and lot traceability numbers. The Auto-ID approach to individual identification of such items via a unique Electronic Product Code will make no appreciable difference to the speed at which possibly contaminated or faulty goods can be recalled or removed from sale.
If mineral water contains traces of benzene, or citrus fruits contain mercury, or headache capsules contain cyanide, or beef products contain prions or any of these are even suspected of being contaminated then all the current stock on the shelves has to be withdrawn. Consumers cannot trust a manufacturer or distributor to say these items may be risky, but these others on the same shelf are ok, even if this is actually true.
Existing lot/batch tracebility systems work perfectly well for recall identification purposes. Where they do not work is due to criminal retailers who re-sell substandard or condemned food or goods, which RFID tags, invisible to the normal consumer, will not prevent.
There is now some hype about research programmes which hope to link biosensor chips with RFID tags These are supposed to react to Chemical or Biological weapons and then let the RFID tags signal an alert, rather than causing a colour change on a label etc.
This plan must inevitably lead to hugely expensive and disruptive false alarms, when, for example, organophosphorus pesticide residues get mistaken for the chemically similar nerve agents (just like during the invasion of Iraq, where state of the art, non-miniaturised equipment operated by trained soldiers gave false alerts, leading to the donning of gasmasks and to as yet unsubstantiated claims about having found Weapons of Mass Destruction). If the RFID tags which are linked to these biosensors are of the "stupid" insecure variety, then a hoaxer or terrorist or extortionist would be able to sit in a van in the car park of a supermarket and trigger false anthrax etc alerts remotely by radio.
Before anybody lets Biosensor RFID tags loose in the food supply chain, it should be established what is the acceptable level of false alert for such systems. If the system only falsly reported the presence of a pathogen once in a million times, then we would have a Bioterror alert every single day of the year, rendering the emergency services useless.
We simply do not believe that such biosensors can be made reliable enough and cheaply enough with cheap RFID tags to be deployed as envisaged.
There is a case for much more CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear) monitoring, which may well make use of cheap biosensor chips, but these should be from permanent monitoring stations run by trained people and inspectors, who can corroborate alerts. Leaving this up to fully automated systems run by the food industry (parts of which is criminally negligent) is literally a recipe for disaster.
It is hardly likely that the ammunition and weapons used by criminals and terrorists will ever get RFID tagged, so the talk about using RFID to fight terrorism or serious crime is just hype.
Some RFID promoters seems to be trying to get their products on the US Government Homeland Security approved list for exemption from civil liability for causing false alarms under the so called SAFETY Act (Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act) of 2002, presumably to get funding to subsidise their research and development budgets, and to get the US Government to purchase lots of their products.
Lessons should be learned from Wi-Fi 802.11b Wireless LAN cards and Access points which are nominally designed for a range of less than 30 metres. These can be used with better commercial or homebrew antenna designs, up to 70 kilometres or more.
Unless RFID tags are deactivated as a matter of routine, they will be snooped upon by the unscrupulous, at ranges far in excess of that of standard reader equipment.
If the tag "killing" /deactivation process is not secure, then they could be re-activated in secret at extended ranges as well.
It may be possible to "kill" a whole supermarket full of RFID tags, from a vehicle in the car park.
Hitachi are now denying reports about embedding their RFID tags in banknotes, etc as an anti-forgery device. Their mu chip has its antenna onboard the silicon chip, and therefore has a very short range (normally measured in millimetres, potentially only centimetres at high RF power)
The technical problems presented in trying to discriminate each individual RFID tag in a stack of banknotes are formidable. How do you stop the RFID antennas from interfering with each other when hundreds of them might be stacked one on top of the other ? Random placement of RFID tags in a banknote would surely cause lots of counterfeit false alerts, they will have to be in a standard position, only separated by the two halves of the thickness of adjacent pieces of banknote paper i.e. much less than the wave length of the radio signals.
How will it be possible to provide enough Radio Frequency energy to remotely power all the passive RFID tags, in a wad of say 50 banknotes, without exceeding the safety/interference power levels laid down for the Radio Frequencies ?
It might just be possible to track a single RFID embedded banknote, but this would be impractical, if several such banknotes together in a wad cannot be tracked.
A banknote is a very physically demanding environment for an RFID tag. Unlike a the RFID tag paper labels, which are normally stuck onto packaging, banknotes are subject to all kinds of wear and tear and have to survive washing machines etc.
Any hard, brittle, sharp edged silicon chip embedded into a banknote will increase the wear and tear and possibly drop out of the banknote after a while, especially if the antenna uses printed conductive ink rather than a metal foil antenna.
Increasing the thickness of the paper or plastic of a banknote to, say, credit card thickness, in order to make them more robust would have a serious knock on effect on Automatic Teller Machines and Vending Machines - you might only get half or a third as many thicker RFID tagged banknotes into the feed cassette, which will then require more frequent re-filling or emptying, increasing the cash handling costs.
In badly designed banknote currencies, notably the old USA $1 and $100 bills, which are physically the same size, petty fraudsters with skill and patience have been known to slice the bills in half edgewise with a razor blade, and then convert $100 plus $1 into two bills one of which has a genuine $100 front and another with a genuine $100 back, and which have the correct "feel" of a banknote, since the other sides are halves of the genuine $1 bill. Embedding an RFID chip and antenna inside the thickness of a banknote will only make such a de-lamination fraud even easier to achieve.
There may be a case for various RFID marker techniques to be incorporated into future banknotes, such as so called "Chipless RFID", but these technologies e.g. CrossID using multiple chemicals (the toxicity and persistance of which in a banknote environment are unknown), or Inkode using a mixture of short metal fibres in conductive ink. However, these have not been shown to be able to produce consistently readable "unique" serial numbers, and so probably do not offer much of an advantage over say "genetic marker" or "Smart Water" techniques against forgery. These technologies may be better suited to say Bearer Bonds or Share Certificates which are more valuable and expensive than banknotes, but suffer from much less physical wear and tear.
The suggested Radio Frequencies used by such "Chipless RFID" i.e. 10GHz to 70 GHz is well into the military satellite communications and millimetre wave radar frequencies, which could present interference and possible health problems with the reader equipment. Passive Millimetre Wave Radar Cameras are can "see under your or your children's clothing" which presents a whole slew of privacy and child porn problems. When such camers become more widespread (at airports and , apparently, on the streets) anybody who shields their RFID tagged money or other items with metal aluminium foil etc. could come under suspicion of carrying concealed weapons etc.
If it were possible to make these chips cheap enough for Auto-ID RFID tags on everything you buy in the shops, then some of our privacy concerns would be assuaged. However, this is simply not the case, and the style of primitive RFID tag shown above in the Tesco trial, without all the built in safeguards could overtake the market, unless consumers and privacy advocates say no.
The current lip service attitude to the implementation of security of the "Kill" command can be demonstrated by comparing the specifications for EPC Class 0 and EPC Class 1 Ultra High Frequency tags The Class 0 tags using a 64bit EPC serial number have a DESTROY password of 24bits, but the newer Class 1 tags (as favoured by the giant Wal-Mart supermarket retailer) with a 96bit serial number will only have an 8 bit KILL password i.e. even less secure. Neither of these is protected by a secure encrypted handshake protocol, and so is vulnerable to Denial of Service attacks and worse.
AutoID Inc, the Uniform Code Council, EPC Global Inc, and all the corporate sponsors of the Auto-ID Center should publically repudiate the use of "stupid" RFID tags like those in the Tesco trial, on consumer goods outside of the warehouse or supply chain.
These bodies which are developing future international standards for RFID tags and their Electronic Product Code, should explicitly forbid the use of RFID tags and readers which are too stupid to be securely disabled permanently or which can be easily spoofed.
NoTags organised a protest at the Tesco Sandhurst store on Monday 15th September from 5.30pm. c.f. Re-scalable map showing the location of the Tesco Extra superstore in Sandhurst. Here is a photo of the event:
MeadWestvaco Radio Frequency ID tags used on DVDs - trial at Tesco, Meadow Park, Sandhurst, UK - July 2003 | |
MeadWestvaco RFID tag embedded in a paper label on DVD case, one pound coin for size reference |
MeadWestvaco RFID tag with top layer of paper removed on standard DVD case |
MeadWestvaco RFID tag with top layer of paper removed |
Closeup of MeadWestvaco RFID tag with top layer of paper removed |
RFID Journal has an article: Tesco Tests Low-Cost RFID System Tesco are trialling MeadWestvaco Intelligent Systems tags for their pilot at their Sandhurst Tesco Extra superstore south west of London. These RFID tags are embedded in paper labels and operate at High Frequency i.e. 13.56 MHz and use an innovative reader antenna sharing scheme which reduces the number of expensive readers required, at the cost of taking longer to poll all the stock on the shelves. This has the effect of making these readers less useful for linking to RFID triggered CCTV surveillance, which has been attempted in the Auto-ID labs, and possibly at the Gillette razor trial in the Cambridge Tesco store (which has now ended, almost certainly not due to any privacy or consumer activist pressure). Since most supermarkets have lots of continuous CCTV Surveillance anyway, the extra "security" that RFID triggered CCTV Surveillance provides must be doubtful. However the combination of RFID Smart shelves and CCTV will be potentially very privacy intrusive if it is aimed at analysing the "browsing" habits of consumers. The DVDs in this trial are already encased in standard Sensormatic (one of the Auto-ID sponsors) tagged anti-theft plastic cases which are removed at the checkout. The DVDs already have standard printed product barcodes. N.B. The MeadWestvaco RFID tag is NOT "killed" or deactivated when the customer pays for the DVDs at the checkout, and can still be read remotely, as was demonstrated by Channel 4 television "Chips with everything" by David Rowan on 27th July 2003. Unless such RFID tags are deactivated permanantly at the checkout, this technology should not be permitted to be inflicted on unsuspecting customers, and should remain where it belongs in the warehouse and supply chain. Tesco deserve criticism for not informing their customers about the privacy implications of these particular RFID tags.
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The previous trial of 13.56MHz High Frequency tags on the plastic trays used to transport food deliveries from Marks & Spencer's suppliers i.e. not on the individual food packaging, and therefore does not present a consumer privacy problem.
It still remains to be seen if Marks & Spencer plans to go down the route of secret experiments on their customers, using RFID tags that are not deactivated at the checkout, like Tescos have done, or if they have learned from the privacy concerns of the public.
Update on the M&S High Wycombe trial
It seems that Marks and Spencer are giving some attention to consumer privacy in the first of their clothing RFID tag trials, initially for 4 weeks (October - November 2003) on
on suits, shirts and ties.
at their High Wycombe store around OctoberNovember 2003.
Computer Weekly also has an article: Marks & Spencer begins the UK's largest in-store trial of RFID tagging technology
M&S; have produced some leaflets explaining something about the RFID tags to their customers, for which one has to hunt around for in the High Wycombe store. This is only a slight improvement over Tesco who try to keep their customers in ignorance.
The paper label RFID tags are removeable i.e. a separate label on the ties and suits, or on the shirt wrapping, rather than the Texas Instruments type RFID tags designed to be embedded in clothing and capable of withstanding laundry processes.
Note the "Please retain this label for refund and exchange" printed on the label
Shadow of the RFID chip and antenna when held close to a lamp.
There are, in fact no RFID readers in evidence in the High Wycombe store men's clothing department, which is relatively small, with probably only a couple of hundred tagged shirts, suits and ties.
Given the public relations silence on the topic so far, it must be assumed that this latest M&S RFID tag trial still does not seem to comply with the Auto-ID Center's idea of a tag that can be "killed" or disabled electronically at the checkout, and that there is no strong authentication handshake which would allow only M&S RFID readers to interrogate them.
Therefore the privacy concerns (similar to those over "third party cookie tracking" profiles compiled from internet web site surfing) still remain.
Apparently there are six Marks & Spencer stores participating in this latest RFID tag trial until December 2004, This press release from March 2004 implies that that the six stores are probably Aylesbury, Camberley, Ealing Broadway, High Wycombe, Kingston and Marble Arch
Comapred with the original trial in 2003 at High Wycombe, the tags seem be restricted to suits and jackets only, with no tags on ties or inside shirt wrappings
These Intelligent Labels seem to be the same sort as before, except that the printing has been simplified. The back of the label is now just plain white, instead of having a glossy white sticker with just the Marks & Spencer copyright information , HQ address, website URL, "ying/yang" arrow symbol and printing reference codes, all of which information now appears at the bottom of the face of the label.
"MARKS & SPENCER" still appears at the top of the label.
The "circuit board" graphic and "INTELLIGENT LABEL TM" has been replaced by the simpler "INTELLIGENT LABEL TM FOR STOCK CONTROL" in the centre of the label. This could be due to confusion with the other labels on some of the menswear which in the High Wycombe trial was labelled as allegedly "intelligent fabric" or the Marble Arch one as "urban wear" fabric, which "breathes" moisture and does not need ironing etc.
The words "Please retain this label for refund and exchange" have now disappeared from the label.
Otherwise, the Marble Arch trial environment seemed to be similar to the High Wycombe one, with absolutely no notices, displays or leaflets informing the Customers that they were taking part in an experimental trial of any sort.
There is no RFID scanning equipment at the payment till counter, and therefore no "killing" of the RFID tag once the individual garment has been purchased. We noticed Staff and Customers blissfully unaware that the newly purchased clothing being wrapped up in a plastic suit bag still had its RFID tag label attached.
Approximately one or two RFID tags per rack seemed to be sticking up, presumably due to Customers' handling of the garments. Several of these tags were bent or folded, which may be significant in causing a few of these paper labels to fail to be read by the scanner. Higher frequency, longer range, more compact tags would probably reduce this potential problem.
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There is a USA based company called Applied Digital Solutions which seems to be intent on selling the creepiest and most threatening versions of RFID tags - ones which are implanted under the human skin.
These VeriChips work on 125KHz which copes better than the High Frequency 13.56MHz or Mobile Phone frequency range (868 - 930 MHz) Ultra High Frequency RFID tags, with absorbtion by the mostly saline liquid human body. Their range is limited, but seems to be sufficient for door scanners. Naturally, although these RFID tags contain a unique serial number, this is not compliant with even the weak EPCglobal standards for privacy, and they are too "stupid" to be "killed" or decativated even temporarily. Obviously removal of the tags requires another surgical operation.
These so called "security" chips are the 21st century version of permanent cattle brands (indeed the original market for Verichips is for prize cattle and pet cats and dogs) or tattoos.
We find the concept completely unethical, bordering on actually evil. What is there to prevent this technology being used by exploiters of slave labour, pimps and brothel keepers, religous cults, abusive or paedophile parents or police states in order to control the movements of their victims and to prevent escape via actual alarm systems or the fear that "we will track you down if you try to escape" ?
They are being sold to the Latin American and Russian markets, aimed initially to exploit the fears of rich parents who fear that their children may be kidnapped, and who are therefore willing to electronically brand them in the vain hope that this will somehow make it easier to trace kidnap victims.
The alternative market to the forced branding of children who are in no position to object is to electronically brand vulnerable adults, e.g. those with Alzheimer's disease, again, a process likely to happen without fully informed consent. The company is also selling the concept of access to online medical records via the VeriChip RFID serial number.
If we have expressed doubts about the security and privacy implications of the EPCglobal back end "internet of things" databases, then these worries are multiplied by orders of magnitude when it comes to VeriChip databases containing details of children or vulnerable adults with, in some cases their online medical records.
The VeriChip distributor in Mexico Solusat, is proudly claiming links with the Mexican Red Cross for access to Medical Records, and the National Foundation of Investigations of Robbed and Missing Children
Why then, is Solusat not using SSL/TLS session encryption on the website through which the VeriChip RFID tag registration details and medical records can be accessed ?
Why is the SQL Server administrator account and password apparently visible to any hacker or corrupt employee, simply by inspecting the HTML source code of this website ?
This would be bad enough if the only thing that they were putting at risk was credit card details, but to put Children's details and Medical Records at risk over the internet or to corrupt employees in this way is criminal negligence.
The latest nonsense from the company is VeriPay, an attempt to try to convince people that electronic payments could be safely authorised using their crude technology which does not employ encrypted authentication handshakes, instead of a normal credit card.
Of course, many fundamentalist Christians see RFID technology, but especially VeriChips as the Mark of the Beast:
"Moreover, it caused everyone, great and small, rich and poor, slave and free, to be branded with
a mark on his right hand or forehead, and no one was allowed to buy or sell unless he bore
this beast's mark, either name or number. (Here is the key; and anyone who has intelligence
may work out the number of the beast. The number represents a man's name, and the numerical
value of its letters is six hundred and sixty-six.)
(Revelations chapter 13: verses 16-18)"
Any reputable companies deploying RFID tags would be well advised to help get these evil RFID human implants banned, or risk getting tarred with the same brush.
The Home Office has spent £5.5 million of taxpayers money on their Chipping of Goods Initiative, on some pilot schemes aimed at combating stolen or counterfeit goods, some of which involve RFID tags. Apparently at least one of the Tesco RFID trials got some public money under this scheme.
It might be worth the media and others asking the Minister and other keynote speakers at the Chipping of Goods Initiative Conference in London on 13th-14th of November 2003 about what they intend to do to allay our Consumer Privacy fears. N.B. this conference has now been cancelled, thereby denying Consumer Privacy campaigners the chance to question the politicians, civil servants and industry leaders.
Shortly thereafter, the RFID Privacy Workshop was held at 9:00am - 5:00pm, Saturday November 15th 2003, Bartos Theater, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (near Boston), USA.
The new standard is supposed to replace the Class 0 and Class 1 chips:
"The proposed specification describes a 96-bit field-programmable RFID tag that can operate in the UHF spectrum (868 to 956 MHz) globally and supports secure communication between reader and tag. The protocol includes a 32-bit kill command that renders the tag inoperable. Allen says systems using the protocol would be able to read 1,700 tags per second in North America and 600 per second in Europe, where there are tighter restrictions on the power output of readers."
Compared to the existing weak 24 bit Class 0 and the trivially weak 8 bit Class 1 "Kill Codes" the proposal to have a 32 bit one must be an improvement, but whether this actually offers any real improvement in security from Denial of Service attacks or actually helps with Privacy is still open to question until the full specification and the alleged "secure communications between reader and tag" are explained.
It will still be possible for developers and retailers to be stupid and to program one master "kill code" into a batch or an entire warehouse full of RFID tagged goods, instead of allocating a separate, random "kill code" to each RFID tag, which would then have to be retrieved securely from a database at the checkout.
EPC Class 1 Generation 2 RFID tag specification available online
For those of you who like us, seem to read, and try to understand lots of highly technical documents, try the Class 1 Generation 2 UHF Air Interface Protocol Standard Version 1.0.9 (.pdf)
"This EPCglobal Board Ratified standard defines the physical and logical requirements for a passive-backscatter, Interrogator-talks-first (ITF), radio-frequency identification (RFID) system operating in the 860 MHz - 960 MHz frequency range. The system comprises Interrogators, also known as Readers, and Tags, also known as Labels."
This is the standard around which all the big electronics companies are producing their new RFID tag products, with promises of better, faster, more simultaneous tag reads per second, greater range etc.
Points of interest to Privacy / Security campaigners:
"These commands use one-time-pad based link cover-coding to obscure the word being transmitted, as follows:
Step 1. The Interrogator issues a Req_RN, to which the Tag responds by backscattering a new RN16. The Interrogator then generates a 16-bit ciphertext string comprising a bit-wise EXOR of the 16-bit word to be transmitted with this new RN16, both MSB first, and issues the command with this ciphertext string as a parameter.
Step 2. The Tag decrypts the received ciphertext string by performing a bit-wise EXOR of the received 16-bit ciphertext string with the original RN16.
An Interrogator shall not use handle for cover-coding purposes.
An Interrogator shall not re-use an RN16 for cover-coding. If an Interrogator reissues a command that contained cover-coded data, then the Interrogator shall reissue the command unchanged. If the Interrogator changes the data, then it shall first issue a Req_RN to obtain a new RN16 and shall use this new RN16 for cover-coding. To reduce security risks, this specification recommends that (1) Tags use unique kill passwords, and (2) memory writes be performed in a secure location."
Obviously, based on past experience, the actual product implementations of this standard, may have other privacy or security issues, in addition to those listed above.
There seems to be considerable R&D; going into thin film polymer battery technology, specifically for use in Active RFID tags. These might not requre to be powered up by the electric field of the radio signal generated by the Reader, but could transmit their data powered by their own battery. Obviously the technology for such Active tags has been around for years, in the bulkier, more expensive, re-usable RFID tag market.
It may also be possible to "trickle charge" such paper thin batterys and tags.
The privacy implications of the successful deployment of such technology are that the range of such RFID tags will be comparable to WiFi i.e. hundreds of metres in the open air, or through considerable thicknesses of building walls and floors etc.
The RFID chips, although physically "like grains of sand" need much larger antennas to grab enough electrical energy to power them up and to transmit their serial ID information. The thin copper foil antennas in use now look likley to be replaced by conductive ink ones, leading to significant cost savings if these can be combined in a price label/barcode printing process.
Given the one way trust nature of the protocols, where the RFID tag betrays vital information to any reader device, promiscuously, there is no reason why terrorists or military opponents could not easily target individuals or groups of individuals with landmines, booby traps etc. based on the RFID tags which are detected on a person e.g. a bomb which only kills rich American or European tourists or singles out military personnel from the local civilian population.
The current plans to include contactless RFID chips in, for example, the new USA Biometric Passports, without any encryption at all, will lead to easier automated target reconaissance for terrorists, who will no doubt program a bomb to wait until several US Citizens are within range before detonating itself automatically.
The UK Government must not put its citizens at risk from this sort of technological short sightedness. Why make a rod for our own backs ?
Savi Technology press release:"TOM RIDGE - FIRST U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY - JOINS SAVI TECHNOLOGY'S BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Brings Extensive Government Leadership Experience to Savi - a Provider of RFID-Based Solutions for Global Supply Chains
SUNNYVALE, Calif. - April 5, 2005 - Savi Technology, Inc., a leading provider of active RFID solutions for supply chain management and security, announced today the appointment of Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and former Governor of Pennsylvania, to the company's Board of Directors."
Obviously having the access that a "friend of President Bush" with a rolodex of contacts in the vast Homeland Security empire must be valuable to an RFID supply chain logistics company, especially with massive contracts like that for the RFID chips and readers for the new US Biometric Passport, which will be awarded by the Department of Homeland Security. at stake.
ZDnet reports:
"Tommy Thompson, the Health and Human Services Secretary in President Bush's first term and a former Governor of Wisconsin
Thompson has joined the board of Applied Digital (N.B. Flash only website), which owns VeriChip, the company that specializes in subcutaneous RFID tags for humans and pets, , is going to get tagged.
To help promote the concepts behind the technology, Thompson himself will get an RFID tag implanted under his skin.
Obviously getting the US medical authorities approval for the invasive, unecessary human minor surgery required for such implants would be beneficial to VeriChip.
Let us know of any more interesting political lobbyists for RFID tags, especially in the UK or at the European Union level.
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