Radio Frequency IDentification

[myself808]

article link (http://news.com.com/2010-1069-980325.html)
..in the future, we could be tracked because we'll be wearing, eating and carrying objects that are carefully designed to do so.

The generic name for this technology is RFID, which stands for radio frequency identification. RFID tags are miniscule microchips, which already have shrunk to half the size of a grain of sand. They listen for a radio query and respond by transmitting their unique ID code. Most RFID tags have no batteries: They use the power from the initial radio signal to transmit their response.

You should become familiar with RFID technology because you'll be hearing much more about it soon. Retailers adore the concept, and CNET News.com's own Alorie Gilbert wrote last week about how Wal-Mart and the U.K.-based grocery chain Tesco are starting to install "smart shelves" with networked RFID readers. In what will become the largest test of the technology, consumer goods giant Gillette recently said it would purchase 500 million RFID tags from Alien Technology of Morgan Hill, Calif.

snip...
It becomes unnervingly easy to imagine a scenario where everything you buy that's more expensive than a Snickers will sport RFID tags, which typically include a 64-bit unique identifier yielding about 18 thousand trillion possible values. KSW-Microtec, a German company, has invented washable RFID tags designed to be sewn into clothing. And according to EE Times, the European central bank is considering embedding RFID tags into banknotes by 2005.

For its part, Alien Technology says its RFID tags can be read up to 15 feet away. "When we talk about the range of these tags being 3 to 5 meters, that's a range in free space," said Tom Pounds, a company vice president. "That's optimally oriented in front of a reader in free space. In fact if you put a tag up against your body or on a metal Rolex watch in free space, the read range drops to zero."

But what about a more powerful RFID reader, created by criminals or police who don't mind violating FCC regulations? Eric Blossom, a veteran radio engineer, said it would not be difficult to build a beefier transmitter and a more sensitive receiver that would make the range far greater. "I don't see any problem building a sensitive receiver," Blossom said. "It's well-known technology, particularly if it's a specialty item where you're willing to spend five times as much."

Privacy worries also depend on the size of the tags. Matrics of Columbia, Md., said it has claimed the record for the smallest RFID tag, a flat square measuring 550 microns a side with an antenna that varies between half an inch long to four inches by four inches, depending on the application. Without an antenna, the RFID tag is about the size of a flake of pepper.

As expected, privacy advocates are up in arms about this, and I can understand why. it does seem ominously big-brotherish.

[sageb1]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/022904rfidtagsexplode.html

Now Europe and the US have RFID on new banknotes.


RFID in banknotes was originally reported in 2003:
02 September 2003

RFID tags make it into bank notes
Imagine a world full of money that can tell you where it’s been spent.
By Martyn Williams, IDG News Service

Hitachi has developed an RFID (radio frequency identification) chip that requires no external antenna and makes possible the embedding of tracking and identification chips in bank notes, tickets and other paper products.

As with competing chips, Hitachi's Myu chip requires antennas through which data can be received and transmitted to a chip reader, all of which draws power. In the case of the current generation Myu chip, this antenna can be between five centimetres and seven centimetres long, said Keisaku Shibatani, a spokesman for Hitachi.

Even though the chips themselves are very small, at 0.4 millimetres square, the large antenna needed effectively limits their use in certain applications. The new Hitachi chip is the same size as the current model although requires no antenna. This means it is suitable for use in a range of applications including embedding in bank notes and documents, said Hitachi.

In May this year, a Japanese media report said Hitachi was talking with the European Central Bank on a project to embed euro bank notes with RFID chips. Shibatani, the Hitachi spokesman, said that such a project was not underway at present.

The new announcement confirms that such a project will soon be technically feasible although several other potential hurdles remain, such as hitting a low price point and also combating growing consumer resistance to RFID.

The company announced one application for the new chip. It will be embedded into tickets for the Expo 2005 fair that will take place in Aichi prefecture in central Japan in 2005.

A production schedule for the chips has not yet been decided and neither has pricing, said Shibatani. The chip announced Tuesday operates in the Japanese RFID band, which is around 2.4GHz, he said.

First announced in 2001, Myu chips contains a 128-bit identification number that is burned into the chip at the time of manufacture meaning it is not possible to change the number once produced.

Article source: http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=displaynews&NewsID=412

[Faithless]

Possible security concerns of RFID:

A review of a recent defon gathering... (http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/12282017.htm)

...
Radio frequency identification tags, or RFID, that send wireless signals and that are used to track a growing list of items including retail merchandise, animals and U.S. military shipments also came under scrutiny.

A group of 20-somethings from Southern California climbed onto the hotel roof to show that RFID tags could be read from as far as 69 feet. That is important because the tags have been proposed for such things as U.S. passports, and critics have raised fears that kidnappers could use RFID readers to pick traveling U.S. citizens out of a crowd.

RFID companies had said the signals did not reach more than 20 feet, said John Hering, one of the founders of Flexilis, the company that conducted the experiment.

"Our goal is to raise awareness," said Hering, 22. "Our hope is to spawn other research so that people will move to secure this technology before it becomes a problem."

Erik Michielsen, an analyst at ABI Research, chuckled when he heard the Flexilis claims. "These are great questions that need to be raised," he said, but RFID technology varies with the application, many of which are encrypted. Encryption technology uses an algorithm to scramble data to make it unreadable to everyone except the recipient.
...