Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » It's an RFID World

August 31, 2004 | Comments: (0)

It's an RFID World

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At a Churchill Club breakfast on Tuesday, Don Adams, chief security and
technology officer for government at Tibco spoke on RFID [Radio Frequency Identification], giving the audience some interesting nuggets of information about this relatively new technology.

Adams reminded the audience that in most cases the only information an RFID tag contains is a number which is then mapped to a server that gives the product description and any other pertinent data.

Here are some of the highlights of what Adams had to say about the ways in which RFID can be used and abused.

• RFID tags can be hacked. Adams sited a case where the RFID hacker was able to change the number on a tagged item in a clothing store and walked out with a $40 sweater that was tagged as something like $4 pair of socks.

•A charter school in Buffalo, New York tracks its students from the moment they get on the bus through every class, club and meeting they attend, library book they take out and then send a report home.

• Adams asked the audience how many would sign up their children for this type of tracking, about half raised their hands. He then asked how many would sign themselves up for the same type of tracking and nobody raised their hand.

• RFID technology is called contactless tracking. So what is the largest threat of contact tracking such as fingerprint readers? Adams supplied the answer: fungus.

• The EU [European Union] plans to tag high denomination Euros by 2007. First to be tagged is 1,000 euro bills and then over time all paper money.

• Cattle will soon be tagged from birth to consumption to track down decease such as mad cow.

• Adams notes that we already give up our privacy when we use supermarket shopper cards to get discounts and that most surveys show almost all people are willing to give up their privacy for a discount.

Unfortunately, Adams and some in the audience thought this was no big deal and scoffed at organizations like Caspian that believe that supermarket club cards are dangerous.

However, I can imagine the day when the insurance companies buy your
shopping information from the supermarket chain and then send you a letter saying they've analyzed your eating habits and decided you are in the 90th percentile of the population for a heart attack, based on the number of pounds of bacon, steak and mayonnaise you buy in one year.

Therefore, they are raising your life insurance rates.

Stay tuned.

Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on August 31, 2004 10:36 AM

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