BiG TeA PaRtY

What’s the Frequency Kenneth?

BY ELIZABETH FIEND 12/7/7

Categories: New technology; RFID; Radio frequency tags; Privacy rights; Big business

When dragonflies head south, they like to ride the tailwinds generated by cold fronts. But when they go north, they prefer to buzz off on warm winds. We know this because scientists attached radio transmitters to the insects along with a single-wire antenna, powered by a tiny battery, running down the length of their abdomen.

Video may have killed the radio star in 1979, but radio is back, big time. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags and chips are here. RFID is an identification system that allows information to be stored and then retrieved via radio waves. The tags can be attached or incorporated into a ‘thing’ or a living creature. Complex tags, like the ones used on the dragonflies, contain silicon chips and antennas which require an internal power source. But the simplest tags don’t require a power source at all.

Do you use E-ZPass and just cruise on through the tool booth? Electronic tool booth collection uses RFID technology to speed things along on the road. Got one of those new-fangled credit cards that you just wave in front of a contact-less reader at the store? It has a RFID chip in it. Already cell phone makers are building RFID chips into the phone turning the phone itself into a payment device, which could ultimately replace debit and credit cards.

No soap, radio.

RFID tags are poised to take off in a major way. Wal-Mart and the United States Department of Defense are at the forefront of developing the way this technology is to be used. Doesn’t this make you and your information feel secure?

Both Wal-Mart and the DOD have mandated that their top suppliers incorporate RFID tags in to their products. In its own special Wal-Mart-way, the retial megalith is shoving this technology down the throats of their 100 top suppliers. They’re literally strong-arming other giant companies (which is cool in a twisted sort of way) like Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and Hewlett-Packard to either adopt the technology or Wal-Mart will drop them as supplier. Fake-hip retailer Target is also on the RFID bandwagon.

RFID tags will be used to track down the last Tickle Me Elmo doll in the store and to catch the shoplifter aiming to liberate it. Libraries are using the tags to locate books that are out of order or upside down on the shelf. In the global health arena, tags could be used to track birds and the spread of the Avian Flu. You may not have realized you’ve already been tracked at the ski resort and at sports and entertainment venues. In Barcelona, the ultra clubbing experience at the Baja Beach Club is to allow the staff nurse to embed a RFID micro chip into your upper arm. Welcome to the Baja VIP Club – wave good bye to IDs and the tacky use of money and while you’re at it, wave your upper arm at the reader: You’re in.

If you love gadgets you can buy the Loc8tor. Proced starting at $99, it’s a combo of radio frequency-emitting tags and a cell phone-sized reader to monitors the tags. Attach the tags to your keys, your briefcase or the cat. Hey, it also has an add-on a ‘panic’ button tag your kid can press to alert you that he’s being abducted by a sexual predator. With its catchy slogan — “Don’t lose it, locate it!” — how can you resist? Currently, the systems’ max range is 600 feet. That will change.

The benefits of RFID on the business end will be vast. RFID tags will be attached to individual items and to loading dock pallets, store and warehouse shelves. Imagine how easy this will make inventory, or to unload a truck at the warehouse. It’s going to totally drive down the cost of merchandise assessment. Of course, those savings will be passed on to the consumer. Not!

Part and parcel of RFID use in consumer products will be the new electronic product code (EPC) a new industry standard developed by EPCglobal born out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The EPC will become the “smart” bar code of the future. Old-school bar codes only identify what’s in the package, but the new electronic product code will tell not only what’s in the package but also be used to determine the exact location of that specific item.

What’s the frequency Kenneth?

Is this all just a benign extension of the bar code or a sinister surveillance device? RFID tags on the on the outside shrink-wrap of a product? No problemo. But what about when that tag is embedded inside the hem of your jeans, or in your sneakers, your car tires? It could be broadcasting messages about you…. to Them. Pair up RFID tags with satellite GPS (Global Positioning Systems), it’s some powerful stuff.

All privacy-invading inventions start out small. Right now the broadcast range of the tags is limited to about 3,000 feet, but stronger signals and richer data streams will eventually turn these Lilliputian tags into powerful tools for tracking consumers’ purchases, a person’s whereabouts, even where an item is located inside your home. There’s a refrigerator in the pipe-stream that will use RFID tags to notify you when your milk has expired!

Will Big Brother Spy on us? Of course, who’re we kidding? The implementation of RFID tags sets up the possibility of staggering privacy violations not only by businesses, but also the Feds The United States Postal Service has expressed interest in putting a RFID tag on every stamp. RFID chips will definitely be used in identity documents like passports. But how comfortable will you feel when they’re embedded in your drivers license, which you must carry, by law, in order to drive?

And what about crooks? The information on RFID tags is encrypted, but the company, DIFRWear, isn’t taking any chances — it’s already begun manufacturing a special wallet that blocks radio waves, to prevent theft of the data you carry around in your pocket.

ID chips or spy chips?

At first these tags are not going to “collect” consumer information. But in the near future, when you purchase something with a RFID credit card and a RFID customer loyalty card, someone will be able to collect an awful lot of info about you.

A middle class African American woman who lives in the suburbs and votes Democratic one day purchases the magazine Golf at the check out stand. Next thing you know Republican campaigners are at her door trying to convince you to vote Red. Wait, that already happened during this past election without the use of RFID tracking. Imagine the type of files, data and marketing information that will be construed about you when much, much more of your life is tracked and monitored?

Hell, at some point we’ll probably be implanting them in our pets. Oh, wait, have we already done that? Well, our kids for sure. If not, install the technology in our schools to log students as they enter and exit school. Mom and Dad feel left out? Why not put the spy chip into your staff-ID tag? Already on the market is iHygiene an “intelligent hygiene management system.” It uses RFID technology to monitor employee compliance with company hand washing policy. Is this the end of E. coli or the beginning of something much more sinister?

The Federal Trade Commission has begun researching consumer use of RFID and the privacy violations it poses. Some states have already begun floating laws about RFID use. In California a bill has been introduced to keep tags separate from personal information. It passed. Then the Govenator vetoed it.

Is RFID’s too last century for you, how about RFIG? Radio Frequency Identity and Geometry takes the technology up another notch by adding projectors and photo sensors to radio frequency tags. These tags are essentially single-pixel cameras pasted on objects that look outwards to a projector adding on a full color 3-D graphic element to the RFID.

This month in a trial run Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Project will begin beaming, via 10,000 RFID tags places strategically around the swank shopping district of Ginza, location-specific coupons, menus, maps and special offers — in 5 languages no less. Shoppers can either get the messages from their cell phones or rent special readers. Wowzer!

What I’ve been tracking is the kooky, I-am-so-cutting-edge use of big letter/small letter in the names of companies involved in RFID, E-ZPass, iHygene, EPCglobal, DIFRWear.

FOLLOW UP — IN THE NEWS:

Nothing like saying, I told you so…. Love, Elizabeth Fiend

Jan 7, 9:46 PM (ET)
By MICHELLE R. SMITH
Source: Associated Press Wire

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - A tech company with ties to a school district plans to test a tracking system by putting computer chips on grade-schoolers’ backpacks, an experiment the ACLU ripped Monday as invasive and unnecessary.

The pilot program set to start next week in the Middletown school district would have about 80 children put tags containing radio frequency identification chips, or RFID chips, on their schoolbags. It would also equip two buses with global positioning systems, or GPS devices.

The school and parents will be able to track students on the bus, and the district hopes the program will improve busing efficiency, Superintendent Rosemarie Kraeger said. The devices are intended to record only when students enter and exit the bus, and the GPS would show where the bus was on it’s route.

Parents could opt out of the program, Kraeger said.

The pilot program, made by MAP Information Technology Corp., is to run for several months at the Aquidneck School, she said. The district, which serves about 2,500 students, is the company’s only client, said Deborah Rapp, the company’s director of marketing and communications.

Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, sent a letter to Kraeger and members of the school committee calling the plan “a solution in search of a problem” and saying the school district should already have procedures in place to track where its students are.

On Monday, he said the program raises enormous privacy and safety concerns.

“There’s absolutely no need to be tagging children,” he said. “We are not questioning the school district’s ability to use GPS to monitor school buses. But it’s a quantitative leap to monitor children themselves.”

Rapp described the system as limited in scope.

“The program is solely designed to provide accountability when the children are in transit, from the moment they enter the bus to the moment they exit,” she said. “It is limited to when they are on the bus. We in no way take it beyond that.”

Brown also raised concerns that unauthorized people, perhaps using RFID readers that are easily bought online, could exploit information contained on the tags.

Ed Collins, the district’s facilities manager, said that would not be possible. Collins and Rapp said the RFID tag would only contain an ID number, not a name, address or other personal information. Only the school administration would be able to match the ID number with the child, Rapp said.

Collins is the brother of Chris Collins, who founded MAP Information Technology last year. The district did not need clearance from the state ethics commission to set up the testing, however, because the program is free during the pilot, Kraeger said.

Officials with the district, which neighbors a naval station and the famed yachting community of Newport, said they didn’t have an estimate on what it would cost to put the tracking system in place district-wide.

Kraeger said she was unaware of the controversy ignited three years ago when a Northern California school system planned to put in place an RFID system to track students at school. The proposal died after protests by parents and privacy and civil liberties advocates, including the ACLU.

The Middletown school board approved the pilot program in November. In a recent letter to parents, the company and the district explained the program and invited parents to get in touch with the school system if they had any questions, Rapp said. No one called.

The district was interested in trying out the program in the hopes that it would improve communication with parents, who will be able to check a Web site to see whether the buses are on time and their children are on them, Kraeger said.

Tracking students’ movements will be no different from an existing system that allows parents to see what their child had for lunch or check their attendance record, Kraeger said.

“If a bus were delayed, they could look for their own student ID and see where the bus was,” she said.

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