Source: TUV
Customers have been slow to implement radio frequency identification (RFID) technology even though resellers and others in the IT sector are set to embrace it, new research has revealed. According to a survey by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), 84 per cent of consultants, systems integrators and solutions providers are poised to implement RFID products during the next three years.

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
As The Millennium dome re-opens to the public this weekend, renamed the O2, over £350m has been spent on updating and adding new technology, including privacy invading RFID security passes for all 2,500 staff. There is growing pressure in the UK for parents to microchip their children as a safety measure and some fear this will eventually lead to the mass micro chipping of the population as chips become ever smaller and can be read from greater distances.

Source: San Jose Mercury News
Forgot your company identification badge at home? That wouldn’t be a problem if employees had a small identification device about the size of a grain of rice inserted under their skin instead of a badge. If that seems Orwellian to you, state Sen. Joe Simitian may have a solution. He’s introduced a bill that would bar an employer or anyone else from requiring a person to have one of the devices implanted. [more]

Source: Goldstream Gazette
Should we track our young children by Global Positioning System for their own safety, with microchips locked on the wrist or implanted under the skin? Seventy-five per cent of British parents say they are willing to buy such electronic gadgets, BBC News reported, quoting think-tank research. Well, why not? The technology could protect the children from predators, and find them if they get lost.

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: TUV PS
A proposed identity card in the US which is aimed at tracking the border movements of individuals will not need strong privacy measures, director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology William Jeffrey has claimed. Reported in Washington Technology, the information held on the card - which is to include a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip - will not need encrypting as it can only send a reference number wirelessly.

Source: Catullus 5
Police, prosecutors, and divorce attorneys use records of highway toll transponders in court all the time. Any day now, they’ll start using CharlieCard records the same way. If they haven’t already. I’d like none of that for me, thanks. I’ll keep my CharlieCards anonymous.

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.