RFID Gazette

Can RFID Implants Be Subverted?

[editorial] In a series of proto-cyberpunk short stories and novellas that I wrote in 2002, set in an alternate, near-future Earth country called the United States of North America (Canada and the US), a roving, microchipped band of digital rebels escape from a USNA government that is essentially a dictatorship pretending to be patriotic. Paper is outlawed, thinking for yourself is highly frowned upon, and everyone is being microchipped "for their safety." (By which I mean RFID chips, though I never refer to RFID.)

These rebels have "underground" meeting places where chips are either removed or disabled, and from where their "subversive" activities are planned. These are the true patriots for freedom and justice, but they are looked upon as hackers and criminals, particularly because they disable the RFID microchips. From their perspective, they do this because they feel the chips are a threat to their privacy and general well-being, and that control of the chips can be subverted by malicious parties - counter to this fictional government's claim that the chips are safe.

Well, truth may be stranger than fiction. According to a security researcher in the UK, Adam Laurie, implanted RFID chips can be hacked by malicious parties and thus controlled. Laurie cracked codes for an RFID id card, a livestock chip, and a chip that a volunteer from the audience had previously had implanted.

You can argue that these demonstrations are not sufficient to be concerned about RFID implants, but obviously I'm going to disagree. As a "proto-cyberpunk" writer, I make it a point to write fiction that considers worst case scenarios of the use of technology. Most of my proto-cyberpunk stories are strongly influenced by the work of science fiction author Philip K. Dick, long-deceased and the author of the novels that were turned into Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and others. They are very dystopian, and not afraid to speculate on the "what might be" aspect of world politics (see The Man In The High Castle) and the misuse of technology.

I'm not saying that my stories equal Dick's, but they are definitely written in the same spirit. That said, I see RFID as both a blessing and a curse. I am of the staunch opinion that just because something sounds like a conspiracy theory does not make it false. RFID is unfortunately an ideal technology for both very good and very evil - quite possibly more so than any technology in history has ever been. In the wrong hands, it will be misused under the guise of self-preservation. And any proof of that possibility is something that we all need to take note of.

RFID Tag A Tree?

RFID can be used for many more applications than might seem evident. Subni RFID Webservice is a social networking website that encourages people to tag objects and map metadata to this site's database. For example, if you tag a tree, I presume that you can share information such as latitude/ longitude, type, age, city, country, date of tagging condition of tree, etc.

I say "presume" because while you have to register to use the service, they tell you after you waste time filling out the form that they're not taking new members. (They also don't bother setting up the form for anyone outside the U.S.) However, their applications page diagrams what look like very interesting applications - with no text whatsoever to describe them, unfortunately.

Basically, at the time of this writing, this site is a tease, hinting at what could be. Very frustrating but also exciting. For example, they describe a Subni application called Soundtag, which converts information from an RFID tag on a prescription bottle to sound. This would help visually impaired people know that they have the right medication. This is a brilliant idea, and while other companies might be doing something similar, I haven't come across it elsewhere.

Other applications that they describe on the site suggest tagging physical objects. This has the potential for some powerful municipal applications.

For example, amongst the client computing projects that I've worked on, one of the more interesting ones was a forestry-style application for a municipal tree database. For the sample database, I drove around wooded areas and photographed a few clusters of trees. Theoretically, I would have attached some identifying badge to each tree, then recorded approximate geographic coordinates. This information from the field would have been synced up with a central database later, when I "got back from the field."

Now imagine if there was an easier way to manage such a database, and make it central. So put it online, and use durable RFID forestry tags. Provided handheld readers have a wireles connection to the Internet, field agents could update a database - private or public - in real-time. Add environmental sensors and a memory device like the i-Disk RFID flash drive, and environmental conditions could be stored for later analysis.

In fact, any municipal assets such as park benches and bus shelters, could be tagged in this manner. What might also help is a means for citizens to report problems with an asset. At present, if a tree goes down, a bus shelter is smashed, etc., a citizen makes a call and gives the nearest intersection.

In the future, they might be able to use their NFC-enabled cell phone (dual-mode Wi-Fi/ cellular) to call in the information using a VoIP application over a municipal Wi-Fi network. The VoIP client could file-share the data from the asset's RFID tag, minimizing what a citizen has to do. And if tags had IP addresses, like RuBee tags do, the information could be accessed remotely, saving municipalites the cost of gasoline, wear and tear on city vehicles, and the scheduling of personnel - except when needed.

RFID + Security: Don't Mess With Las Vegas?

A glimpse of the TV show Las Vegas would suggest to you that security for casinos there are high-tech, marvellous operations. Well it just might be true. A surveillance tech company called Third Eye has a new RF-based security system, SATS (Security Alert Tracking System) based on a wristband biosensor (from SPO Medical) that monitors employee's heart rate. If the rate suddenly increases, management is alerted by an RF signal from the wristband.

The premise is that if a casino employee's heart starts suddenly beating rapidly, they are likely under stress. This could be due to some emergency such as a robbery, or possibly because the employee is planning a theft.

RFID has some very important applications in health care, and this biosensor is no exception. But the idea that every casino employee would have to wear these wristbands, in case they just might be planning a theft, could turn into a Minority Report-like situation. The movie stars Tom Cruise and is based on the Philip K. Dick novel of the same name. The idea is that law enforcement officers can stop crimes before they start by arresting future perpetrators, based on technology that can read the latter's thoughts and determine that will/may commit a crime.

The SPO Medical wristband in and of itself is not my issue but rather Third Eye's intended use of it by casino clients. It seems to move life into the realm of guilty until proven innocent. An odd thing for a company whose name is borrowed from a spiritual concept of the inward eye of self-enlightenment.

RFID Gazette - Mon Mar 26, 2007

What RFID Is Not
Spychips points to an AIM Global newsletter item that kills some so-called RFID truths. Keep in mind that AIM Global is an important  RFID international standards body with very well-placed industry people in its membership list. They list 6 RFID myths, amongst them: that RFID is secure and no threat to privacy.

Calling Occupants... Of Interplanetary Craft
[with apologies to Klaatu] RFID is an ideal technology for the supply chain, regardless of what kind of industry. Most of the time, location is not a barrier, either. As such, RFID could be useful for the interplanetary supply chain that NASA is setting up for the planned Moon base for 2020, and crewed missions to Mars. New Scientist Space has more details, though RFID is not mentioned in the article.

RFID Industry Mergers
PanGo networks and InnerWireless have announced a merger. The two companies had been working on an asset tracking project together for a joint customer, a hospital. [via RFID Update]

2007 RFID Conferences

Several RFID conferences are coming up for 2007 (in approximate chronological order):

• RFID World and related:
  
  • RFID World, Mar 26-29, Dallas, Texas.
  • RFID Excellence in Business Awards, Mar 26-28, Dallas.
    
  • NFC Planet at CTIA, Mar 26, Orlando, Florida.
  • NFC Europe + RFID Germany, Oct 1-2, Frankfurt, Germany.
    
• DoD RFID Summit, Apr 3-4, Washington, D.C.
  
• RFID Journal Live, Apr 30-May 2, Orlando, Florida.
• 2007 Canadian RFID Conference, May 8-9, Markham (~Toronto), Canada.
  
• RFID Eurasia, Sep 5-7, Istanbul, Turkey.
• EPC Connection, Oct 2-4, Chicago, Illinois.
   

Maybe it's because I've only been writing regularly about RFID since last July but it seems to me that the number of events in North America alone have almost doubled. And to go along with the conferences, a number of training companies have started to schedule workshops and certification sessions to coincide. This is a good sign, of course, and suggests that the industry is maturing enough for such niche events to succeed.

RFID Bottle Caps

NEC Corp and Toyo Seikan Kaisha, Ltd., both in Japan, have developed a plastic bottle cap with an embedded passive RFID chip. The cap could be used by soft drink manufacturers for the supply chain. It's design is said to be able to avoid any internal moisture, which would normally render the chip useless. [via RFID Weblog]

An alternative might be to use something like the edible RFID chip that Kodak recently debuted. There's also no reason the chip has to be on the inside of the bottle, where the moisture is. A second, hidden layer at the top of cap could hold one of the tiny powder RFID chips that Hitachi created.

i-Disk RFID USB Flash Drive

Pretec has come up with a tiny waterproof USB flash drive that combines RFID technology to allow remote reading of data. Memory sizes range from 128Mb to 1 Gb. Applications for use involve environments such as hospitals, airports, and warehouses. [Digitimes, Gizmodo, Medical Design Online, Loftwares]

Considering that most RFID chips have puny memory storage, technology like this has numerous applications. For example, such a drive could replace/ supplement the patient records that hang on a clip board in a hospital. In fact, since the device is so small (smaller than an American quarter) it could be used in a number of consumer devices as well, say for payment solutions. However, the USB technology would be unnecessary in some devices.

One other application might be to use it to replace the "dog tag" id tags that US soldiers wear. The Pretec device could be fashioned into a new set of dog tags and carry a soldier's details. This use would maybe put paid to VeriChip's idea of imposing forced chip implantation into members of the military.

Loftware Employees RFID-Certified

Loftware, Inc., in New Hampshire, announced that they now have the honor of being the 2nd largest employer in the world in terms of the number of certified staff. Eighteen of their staff are now CompTIA RFID+ certified. Congratulations to Loftware. This is good news, and hopefully other companies will follow along.

CompTIA RFID+ is relatively new RFID certification program. A CompTIA surveylast year showed that there is a lack of skilled workers in the industry. A few colleges in North America are starting to get RFID labs and study programs, and there are new training centers in Canada and the US. In fact , industry insiders have suggested to me that the RFID training niche is likely to explode in the next few years. RFID kits are also becoming more readily available at a lower price.

RFID: To Regulate Or Not To Regulate?

Law makers in the US and EU have been considering regulating the use of RFID in their respective districts. The European Union commissioner backed off, deciding to let the technology mature before imposing regulations.

In Washington state, RFID legislation didn't make the Floor. It sought to impose rules on how RFID would be deployed and used to collect personal data. In Wisconsin, a new bill was just passed that prohibits US currency and documents to be embedded with chips. Previously, the state passed legislation banning forced chip implants.

Implants in particular are going to be a hot law issue in the years to come, Companies like VeriChip have been trying persuade anyone and everyone to implant, including soldiers, and diabetics, and have used them on corpses during disaster recovery.

RFID Gazette - Wed Mar 14, 2007

Managing Portable Toilets With RFID
Many thousands of portable toilets across Europe will have their maintenance scheduled more reliably using low-frequency RFID tags. [via RFID Journal]

VeriChip Still Pushing Implants?
Despite VeriChip's poor showing post-IPO recently (due mostly to doubt about the market for RFID implants), their VeriMed Patient Identification System seems to have created a bit of a buzz at the Atlanta Diabetes Expo. The system requires an implant chip, and is supposed to help health professionals, if a patient arrives at hospital and cannot communicate. For some reason, VeriChip seems to always suggest that a bracelet or badge of some sort wouldn't be durable enough.

Intel Goes UHF
Intel, the world's largest manufacturer of computer processor chips, released their first UHF transceiver chip, the R1000, recently. [via RFID Blog] The chip has attracted attention from several companies. Alien Technology, who plan to use the R1000 in new RFID readers, as well as CAEN and ThingMagic, a startup funded by Cisco and MIT. Intel's chip is expected to usher in lower RFID reader prices.

RFID Gazette - Tues Mar 13, 2007

Mobile Payments Initiative
Two organizations have launched a joint initiative for the financial services industry to enable mobile payments. They are looking at two types of payment. One would be for purchases via NFC and other contactless technology. The other would be transfer of funds between the accounts of two consumers. It should be noted that PayPal, the payments processor owned by eBay (who also own the Skype VoIP software company) already allows mobile payments through SMS text messaging.

Apple Into RFID?
Not quite. However, they have filed a patent for a wireless home networking system that uses an RFID reader. The system would assume that a variety of devices (laptop, PDA, iPod) would have an RFID tag and the network would automatically configure a network connection for it. [via RFID Update; they have a link to the patent.]

Very exciting application. I heard nothing about this until now. The drawback is that Apple technology has traditionally been very singular, with the company typically not licensing/ authorizing clones. This sounds like a fascinating application, but it might only ever be used for Apple products.

If You Can't Beat'em, Confuse'em:
So IOActive's researcher Chris Paget was told to put off his "clone RFID cards" talk at the Black Hat conference recently, based on the charge that the demonstration would violate HID Global's patents in card readers. Huh? Defeat "enemies" with confusion? I don't even know where to start with this one. The validity of this claim is questionable. Other RFID presentations did continue, however. Still, this is a bad precedent and stinks of bullying.

Why Amal Graafstra Got RFID Implants

Amal Graafstra, author of the book RFID Toys, is one of the first people to implant himself with an RFID chip. His first chip was in one hand, and he later implanted a second chip in the other hand. As he's said a few times, he doesn't need to carry around keys.

If you want to know more about why he did it, read Celebrating a mark in his right hand [via Trossen Robotics]. I've always maintained that while I don't believe in forced implants, I have no problem with someone who willingly gets implanted or even does it themselves. I have friends/ acquaintances who have done other types of body modifications, including implants of small balls, horns or other shapes. That said, I'd go for other types of implants/ piercings or tattoos and scarifications, etc., before I'd ever get an RFID implant.

Company Drops RFID Patents

With all the companies levying lawsuits about patent infringement, you'd think that Australia's Sandtracker would at least sell their patents or give them to the RFID Consortium patent pool. Instead, they've decided to abandon them [Stuff NZ]. According to the Stuff New Zealand article, Sandtracker had original thought they could crack the 7-cent barried for RFID chips. So they created their RFID tags with their chips, which use quartz crystal diodes instead of the typical silicon.

Problem is, regular RFID readers cannot be used with these tags. They apparently wanted to redesign their reader and transponder, but decided to abandon the patents. Meanwhile, an Israeli company, SmartCode, has cracked the 5-cent silicon-based tag level. And there's printable RFID tags, which Philips is working on, which if successful will result in sub one-cent tags. However, some people have said that they feel printable tags are a ways off yet.

Still, RFID chips are bound to go down under normal economic influences, as production volumes increase. The catch-22, of course, is that chips (and thus tags) are too high for many organizations to want to adopt RFID technology. Which is why the projects of larger organizations such as Wal-Mart and the US DoD (Dept of Defence) are so important in helping bring prices down.

RFID Credit Cards: Hot or Not?

Late last week, I went to a sub-post office to get and send a money order for a credit card I was accepted for. As I was signing my money order, a young woman paid for a purchase with her credit card. She was surprised when the clerk didn't ask her to sign a receipt, and pointed this out. The woman behind the counter indicated that it wasn't necessary (the younger lady had an RFID credit card, which surprisingly can be used without a signature). She had a puzzled look on her face and chuckled nervously.

I don't blame her; I'm not big on RFID credit cards. But then I thought, what am I going to do if my new card has an RFID chip? Legally, the card belongs to the issuer. Disabling the chip could be considered an act of vandalism. So that leaves two options: (1) don't use the card. (2) get an anti-RFID sleeve/ wallet. Since I want the card, I haven't got much choice, do I?

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RFID Applications: Tiny Chips For Currency?

The tiny powder RFID chips that Hitachi recently debuted are small enough to be embedded in paper. Reading that in the York Dispatch, it triggered a thought: the US government (collectively) has long desired a way to track paper currency. Some or all American bills have had a thin strip of metal for at least a decade. (My apologies: I don't know which denominations.) But now they may have the means of embedding RFID chips into paper currency.

If you watch enough police dramas on TV like I do, you start thinking of all the times monitoring the literal flow of ransom money would have been helpful. Then there's the other side of the coin, so to speak: the Big Brother scenario, which RFID more than any other technology could support, especially if it becomes as ubiquitous as being in currency. And with RFID in powder form, the potential for abuse grows. Hopefully, that's not the case.