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You need not be paranoid to fear RFID
By Hiawatha Bray 10/10/2005
From the Boston Globe --
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2005/10/10/you_need_not_be_paranoid_to_fear_rfid/
UPGRADE
You Need Not be Paranoid to fear RFID
By Hiawatha Bray
It's one of the cutest of those cute IBM Corp. TV commercials,
the ones that feature the ever-present help desk. This time,
the desk appears smack in the middle of a highway, blocking
the path of a big rig.
''Why are you blocking the road?" the driver asks. ''Because
you're going the wrong way," replies the cheerful Help Desk
lady. ''Your cargo told me so." It seems the cartons inside
the truck contained IBM technology that alerted the company
when the driver made a wrong turn.
It's clever, all right -- and creepy. Because the technology
needn't be applied only to cases of beer. The trackers could
be attached to every can of beer in the case, and allow
marketers to track the boozing habits of the purchasers. Or if
the cargo is clothing, those little trackers could have been
stitched inside every last sweater. Then some high-tech
busybody could keep those wearing them under surveillance.
If this sounds paranoid, take it up with IBM. The company
filed a patent application in 2001 which contemplates using
this wireless snooping technology to track people as they roam
through ''shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus
stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, rest rooms, sports
arenas, libraries, theaters, museums, etc." An IBM spokeswoman
insisted the company isn't really prepared to go this far.
Patent applications are routinely written to include every
possible use of a technology, even some the company doesn't
intend to pursue. Still, it's clear somebody at IBM has a
pretty creepy imagination.
And it's not just IBM. A host of other companies are looking
at ways to embed surveillance chips into practically
everything we purchase -- and even into our bodies. It's a
prospect that infuriates Harvard graduate student Katherine
Albrecht.
''I think the shocking part is they've spent the past three
years saying, oh no, we'd never do this," Albrecht said. But
instead of taking their word for it, Albrecht and her
colleague, former bank examiner Liz McIntyre, began reading
everything they could find on the subject. Now they're serving
up the scary results of their research in a scathing new book,
''Spychips."
That's Albrecht's preferred name for a technology called radio
frequency identification technology, or RFID. If you use a
Mobil Speedpass to pay for gasoline, you're already using
RFID. Your Speedpass contains a microchip and a small antenna
that allows it to broadcast information to a receiver. The
chip has no power source of its own. Instead, it picks up
radio signals from an RFID chip reader, turns these radio
waves into electricity, and uses the power to broadcast data
to the reader.
Because they need no batteries, RFID chips can be made small
enough to attach invisibly to practically anything. One
company is even working on a way to print RFID chips onto
newspapers, using electrically conductive ink.
Why is this so scary? Because so many of us pay for our
purchases with credit or debit cards, which contain our names,
addresses, and other sensitive information. Now imagine a
store with RFID chips embedded in every product. At checkout
time, the digital code in each item is associated with our
credit card data. From now on, that particular pair of shoes
or carton of cigarettes is associated with you. Even if you
throw them away, the RFID chips will survive. Indeed, Albrecht
and McIntyre learned that the phone company BellSouth Corp.
had applied for a patent on a system for scanning RFID tags in
trash, and using the data to study the shopping patterns of
individual consumers.
''Spychips" reveals a US government plan to order RFID chips
embedded in all cars sold in America. No big deal -- until you
realize the police could then track your comings and goings by
putting inexpensive RFID readers at key intersections.
Then there are the RFID pajamas from a California maker of
children's clothing. It's a clever way to prevent kidnapping:
Just put RFID readers in your home, to alert you if Junior's
taking an unauthorized trip. It's easy to imagine parents
buying into this idea, but they'll now have to install RFID
readers in their homes. ''There's the nose in the camel's
tent," said Albrecht. At first, companies will just scan your
kids' jammies. But later they'll ask permission to scan the
tags on your groceries and your clothes. The consulting
company Accenture has patented a design that builds an RFID
reader into a household medicine cabinet, to make sure you're
taking all your medications.
There are countless applications for RFID, and viewed in
isolation, some are downright appealing. It would be nice for
the medicine cabinet to send you an e-mail -- ''Time to buy
more Viagra." But what if it's also sending that data to
consumer marketing companies, eager to bombard you with
unwanted advertising? Worse yet, what if they're sending the
data to government investigators, or to hackers who've figured
out how to break into the system?
Not to worry, said Jack Grasso, spokesman for EPC Global of
Lawrenceville, N.J.,, the nonprofit organization that sets
technical standards for RFID systems. His organization has a
code of ethics that requires notifying consumers about the
presence of RFID tags. The group also recognizes the right of
consumers to deactivate RFID tags, and is working to develop
systems to make this easy.
So how about putting these principles into law? No thanks,
said Grasso. ''We believe it is far too early." Because the
RFID industry is so young, any regulation ''would have a
chilling effect that would put us back years."
And that's a bad thing?
Somebody needs to sit down and think this through. Dozens of
companies and government agencies are planning to use RFID to
track nearly every move we make. And although many of the
individual applications make sense, what would happen if they
were all implemented, without oversight or restraint? We'd
then live in a world in which everything we own gossips about
us behind our backs.
And it would be too late to call the IBM Help Desk to ask for
our privacy back.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.
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