Source: Citizensadvocate.net As the AP will report, a series of research articles spanning more than a decade found that mice and rats injected with glass-encapsulated RFID transponders developed malignant, fast-growing, lethal cancers in up to 1% to 10% of cases. The tumors originated in the tissue surrounding the microchips and often grew to completely surround the devices, the researchers said. Albrecht first became aware of the microchip-cancer link when she and her “Spychips” co-author, Liz McIntyre, were contacted by a pet owner whose dog had died from a chip-induced tumor. Albrecht then found medical studies showing a causal link between microchip implants and cancer in other animals. Before she brought the research to the AP’s attention, none of the studies had received widespread public notice. A four-month AP investigation turned up additional documents, several of which had been published before VeriChip’s parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, sought FDA approval to market the implant for humans. The VeriChip received FDA approval in 2004 under the watch of then Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson who later joined the board of the company. Under FDA policy, it would have been VeriChip’s responsibility to bring the adverse studies to the FDA’s attention, but VeriChip CEO Scott Silverman claims the company was unaware of the research. Albrecht expressed skepticism that a company like VeriChip, whose primary business is microchip implants, would be unaware of relevant studies in the published literature. “For Mr. Silverman not to know about this research would be negligent. If he did know about these studies, he certainly had an incentive to keep them quiet,” said Albrecht. “Had the FDA known about the cancer link, they might never have approved his company’s product.” Since gaining FDA approval, VeriChip has aggressively targeted diabetic and dementia patients, and recently announced that it had chipped 90 Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers in Florida. Employees in the Mexican Attorney General’s Office, workers in a U.S. security firm, and club-goers in Europe have also been implanted. Albrecht expressed concern for those who have received a chip implant, urging them to get the devices removed as soon as possible. “These new revelations change everything,” she said. “Why would anyone take the risk of a cancer chip in their arm?”
Source: Ledger Dispatch “To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques,” Sean Darks, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based company, said. He compared chip implants to retina scans or fingerprinting. “There’s a reader outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it opens the door.” Innocuous? Maybe. But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their ability to erode privacy in the digital age. 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. Thirty years ago, the first electronic tags were fixed to the ears of cattle, to permit ranchers to track a herd’s reproductive and eating habits. In the 1990s, millions of chips were implanted in livestock, fish, pets, even racehorses. 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. “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. 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.) 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:
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. 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.
Source: TUV However, those that have introduced the technology state that less than one-fifth of their customers have followed suit. David Sommer, vice president of e-business and software solutions at CompTIA, said the research reflected the current RFID market, which he said had welcomed the wireless system but also faced financing problems and a shortage in the skilled workforce. “Rosy forecasts about rapid and widespread adoption have given way to the reality of dealing with a technology whose broader deployment has been challenged by equipment and tagging costs,” he concluded. A number of uses for RFID have recently been announced, including its implementation in a sushi restaurant and to monitor handwashing in healthcare facilities. TUV Product Service, part of the TÜV SÜD Group of companies with 1bn Euros turnover, in excess of 9,500 employees and 500 locations worldwide, is a leading producer of Compliance and Assurance Solutions for the RFID sector. Please contact us (info@tuvps.co.uk) for further information.
Source: Rinf.com
Source: Goldstream Gazette But there is a gap between talk and action. Few people have bought the GPS or wireless tracking devices that are already on the market. We send a social signal when we reject the distant-oversight hardware. We admit we are scared of the surveillance world. We confess that we can’t see any landmarks, as events push us deeply into that world. [more]
Source: Catullus 5 Fund them only with cash, and don’t “register” my account with the MBTA. And since I don’t need a monthly flat-price pass, I’ve gone ahead and obtained TWO cards, so I can mix it up. Use one for going inbound, for instance, and the other for going outbound. That way no one can even prove that the same person made both legs of the trip. This greatly reduces the quantity of information they can collect. The MBTA system doesn’t know when or where you get off the subway, but by using the same card twice it’s easy enough for them to make an educated guess. If a card pays a fare at station A and another at station B two hours later, it’s a good bet that B is where this person got off the first time. Furthermore, he probably returned to station A, and he probably lives near there. That’s a lot of information. I’d rather mix it up so they only get one data point. They won’t know if A is where I come from or where I go to. There are some ways this scheme could fail. “They” could surveil me at the turnstile, and then associate my face with the system’s record of which card was presented at that same time. They could mine their data looking for repeated instances of some card X being used exactly once, followed by another card Y also being used exactly once. If a pattern appears for two cards X and Y, they can conclude that the same person holds both cards. Or they could simply search or arrest me and discover both cards. But regardless, this is definitely an upgrade over “Hello, my name is Bob Q. Subject, and this is the card with which I’ll create exhaustive records of all my travel from this day forth.” P.S. Anyone who makes the argument about “if you’re doing nothing wrong, what do you have to hide?” deserves to be pimp-slapped. RFID fare cards for the Boston subway, for you out-of-towners
The Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee of the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) had issued a recommendation against the use of RFID chips in identity cards. Needless to say, DHS ignored that recommendation and sprinted along with the project. Right now the Smart Card Alliance is airing their criticism about the DHS RFID usage for cross border identification, claiming that it is making the mistakes that the Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee has been warning them about.
Congress is moving quickly to put into motion measures that will ensure airport employees are subjected to stricter security checks. Everyone from Restaurant employees to airline mechanics could soon be forced to provide biometric finger and iris scans and may even face the possibility of being implanted with a microchip. Currently all airport employees must pass a police and FBI background check, however this may soon be upgraded to include credit checks, routine searches of bags and property and the use of biometric readers with the possibility of microchip implants on the table The measures are still under Congressional discussion. Local News Channel KENS5 broadcast a report on the proposals from San Antonio airport.
Source: Times Online Professor Kevin Warwick, who developed the technology that made it possible for the first child in Britain to volunteer to be “chipped” in 2002 – after the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman – has been bombarded with e-mails over the past few days from parents desperate to keep tabs on their children. As we talk, another e-mail drops into his inbox from a mother of two young children who says that she is deeply anxious about Madeleine’s disappearance and wants to know more about the chip technology. [more]
Source: Stuff (NZ) However, there are fears that RFID tags could be scanned secretly once consumers have taken goods home from shops, raising the possibility the technology could be used to snoop on the contents of people’s handbags, for example. Overseas, RFID champion Wal-Mart has scaled back its goals for the technology. Only 600 of the retailers’ 20,000 suppliers are tagging their shipments to Wal-Mart with RFID chips, four years after it issued an edict announcing that RFID tags would be mandatory. Information Week reports that the consensus among businesses in the US is that the technology will find a place.
Source: ITP “The security research being done today uncovers clues to the types of attacks that are likely to become commonplace tomorrow. And today’s infrequent attacks can easily turn into tomorrow’s epidemic,” states the report. The statement continues that some of the major threats coming our way, as digital offenders look beyond the PC, include mobile spam, spoofed VoIP phishing and the infiltration of RFID technology. McAfee predicts that the growing smartphone market – which is expected to exceed US$250 billion by 2011 – is too lucrative for cyber thieves to ignore. Greater adoption of these devices, coupled with more users accessing personal and financial data on the phones, will lead to increased phishing attacks, spyware and identity theft. Mobile spam also has the potential to explode as spam and Trojan authors develop mobile malware. The report maintains that mobile network operators must adopt risk management measures to stay on top of these developments—not only to prevent costly disruptions but also to enable their environments for new, more secure services. VoIP – the revenues of which will touch US$20 billion in 2009 according to Infonetics Research – is another ripe messaging medium for spam. Spam over Internet Telephony (SPIT) is predicted to increase as VoIP allows spammers not only to place large volume of calls, virtually for free, but also to forge them. Spoofed VoIP phishing attacks will likely be more successful than their e-mail counterparts, because anti-SPIT technology is far behind that of antispam. In addition to these social engineering attacks, the VoIP technology itself is vulnerable to eavesdropping, recording, and hijacking, which means that attackers can capture confidential information, such as account and PIN numbers as well as personal conversations. Another emerging technology that poses a significant risk to privacy, as per McAfee’s research, is radio frequency identifications (RFID). Current RFID technology is vulnerable to eavesdropping, recording, cloning, and forgery. RFID readers could contain vulnerabilities that would allow RFID chips to contain exploits to steal information from backend databases. As RFID becomes more widely adopted by corporations and countries for tracking and identifying people and assets, these elements could become prime ground for new-age intruders, adds McAfee’s report.
Source: SF Gate Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, called his legislation a “look before you leap approach” that would give officials time to ensure that any technology adopted by the DMV would not violate privacy rights. Simitian has introduced several bills over the last few years to control use of RFIDs, saying the information contained in them could be used for improper purposes, including by stalkers and identity thieves. “Do we really want to be in the situation where the state will require more than 20 million Californians to carry government identification documents that broadcast their personal information without their knowledge or consent?” Simitian asked. “Most of the people I talk to tell me absolutely not.” Mike Marando, a spokesman for the DMV, said the department had no plans to use RFID technology. But Simitian said federal law requires states to develop driver’s licenses with some form of “common machine-readable technology.” “That might or might not include this (RFID) technology,” he said. “We’re trying to send the clear message that until we address privacy and security concerns, this is an inappropriate technology. Right now, there’s no limit on what information could be there and no requirements that information be protected, even on the most basic level.” He said the state could meet the federal identification requirements for driver’s licenses by using bar codes or magnetic strips on the licenses. A 31-6 vote sent the bill to the Assembly.
Source: The Register Kate Jopling of Help the Aged told the BBC: “Although when we first hear this it smacks of ‘Big Brother’, we shouldn’t dismiss the possibility of some new technologies to help us in providing better care for people with dementia”. Tagging was introduced by the UK Home Office in 1999 as part of its home detention curfew scheme, which came about in an attempt to help reduce prison overcrowding. Such a surveillance device, which is attached to a person’s ankle, uses radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The tag communicates with a base station that is hooked up to a telephone line. If the person wanders out of range it sets off an alert. But other technology options could also be considered, including GPS tracking. “Let’s use satellites and satellite technology to tackle some real important social issues that worry many families,” said Wicks. Symptoms of dementia, for which there is no cure, can often include memory loss and confusion, making thre sufferer more vulnerable to wandering off. According to the Alzheimer’s Society, there are currently 700,000 sufferers of dementia in the UK of which the majority are elderly people.
Source: Berkeley Daily Planet At the March Board of Library Trustees’ meeting, Lisa Hesselgesser, Service Employees International Union 535 shop steward, presented a list of 24 concerns library workers have about the technology. The system “is not working at all on CDs,” Hesselgesser told the Daily Planet in an interview on Tuesday. “It’s a scandal—the donut tags [used on CD cases] are really expensive.” Checking out books with the RFID system is mixed, she said. “Sometimes the tags fail; sometimes the equipment fails.” With the RFID system, a patron or a library staff member was supposed to be able to place a stack of books on the equipment and check the books out all at once. This would mean that a library worker would not have to pass one book at a time through the system all day long, thus reducing repetitive stress injuries to workers. Because the system does not consistently function properly, Hesselgesser said repetitive stress injuries are up, something of which Library Director Donna Corbeil says she is unaware.
Source: IT Pro In particular he is concerned that that unencrypted data stored on an RFID chip in an e-passport, such as those currently being implemented by the UK Government, can be read by anybody passing near the document holder with the right equipment. “Not only could a passport holder be revealing identifying and personal information to passport control, but they could also be unwittingly revealing their personal data to ’spies’ who had equipped themselves with readers,” says Gilbert in the report. These eavesdroppers, he says, could use the resulting data for fraud of various kinds, for example stealing biometric details and accessing other services that use biometrics like pay-by-touch systems. “With sensitive personal details readable over a distance, it could even become possible, with appropriate antennas and amplification, to construct a bomb that would only detonate in the presence of a particular nationality or even a particular individual,” suggests Gilbert. Clive Longbottom, an analyst with consultancy Quocirca, believes the terror risk is remote. “The possibility of using RFID in passports to set off a bomb is rather an outside chance, as the chip reader would need to be with a few centimetres of the person involved, as there is no active component to the passport,” he told IT PRO. The terrorists, he says, would also need to have hacked the passport database to gain the details of the passport signature, and then would have had to replicate the passport reader technology to fully recognise that signature: “If they can do that, then they probably don’t need to be so clever in placing a bomb - why not just use standard blunt weapon approaches, or a sniper?” Longbottom believes that RFID does, nevertheless, represent a serious security challenge, open to official or unofficial misuse. “RFID can be misused, and doubtless will be by the powers that be,” he says. “We can put in place safeguards for technological approaches. We can also use technology to stop wilful abuse - for example, creating the need for dual biometric security credentials to access certain information means that you have to have at least two people involved in the abuse. I don’t think that RFID is the problem, it’s far more down to how it’s used.”
Source: Computerworld Advocates of curbs on forced chip implantation claim it protects the civil and privacy rights of individuals. On the other hand, some RFID supporters say forced chipping could be useful for a variety of purposes, such as helping prisons to keep track of inmates or parents to monitor the whereabouts of children. It also could be used for medical purposes — for instance, for keeping track of patients who might be suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Such patients would not be capable of giving their consent for the implantation. The legislators of North Dakota aren’t buying those arguments, however. “Technology is a wonderful thing,” said North Dakota state Sen. Dick Dever, one of the co-sponsors of the bill. “It creates all kinds of opportunities. It also brings with it the possibility for abuse. This bill to prevent the implantation of RFID chips in an individual against their will is to protect people from the abuse of that technology. I would hope that the IT industry would support efforts to prevent the misuse of technology.” Not everyone believes such a law is necessary. Some fear it could even hamper legitimate deployment of RFID in business. “I’m still not sure why this is a perceived threat or why it requires additional laws to prevent,” said Douglas Farry, managing director of the government affairs practice at McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP, a Washington-based law firm. He noted that he watched an episode of the fictional television crime drama CSI in which a criminal had secretly injected an RFID chip into his wife to record her comings and goings. The chipping culprit was arrested even without a special “no RFID implant law,” noted Farry. “I don’t remember which CSI it was, but it was definitely not CSI Wisconsin.” Comment: You know the country, and perhaps the world, is in very serious trouble when LAWYERS are starting to use FICTIONAL tv series as references!!
Source: Workplace Law However, employers be warned, there are currently a number of pieces of legislation that make it illegal for employers to monitor staff’s email or calls without informing them. Under the Human Rights Act 1998, the Data Protection Act 1998, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, and the Telecommunications Regulations 2000 employers must inform employees why their email is being checked.
Source: Republic of Internets
Source: International Herald Tribune Notice how the focus is on tracking goods and purchases and fails to mention the tracking of humans and their activities, spending, whereabouts, etc.
Source: AIM Global
Source: CASPIAN The meeting was organized after CASPIAN called attention to one of the company’s more troublesome patent applications. That patent application, titled “Method and System for Facilitating a Shopping Experience,” describes a Minority Report style blueprint for monitoring consumers through RFID-enabled objects, like the American Express Blue Card. According to the patent, RFID readers called “consumer trackers” would be placed in store shelving to pick up “consumer identification signals” emitted by RFID-embedded objects carried by shoppers. These would be used to identify people, track their movements, and observe their behavior. The patent also suggested such people-tracking systems could “be located in a common area of a school, shopping center, bus station or other place of public accommodation.” Allegations of American Express people-tracking blueprints first came to light at a conference sponsored by the Consumer Federation of America in Washington, D.C. last month. There, Dr. Katherine Albrecht, Founder and Director of CASPIAN, revealed the patent pending plans that she and her “Spychips” co-author Liz McIntyre uncovered in their ongoing RFID research. Soon thereafter, American Express arranged for four of its vice presidents, including the vice presidents of Contactless Payments and Public Affairs, to meet with CASPIAN leaders in a phone conference. “We are pleased that American Express responded to our concerns,” said Albrecht. “It’s clear the company is thinking about privacy issues and wants to address them constructively. However, we had hoped that American Express would renounce its people tracking plans altogether and be more sensitive to the fact that placing RFID tags in consumer items, like credit cards, puts consumers at risk for surreptitious tracking by others.” In response to CASPIAN concerns, American Express also promised that it would make a chip-free version of its credit card available to concerned consumers who ask for it. “Offering a chipless credit card is a positive step and should serve as an example to the rest of the industry,” said McIntyre. “Consumers don’t like RFID technology. Contrary to American Express ads, most people would rather leave home without it.” The complete text of the American Express people tracking patent application is posted here.
Source: News.com Australia (via Financial Times) It also looks as though it will become a key component in identity card systems. RFID readers send out a signal that is picked up by the tag’s antenna. The signal provides power for the chip to run processes and send back a response. This can be simple, such as triggering a shop security alarm, alerting staff that an unprocessed chip is leaving the store, or complex, perhaps allowing a gate to open and rewriting a cash value to the chip. As the chip has no power of its own, and the querying signal cannot provide enough power to allow strong encryption, RFID chips are, however, weak in security terms. Various organisations are researching RFID systems for use in passports. The real interest lies in exactly how RFID will be used. Passport chips do not contain masses of personal data – yet. Maybe they never will. They do store data that is used to recognise a biometric signature, such as a retina scan. This means the passport acts in much the same way as another secure token might. The British government’s Iris (Iris Recognition Immigration System) scheme requires a passport holder to enter a booth, have their retina scanned and wave the passport in front of a reader. If both pieces of data match, the holder is deemed legitimate. This also means that anyone walking close to the holder of an RFID passport or access card can skim information from the passport or card. British network security specialist SecureTest has demonstrated this. The range at which it can happen will vary according to the power and capability of the reader being used, but in a crowded or busy space it is easy to do. An unauthorised user could write data to the passport or card they are skimming, making it invalid, or they could clone it and use the data as if they were the legitimate holder. They could even poison the identity of the holder to create chaos. Many readers require close proximity to the RFID tag, but longer range scanning is also possible. The accurate distance at which a passport or card can be read will have a profound effect on how organisations – including government agencies – can use the technology. Well-placed readers would enable tracking of a passport’s movements. The data available would reveal age, gender and ethnicity: a full hand for security agencies. When a government has the ability easily to monitor a person’s movements, privacy becomes important. So anyone with an RFID passport needs to be aware of this and also of the level of security afforded to their personal data. There is a way to manage privacy on an RFID card. Shielding it makes illicit or covert reading impossible. To render an RFID card or passport impervious to attack, simply make a tin foil envelope in which to store it. A reader cannot penetrate the metal, so cannot read any data. Some passports, such as those in the US, have an inbuilt metal-lined cover, but Irish ones appear not to. The idea of wearing a tin foil hat to prevent aliens reading your mind may seem ludicrous, but when it comes to passports it is the best option for peace of mind. In an age of paranoia, it is a sad reflection on how technology, or its use, is forcing people to rethink how they protect themselves against it. Manufacturers, vendors and adopters of RFID solutions seem uninterested in how this technology can be abused, so for now it appears to be up to individuals to take measures to protect their identities.
Source: American Daily In the security business, cloning any identification whatsoever breaches security. It punches a hole in the boat so the very idea of that floated security theory can sink like a rock. It’s my surmise that many of the predictions of the hazards of RFID technology are coming true. One of the worst of those forecasts is how the industry responds to criticism. More appropriately, how it responds to refusal. Since the beginning, I’ve posted forecasts of the industry’s attitude on intrusion, destruction of privacy in mistake, abuse and retaliation, and the campaign to ram the Flea down our throats. Now it’s happening when some wonk wants to prove at a conference the defects in the very concept. It can be cloned, reportedly with only $20 worth of materials. This is part of the information the citizen needs to make their best informed decision, and it’s being silenced. If you thought the Flea was harmless to you because you have nothing to hide, your blind spot is in your (our) freedom of speech being skunked – you know, the kind you depend on to make your best informed decisions. For many millions following the concept with an open mind, most won’t hear about the way to clone your various RFID Chips for the cost of a year of Sports Illustrated. The RFID Industry is responding predictably: discouraging and pressuring the exhibitor to drop the exhibit - censorship - and then promising layer upon layer of hi-tech security on the Flea. Sounds ike they acknowledge the shortcomings, but fail to comprehend that nothing will work, because locks can be picked. What the industry refuses to acknowledge in the whole argument is our right to refuse the Flea, outright refuse it. In a free country, we don’t have to prove anything, furnish data or even have a reason: we’re sovereign, and no should be enough. People want to make money on this, I understand, but not at the expense of our sovereign right to opt-out. The U.S. Patent on human implantation was granted in the early seventies, so they’ve been working onthis for a long time. It’s time to say that assurances are irrational. No matter what the industry does to perfect the Flea in addressing our concerns, they will have positively no way of guaranteeing it nor will they ever make good on damages arising from the very existence of the thing in your body, much less in your wallet and credit cards. Any chip implanted on a person will contain some important data for it’s very existence and mission, and as such, will be desirable to thieves. If they can penetrate the veneer – and all locks can be picked – then all the promises will be irrational and all the solutions ineffective. Many individuals will suffer nightmares of identity theft, mistake, and worse - and the industry will consider you collateral damage. It is not that people will get through and into your stuff if they really want to - it’s that another repository of data now exists within the reach of thieves more than ever before. It’s not the lock, it’s the electronic duplication storage of vital data when before, it was resident somewhere else for the most part beyond the reach of most thieves. Understand that sensitive personal data has not been readable at a distance and through solid objects until the arrival of the RFID Chip. That’s the difference. And it’ll be within reach of millions of thieves. Why don’t the proponents take their own chip? What’s in their wallet? I recommend you log-in to your favorite search engine and plug in search term RFID to receive e-mail alerts on this topic from now on. The Flea may be driven by profit motive, that’s alright, I guess, but we’re actually likely to pay for it in our privacy and sovereign authority. I don’t care what the benefits are - it’s too expensive. The looting of the nation is a funny thing: we don’t pay for looting with money, we pay for it in sovereignty. There is only one way for the RFID Industry to address our concerns the way it should be in a free country: drop the idea.
Source: RFID Journal
Source: Earth Times The AeroScout T3 Tag builds on the company’s innovation and expertise as the creator of both the market’s original Wi-Fi tag, and the current market- leading T2 Tag. The T3 Tag combines the proven benefits of AeroScout’s asset tracking capabilities with a new streamlined, flat shape, low power consumption, and advanced capabilities to meet a wide variety of customer needs.
Source: PC World According to a study from academic and business researchers at the University of Massachusetts, RSA, and Innealta, many of the cards will transmit your name, credit card number, and expiration date (but not the three-digit security code) in the clear to anyone nearby with a scanner. One of the researchers, Kevin Fu of the University of Massachusetts, provided an electronic copy of the report’s just-finished final version to PC World. The draft version is available online. Millions of Cards in Use RFID is widely used to track shipments and store inventory–and now it’s in credit cards, allowing customers to swipe the cards past readers in McDonald’s restaurants, CVS pharmacies, and elsewhere, making for quick and easy transactions. Visa says more than 6 million “contactless” cards exist worldwide, and their number is growing rapidly. In an e-mail, Fu wrote that “in our collection of approximately 20 cards, the vast majority revealed CC name, CC number, and expiration” when the researchers scanned with a commercial RFID reader that they modified to work with the credit cards. According to the FAQ on the study, the sample cards “spanned all three major U.S. payment associations and several major issuing banks.” According to a Visa spokesperson, the company’s contactless card network uses an encrypted security code to verify a transaction. That should protect against certain types of fraud–but again, it doesn’t protect against someone pulling the name and number. However, second-generation Visa Contactless cards no longer send the name, says Brian Tripplett, the company’s senior vice president of emerging product development. The new cards still send their numbers, but those would be difficult to use without the card holder’s name. With the first generation of cards, Visa suggested that banks not issue cards that transmit the name; with new cards, that’s required. Tripplett also says that Visa’s technology has a shorter read range and communicates differently than does the standard RFID used for inventory management, for example. Mastercard didn’t respond in time for this story. Is Your Card RFID-Equipped? How do you tell if your card has one of these chips? Some cards have visible microchips, according to the study’s FAQ, but others don’t. Tripplett says that Visa Contactless cards have a symbol: four vertical wave-like bands on the front or the back. But to know for sure, and to know whether you have a first- or second-generation Visa card, you need to call your bank and ask. You should be able to request a card without the technology, or at least one that doesn’t transmit your name. Also, you can block RFID signals with a “Faraday cage,” which uses a metal mesh or casing. A quick online search turned up some wallets and wallet inserts that incorporate the cages. Other Risk Reductions Even for the first-generation cards that do send the name, some other mitigating factors exist. First, while the researchers used a commercially available RFID reader, they made modifications to it that take “technical skills and know-how,” Fu wrote. Also, the reader must be close: The card specs say only a couple of inches, but Fu says some research papers put the max range at about 6 inches. And most important, phishing, keyloggers, and other kinds of online ID theft are far too successful right now for criminals to put in the effort required for this type of fraud. So the risk probably isn’t significant–for now. Major risk or not, however, there’s no way I’d want my credit card to transmit its information without any encryption. Adding yet another opportunity for ID theft where there doesn’t need to be any, whether the threat is large or small, simply makes no sense. Comment: And once your card details get used by criminals you can spend countless hours trying to explain that it wasn’t you who used it.
Source: Computer Economics Despite these factors, the adoption rate of RFID technology has stalled significantly in the last year. This slow-down is not being publicized by suppliers of RFID equipment and systems, since their success depends on continued promotion of the technology. Some reports of an RFID slow-down, however, are beginning to appear in the business press. For example, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Wal-Mart has only installed RFID in five of its distribution centers, which is well behind its plan two years ago that called for 12 of its distribution centers to be up and running by now. The same article reports that apparel maker VF Corp. has curbed its RFID program, citing an absence of payback for its efforts in the foreseeable future. This Research Byte is an executive summary of our full report, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Adoption Stalls.
Source: Rantings of a New Yorker But as the ranting New Yorker writes; “According to Cnet, implanting people with RFID chips isn’t as lucrative, or popular, as we are led to believe. Ever since VeriChip went public with their idea to implant humans, their stock has been struggling. The chip, to be used for medical purposes, has attracted a mere 222 humans willing to be chipped.” And that “Three years ago, VeriChip began its ad campaign about how wonderful and useful it would be to be chipped. Everyone from civil libertarians to my grandma balked at the idea, claiming that there were severe privacy issues at stake in such an endeavor.” The rant ends with a note on privacy, “Our privacy is slowly disappearing. Some care. Most do not. I suspect that, by the time I am an old lady, rocking in my chair on the front porch each afternoon, that I, and a few like me, will remember a time when privacy mattered. I will witness the erosion of privacy and individual rights as the generations behind me freely give up what the generations before me fought so hard to preserve.” Go read the full article!
Source: The Daily Aztec A common RFID application is the FasTrak electronic toll-payment system used by Caltrans on highways around California. The FasTrak badge is a type of RFID transponder that uses radio signals to send credit card information to the radio terminal at a toll station. While this sort of technology has been in use in California since the early 1990s, the most recent application of this technology has shown promise for the future, as well as some questionable features. Some retailers use RFID to track the whereabouts of products in stores and to have the ability to see if a certain product has been stocked improperly. Many people fear that as RFID technology gets cheaper and easier to use it will be misused at the public’s expense. Groups of privacy advocates fear a sort of Orwellian future with every individual being implanted with an RFID chip to eliminate the need for money and forms of identification, thus making us lose our individuality because they would branded like cattle. Such startling uses have been put into practice already. Several nightclubs in Europe have implanted RFID chips in their VIP members to make it easier for them to gain access to exclusive places. While this application is quite odd, the fear of the government using RFID to track Americans is a greater fear. The government could possibly know the whereabouts of all its citizens at any given time if a nationwide application to RFID was used. On Valentine’s Day, Japanese chip maker Hitachi unveiled a new advancement in RFID technology to further any speculation of the possible misuses. Hitachi showed the world the creation of RFID powder. Hitachi developed what it calls mu-chips or .05 mm by .05 mm RFID chips, which are smaller than a grain of rice. There were immediate speculations of the possibility that a person could be given an RFID chip and not know. It could be inconspicuously slipped into food, clothing or one’s body given its ultra-small size. It even has the possibility of being embedded within a piece of paper and effortlessly track the whereabouts of any person. Debra Bowen, who is running for Secretary of State, said in a 2003 hearing, “How would you like it if, for instance, one day you realized your underwear was reporting on your whereabouts?” There is an inherent fear that America’s consumer society would be amplified even more so with corporations reporting our whereabouts in order to increase the effectiveness of advertising that would entice people to purchase more. Should Best Buy employees really know that you went to Circuit City after you discovered its prices are higher? However, the technology’s possible practical applications could rival any misuse. The U.S. government is already placing RFID chips in passports for electronic identification of citizens and to deter forgeries. If the mu-chips were to be embedded in paper and money, counterfeit documents and money could be a thing of the past. If stolen, a mu-chip unknown to the thief could be used in tracking the document in question once it passes through RFID readers in an unauthorized area. The proof of a legal document could be proven with RFID technology and $100 bills would no longer require the meticulous inspection upon its use. Consumer buying trends, product tracking and data collection could be better than ever with the application of the technology to a greater degree. Privacy in the United States and identification systems must balance each other out in the future with the increasing questioning and development of the RFID technology. Whether the technology can be misused will be debated for a long time; however, forms of RFID will be continuous because it’s like any other technological advancement that will help people in the future.
Source: New Jersey 101.5 FM Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology can be thought of as a next-generation bar code. A simple RFID tag consists of a microchip and antenna, which when stimulated by a remote “reader,” sends back information via radio waves. Like a bar code, an RFID tag identifies the product it is attached to for inventory or purchasing purposes; but an RFID tag can do more. For example, RFID tags can hold information related to the expiration date of a product, record whether a product has been exposed to excessive hear, or could be used to assist with product recalls. An RFID-tagged product can be tracked as it moves in commerce, providing better ways to identify and meet consumer demand for products. “If the device remains on the item,” says Assembly Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman, “it can also track the whereabouts of the individual who purchases it and I believe that’s an invasion of privacy.” Surely such technology is reserved for only hi-tech gizmos and the most expensive wares a store has to offer, right? Wrong? Watson Coleman says, “RFIDs are in your clothing, in your underwear, in your razor blade packages, any item that you purchase.” The purchaser of the item is usually unaware of the presence of the tag and unable to remove it. The tag can be read from a distance without the individual being aware that it is being read and if an item is purchased using a credit card or a loyalty card is used at the time of purchase it would be possible to tie the unique ID of the tagged item to the identity of the consumer. The majority leader is sponsoring a bill would require businesses purveying items with RFID tags to post notices on their premises and labels on the products and would also require the removal or deactivation of the tag at the point of sale. 14 other states have similar legislation pending.
Source: RFID Journal Mark Roberti of the RFID Journal writes that “there’s a danger that stories like this—and we’ve seen many—can have a chilling effect on RFID adoption. Many companies don’t want to change the way they do things, so this becomes a reason not to examine RFID’s potential. That’s obviously bad for the RFID industry, but it’s also bad for the companies that are misinformed.” The question on people’s minds after reading that is most likely a “but is it good for us, the consumers, if RFID adoption is halted and slows down”. Considering the many negative side effects and uses that RFID can bring forth, much of which the RFID industry as a whole would not like to comment on, are evasive about, or are trying to downplay with overwhelming publications of only its positive sides, it is certainly a more prudent question to ask. Mr. Roberti comments that “Wal-Mart’s RFID efforts are not primarily about cost-cutting.” and while that may be true in the case of RFID, given how stocking and logistics are an important aspect of running a dominant ursurper like Wal-Mart’s operation is, it probably won’t sound too credible to many people who are aware of Wal-Mart and its extreme desires for cost-cutting as an overall strategy of the business. And of course that doesn’t only include cost-cutting on employee salaries. The article by Mr. Roberti is definitely worth a read, though. The only question on our minds is; who gains from RFID adoption? The RFID Journal, whos existence is clearly based and dependent upon the success and adoption of RFID technology, perhaps? What reasons would the Wall Street Journal have to, as Mr. Roberti implies, misrepresent the RFID pilot at Wal-Mart? Food (not bought at Wal-Mart) for thought.
Source: Wall Street Journal Gary higlights that “Wal-Mart is pushing the RFID technology on the idea it will increase efficiency and eventually save everyone money — manufacturers as well as Wal-Mart. Yet as Wal-Mart searches for an answer to its rising costs, suppliers are saying RFID isn’t it.“ This isn’t surprising if you consider the fact that RFID tags cost about 15 cents each while the barcodes that they are aimed to replace cost only a fraction of a cent. Needless to say, the customers will eventually be paying for all this increased cost and RFID does not show there is any advantage to the customer, at all. Except, perhaps, higher availability in store shelves of certain products. This of course does not just include the cost of all those tags that Wal-Mart forces its suppliers to use, but also the high cost for those suppliers to invest in the hardware and software required to deal with RFID chips, such as there are; readers, transponders, antennas, computers, analysis software, etc. According to the article and in line with other research that has been done, suppliers are careful to publicly critize Wal-Mart but at the same time say that they aren’t expecting returns on their RFID investments for years. Some openly say that Wal-Mart hasn’t achieved any savings itself by using RFID tags. The article also notes that, A Wal-Mart supplier, who doesn’t want his company identified, laments the lack of any clear savings despite investments of $200,000 and up a year. “It’s a big black box with nothing out there for a return. A lot of people, if given a true choice, would not be in it,” he says of the mandate.
Source: ECP Solutions But according to The Wall Street Journal, in an article by Gary McWilliams, “Wal-Mart’s radio tracked inventory hits static”.
Source: Hitachi
With just a 5 micron thickness, these RFID chips can be embedded into anything from bank notes, paper, or any other object where you would most likely never even notice a tracking chip. Most likely of course, those will be in there with the purpose of being virtually undetectable. This gives a whole new meaning to the writings of author Bruce Sterling when he wrote about bugged money in his novel Distraction (1998). These tiny particle-like RFID chips could easily be used to identify individuals and track there whereabouts. Imagine being a protestor in a group and having RFID powder sprayed or sprinkled on you by law enforcement, security guards, private corporate interests, you name it. At any time after such an encounter you can be tracked and investigated without knowing it, provided high powered RFID readers and scanners are used to perform the tracking. Another use could be to have this powdery RFID tag sprinkled on areas of high security, like certain corridors in a high security facility. Any non-authorized individuals that have come in contact with the RFID powder would very likely have several on their body, their clothes, their shoes, in their hair, and could be determined as having breached security. It will be easy to come up with dozens of nefarious uses of this new technology and we will leave it up to you to imagine them. Certainly, the technology is already here to make those uses a possibility.
Source : CNET News VeriChip, which has created a system for putting RFID chips into humans for medical-record tracking, held an initial public offering on Friday, and the company’s stock has been struggling ever since. The stock is currently trading at around $6.15. The company released 3.1 million shares in the IPO for $6.50 a share. Part of the problem is likely the lackluster sales for the company’s most famous product. Only 222 medical patients in total have opted to get RFID chips from VeriChip implanted as of the end of 2006, according to documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of its initial public offering. It’s a modest number, the company says, and revenue for these systems is far below projections.
Source: Electronic Design “Monitoring children with RFID tags is a very bad idea. It treats children like livestock or shipment pallets, thereby breaching their right to dignity and privacy they have as human beings,” said Cédric Laurant, Policy Counsel with EPIC. Those who fear the “slippery slope” of RFID as the tool of Big Brother are working to ensure that
Source: Computerworld A spokeswoman for the DHS border security program said the agency is now “exploring alternatives,” such as biometric technologies, for tracking foreign visitors as they pass through checkpoints entering and exiting the U.S. The agency tested the technology in an effort to improve its U.S. Visitor and Immigration Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program, created by Congress in Jan., 2004 to track foreign nationals within the United States. The US-VISIT spokeswoman said the agency hoped to use RFID technology to automate and speed up the process of getting an accurate record of who left the country. A testing period from Aug., 2005 to last November found the technology wanting for multiple reasons, DHS officials said. DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff disclosed the failure of the technology on Feb. 9 in testimony to the Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. In his testimony, Chertoff cited a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, released on Jan. 31, that also found the RFID test to be a failure due to performance and reliability problems. The agency tested the technology at five entry points on the borders of Mexico and Canada. RFID tags were added to I-94 immigration documents, which show an immigrant’s country of origin and legal status in the U.S., and were to be read at the selected checkpoints. For the test, the tags were added to the documents of some 200,000 immigrants who entered the country at checkpoints near the five test sites, the spokeswoman said. The RFID tagged documents were to be scanned as the visitor passed through a border crossing, and his or her exit from the country were recorded in a DHS database. The GAO report found that during a one week period at one test site, only 14% of 166 RFID tags that crossed the border were read by scanners. The DHS had set a goal for the test of reading 70% of tagged documents crossing the border. The GAO report also noted that even if RFID tags were read as they crossed the border, the DHS had no way to prove that the person carrying the document was the one to whom it was issued. Rod McDonald, CIO of DHS Customs and Border Protection unit, said the agency had hoped the test would determine that chips stored in vehicles traveling at 40 miles per hour would be read. “Unfortunately, the pilot was unsuccessful at reaching a reasonable read rate and for us to verify the exits,” he said. “We’re still interested in RFID, but just in that specific pilot we have to look for some alternative.” The US-VISIT spokeswoman said the agency is working closely with government and private-sector partners to deploy alternative, more viable, technology for the project. No schedule has been set for selecting the technology, she said.
Source: The American Conservative Information-security expert Lukas Grunwald is not reluctant to share his opinion of the radio frequency identification (RFID) technology that is now a mandatory security feature of American passports. “This whole design is totally brain damaged,” Grunwald told Wired magazine. “From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They’re not increasing security at all.” RFID chips or tags are tiny data storage units, generally the size of a grain of rice, equipped with radio transmitters. The new “e-passports” issued by the U.S. government have a passive RFID chip embedded in the back containing personal information, including a digitized photograph and, in the future, a fingerprint. The chip is activated by passing it in front of a reading mechanism that transmits the appropriate radio signal. Under a U.S. law passed in 2002, the 27 countries participating in the Visa Waiver Program—most of them European—are required to install RFID chips in their passports. U.S. citizens returning from abroad must now present a passport to customs officers, and since Jan. 1, 2007, the U.S. government has issued e-passports to Americans renewing travel documents or obtaining them for the first time. The State Department insists that the new digitized passports are more secure. Experts like Lukas Grunwald strongly beg to differ. During last August’s Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Grunwald, a consultant with DN-Systems Enterprise Solutions in Germany, demonstrated the ease with which the RFID-enhanced e-passports can be hacked and cloned. Along with an associate named Christian Bottger, Grunwald developed a cloning program that can duplicate an e-passport’s digital information in roughly five minutes using an RFID reader he purchased on eBay. The cloned passport chip is completely indistinguishable from the genuine article. Grunwald was neither the first nor the only techie to expose the vulnerabilities of e-passports. In January 2006, the Dutch security firm Riscure conducted a similar experiment for “Nieuwslicht,” a television news program in the Netherlands. Using a personal computer and a commercially available radio receiver, Riscure was able to read the digital information of a prototype Dutch e-passport (which uses the same RFID chip and encryption scheme as the new U.S. passports) from a distance of about 30 centimeters. With that information, Riscure cracked the e-passport’s password in roughly two hours and thus gained full access to the RFID chip’s contents, including a digital picture, fingerprint, and other personal information. “Nearly every country issuing this passport has a few security experts who are yelling out … ‘This is not secure,’” Grunwald points out. “This is not a good idea to use this technology.’” British computer security expert Adam Laurie of Bunker Secure Hosting expresses that view in more colorful terms, comparing the supposedly ultra-secure e-passport system to “installing a solid steel front door to your house and then putting the key under the mat.” Laurie himself has rigged a device that can swipe an e-passport’s information from a distance of slightly less than eight centimeters. That distance is “enough if your target subject is sitting next to you on the London Underground or crushed up against you on the Gatwick Airport monorail, his pocketed passport next to the reader you have hidden in a bag,” writes Steven Boggan of London’s Guardian. A technical study performed in 2005 demonstrated that it’s possible to eavesdrop on an RFID passport from greater distances. Using an electronic “leech,” researchers were able to read personal data from about 50 centimeters and then relay it to a second device called a “ghost” up to 50 meters away. A relay system of this sort in a crowded travel node—an airport, bus station, or subway—would make it possible for information thieves to harvest countless digital profiles from e-passports. What use could be made of a cloned e-passport? Wouldn’t it be easier to simply steal a physical passport, as defenders of the new system maintain? According to Grunwald, the biometric features that supposedly make the RFID-enhanced passport more secure may actually benefit terrorists, smugglers, and others in the market for phony travel documents, in large part because those features make stealing physical passports unnecessary. Although a cloned chip cannot be altered to add new biometric information, such as a new fingerprint, Grunwald contends that there are “established ways of making forged fingerprints” that can fool automated security systems. And electronically stored photographs would pose only minor obstacles to terrorists. As the Guardian’s Steve Boggan points out, “if a terrorist bore a slight resemblance to you—and grew a beard, perhaps—he would have a good chance of getting through a border. Because his chip is cloned, with the necessary digital signatures, and because you have not reported your passport stolen—you still have it!—his machine-readable travel document will get him wherever he wants to go, using your identity.” The potential usefulness of e-passports to terrorists goes well beyond merely making identity theft easier. Some privacy advocates and business groups are concerned that the new U.S. passports will leave Americans more vulnerable to violent crime abroad—from petty theft to kidnapping to murder. The Business Travel Coalition worries that the RFID-equipped passports “will put American business travelers at risk of identity theft and physical harm.” Greeley Koch, president of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, seconds that criticism. “The thought that your travel documents could be broadcasting your nationality to those with an interest in harming U.S. citizens is bad enough,” states Koch. “But it could also be pinpointing likely targets for pickpockets, thieves, and even providing information to steal.” In a paper submitted to the State Department two years ago, information security experts Ari Jules, David Molnar, and David Wagner describe some terrifying potential uses for stolen e-passport data. One possibility is that captured data would “enable the construction of ‘American-sniffing’ bombs, since U.S. e-passports [do] not use encryption to protect confidentiality of data.” Another “unpleasant prospect,” as the authors put it, is the advent of an “‘RFID-enabled bomb,’ an explosive device that is keyed to explode at [a] particular individual’s RFID reading.” In an April 4, 2005 submission to the State Department’s Office of Passport Policy, representatives of six privacy and cyber-security advocacy groups protested that “the proposed RFID passport unjustifiably endangers passport holders’ privacy and creates substantial security and other problems.” They also pointed out that the State Department had no statutory authority to issue the e-passport. The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 mandates that the countries participating in the Visa Waiver Program upgrade their passports with RFID technology, but as the State Department admits, “the United States is not mandated to comply” with that provision. So in addition to making American citizens and their travel documents less secure, the e-passport program is technically illegal. Why did Washington make the program’s creation such an urgent priority? At least part of the answer is corrupt corporatist profiteering. The watchdog group Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) obtained a December 2004 memo from the General Services Administration urging federal agency heads to engage in something akin to what the film industry calls “product placement” advertising on behalf of RFID technology. The GSA, which administers federal procurement policies, instructed agency heads “to consider action that can be taken to advance the [RFID] industry by demonstrating the long-term intent of the agency to adopt RFID technological solutions. … [A]gencies need to determine how to best implement RFID technology on current or proposed contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements.” Since that time, notes CASPIAN, “major RFID initiatives have been publicized by a number of government agencies, including Social Security, NASA, the Postal Service, and the Department of Homeland Security, among others.” “Buying needed equipment is one thing,” observes CASPIAN founder Katherine Albrecht, co-author of the RFID exposé Spychips. “Finding excuses to purchase and promote controversial technology at taxpayer expense is another.” Former Homeland Security Czar Tom Ridge embodies the nexus between the growing RFID industry and the thriving federal Homeland Security apparatus. In April 2005, Ridge joined the board of directors at Savi Technology, a Silicon Valley RFID firm. A few months later, Tommy Thompson, who had been George W. Bush’s first-term Secretary of Health and Human Services, joined the board of Applied Digital, which manufactu |
