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Wireless Networking Hardware Technology

Innovative Uses of RFID Tags 267

Posted by michael from the you're-it,-forever dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "When your newspapers write something about RFID tags, it's almost always about Wal-Mart or how these tags are threatening our privacy. But they often miss the important innovations brought by this technology. For example, in Florida, RFID drives highway traffic reports on more than 200 miles of toll roads. Or take DHL, which is tracking fashion with RFID tags on more than 70 million garments in its French distribution center. Elsewhere, in Texas, 28,000 students test an e-tagging system which promises better security for them. And what about RFID tags which could prevent surgical errors and have just been approved in the U.S last week? So, what do you think? Are these innovations promising a better future for us or not? For your convenience, this overview contains the essential details from the different articles mentioned above."
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Innovative Uses of RFID Tags More

Innovative Uses of RFID Tags

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  • RFID is cool! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nicholas Evans ( 731773 ) <OwlManAtt@gmail.com> on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:04PM (#10877885) Homepage
    Last month at the local open source group's installfest, I was talking to one of the compsci teachers from a university. He had recently attended some sort of college fair or something, and someone (MIT?) had set up a nifty display using RFID chips.

    You see, they had disguised an rfid reader as a tablet, and embedded rfid things into little plastic discs. On the discs were images representing english, math, etc. Someone tosses a chip on the reader, and a load of information is displayed on the screen about that course. Nifty, nifty...

    • Re:RFID is cool! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah, that sounds a lot more practical than a stupid paper catalog you can take home and read on the bus. Much better to come up with some sort of technical solution that requires extra hardware.

  • On/off switch... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pdboddy ( 620164 ) <pdboddy.gmail@com> on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:07PM (#10877897) Journal
    RFID tags *could* promise a better future. But, like anything that provides potentially personal information to anyone with the right scanning device, RFID tags could be abused on a scale never seen before.

    Have you seen anywhere at all that mentions anything about the ability to turn *off* an RFID switch?

    Not to mention the possible side effects of having a radio transmitting from inside a human body for long periods of time.

    Abuse by car insurance companies able to read your car's performance?

    The chance of abuse is too great...

    • Have you seen anywhere at all that mentions anything about the ability to turn *off* an RFID switch?

      This is the only thing that prevents RFID from having my approval, for whatever that is worth.

      I mean, if everything I own had its own RFID tag, nothing would ever get lost in my room!

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:On/off switch... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Compholio ( 770966 )
      Not to mention the possible side effects of having a radio transmitting from inside a human body for long periods of time.

      RFID chips don't use wavelengths capable of causing damage (radio waves don't have enough energy to punch pieces of your DNA out). Your privacy concerns are probably valid but from a health standpoint you have more to worry about the radiation from sleeping with your SO then you do from radio waves.

    • Re:On/off switch... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gtkuhn ( 823989 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:16PM (#10877961)
      Having a tag inside a body doesn't seem to be the point. I imagine the tag would be in the plastic bracelet they give you (at least in the US, are those things used everywhere?). Anyway, this would eliminate misreading similar names and such human errors. Another good medical use might be having an RFID reader in the surgical instruments tray and tags on all the instruments. Lights or a readout could display when instruments are missing from the tray to prevent things getting left in a patient.
      • A tag inside the body could potentially measure and track biometric data like blood pressure, body temperature, etc. An active RFID could send back such vital information (along with GPS location), allowing a Fire Department, Police Department and Ambulance dispatch to keep track of the health of their people. You could know if a cop was under pressure, or where a firefighter was trapped in a burning building, and act in a timely fashion.
        • Measuring things? Active mode? Sending over large distances? Keeping track of the health of all of the population? I have no idea what you are talking about - before your post, the topic was RFID tags, which can't do any of those things. All they can do currently is transmit a fixed number at very close distances.
          • Mea culpa - there apparently is the term of active RFID, even though this is not the typical application of RFID. Which isn't surprising, the fact that RFID chips don't need a power source to function is the neat (almost magic) thing about them. Everything else still applies though.

          • Re:On/off switch... (Score:4, Informative)

            by pdboddy ( 620164 ) <pdboddy.gmail@com> on Saturday November 20, 2004 @10:04PM (#10878181) Journal
            Well, here's an article [worldnetdaily.com] for VeriChip, which is implantable, and stores a persons health information, and is wirelessly writable.

            Here's another [worldnetdaily.com] about an implantable GPS system, currently the size of a pacemaker, but the inventors believe it can be shrunk down to as much as 1/10th the size.

            And, one last [worldnetdaily.com] one about Wal-Mart, tracking customers using RFID "from company headquarters some 750 miles away".

            So yes, RFID can do those things, and IS doing some of those things now.
            • So you are claiming that RFID chips are extremely small, implantable devices capable of storing non-trivial amounts of information, able to be accessed over 750 miles? If only Dell knew, they could just use one instead of both hard drive and wireless NIC.

              All the "VeriChip" seems to do at the moment is store - aha! - a single, fixed number. The article alleges that it's possible to make it writable and to store more information on it, but it doesn't go on to explain how that's possible given the contraints
      • Lights or a readout could display when instruments are missing from the tray to prevent things getting left in a patient.

        There is already a very sophisticated technique that solves this problem. It's called counting. Count the tools before surgery, and count before sewing up the patient.

      • Re:On/off switch... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by macrom ( 537566 )
        I don't think it was RFID (this is almost 3 years ago), but when my daughter was born, the umbilical cord clamp was actually a device much like what department stores use on clothing items. At the exits to the maternity ward were sensors that would trigger an alarm if you took your baby past the checkpoint. They warned people over and over that taking your child out to see everyone in the waiting room would cause chaos -- the doors to the floor would be automatically locked, the elevators disabled, etc. Som

    • Re:On/off switch... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Medevo ( 526922 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:19PM (#10877979) Homepage
      Not to mention the possible side effects of having a radio transmitting from inside a human body for long periods of time.

      First of all, there are two kinds of RFID chips, the active kind, that contain a power source and constant transmit and the passive kind that only activate when they are around the reader.

      Most of the tags in existance today are passive models, they are cheaper and have a virtually unlimited lifespan. They are powered by either a electric or magnetic field (depends on unit frequency). These models DO NOT CONSTANTLY TRANSMIT and would be unlikly to cause any problems to humans unless they were read a lot (1000+ times a day).

      The active kind are unlikly to be used alot around humans do to cost. The battery installed into them means that they usually only have a lifespan of around 5 years, and would have to be replaced then. Chances are after a cycle or two of battery usage, whatever the tag was doing will be replaced by a better technology.

      Medevo

      • Re:On/off switch... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by pdboddy ( 620164 )
        Yes, most RFID tags are passive. But how long before they install RFID readers everywhere? And the passive ones are worse than the active ones, since they have a "virtually unlimited lifespan".
        • I stand by my 1000+ reads a day that would be required for any health problems in humans. The devices when read are only on for a very small amount of time. Some are designed to have large transmission ranges, but these are usually the active kinds. The passive ones are usually low power and frequency (to reduce cost more)

          Low Power/Frequency + Low Exposure Time = Safe (except for extremes)

          Medevo

          • And I stand by my comment about RFID scanners everywhere. Going in and out of work, maybe getting on the bus, walking into malls and shops, the airport, the subway, etc. How many places would have a legit reason to keep track of who enters and leaves? 1000+ scans a day isn't that hard of a target to reach, if RFID becomes the next id card/drivers license/bank card it's creators are painting it to be.
            • And I stand by my comment about RFID scanners everywhere.

              Did you ever notice how we have bar scanners everywhere--no, wait. We only have them in a few places. Mostly stores, plus a few inventory & hospital places.

              RFID is a technology in much the same vein, and most of its uses will be of the same type.

              How many places would have a legit reason to keep track of who enters and leaves? 1000+ scans a day isn't that hard of a target to reach

              1000 scans a day, assuming that you are "at home" for only e

              • Did you ever notice how we have bar scanners everywhere--no, wait. We only have them in a few places. Mostly stores, plus a few inventory & hospital places.

                In your headlong rush to be clever you failed to notice, or deliberately avoided noticing, that bar codes cannot be read without being on the outside of something. RFID tags can be read through anything but a metallic layer of protection, like a mylar bag or a tinfoil hat.

                • In your headlong rush to be clever you failed to notice, or deliberately avoided noticing, that bar codes cannot be read without being on the outside of something

                  RFID tags can be read by a bunch of folks for a bunch of reasons, but the "why" is relatively low. Wal-Mart could track your time in their store via the RFID tag in the shirt you bought there, but that'd only affect the portion of their customer base that buys shirts at Wal-Mart. They could do the exact same thing with random surveys and in-sto
      • "unless they were read a lot (1000+ times a day)."

        Nice, all we need then is RFID readers build into home computers (aswell as people start getting them embedded in them of course) and I can write a trojan to give my enemies cancer remotely.

        *evil laugh*
    • Don't blame the player, blame the game.
    • The latest long-range RFID tags DO in fact have an ON/Off switch of sorts

      It is called the KILL command. You send the Kill command and the tag is permanently disabled.

      We the developers of RFID tags neither want to be tracked ourselves, or have people boycott RFID tagged products in mass because of privacy concerns. The Kill function was placed into the protocol back almost 2 years ago. You can have the tags killed at the point of sale, or you can even kill them personally with a home RFID reader, an
      • Well, that's a bit of a relief. But there's nothing to say that companies will turn off RFID tags as they leave the store, and there should be laws in place to do ensure the tags are turned off, *before* the tags become ubiquitous.
    • So how do you feel about genetically engineered food crops? Surgery? The internet?

      Greater technology always brings with it a greater risk of abuse. The same technology that gives your mechanic the ability to repair the very sophisticated car with the 400hp engine that gets 20MPG can jsut as easily be used by the police or insurance company to determine how fast you were going when you wrapped it around a pole, or to run from the scene of a crime.

      So avoid products with RFID tags. Or buy a hammer. Drive a t

  • All I will say is.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:07PM (#10877906)
    this is what the standard slashdot rhetoric is:
    • P2P - ooh it has legitimate uses (tho you have to look hard to find them in actual usage), you cant ban it
    • RFID - ooh it can be used for bad things (but hasnt yet), ban it
    I welcome this article, as it points out the many positive uses of RFID technology, so heres hoping it might change some slashdotters minds. Personally, I see RFID as a hugely positive thing, with a great potential in front of it (for good or bad, but thats the same for P2P).

    • Re:All I will say is.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Laurence Wood ( 819387 ) <laurence.wood@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:16PM (#10877960)
      I think the key is who is doing the bad things.
      With P2P its the people theoretically hurting artists and record labels. Record labels certainly aren't considered worth helping and artists are generally felt to live a good life. Whether this is true or not I don't want to get into.
      If RFID is abused as in the slashdot paranoia, it means a clamp-down on the freedom and privacy of the masses. I consider this a far worse fate than some obscenely rich people not getting much richer and artists having to perform live to make a living.
    • Okay, lets be frank. To avoid legal problems we need to find a "legitimate" excuse for P2P programs to be able to exist. It is because sharing files shouldn't be considered a crime, though it is. I agree, its an excuse, but its with reason. With RFID, the exact opposite happens: something invading privacy, which is a real concern is not banned or at least sancioned (to use with care). I would freak out at the idea if i were one of the Texas students tracked by RFID.
    • Nobody wants RFID banned. They don't want to be tracked by it. They don't want it used in insecure ways. RFID is fricking brilliant, it's just a travesty waiting to happen. Slashdot's concensus is "it's going to be bad, so be careful" not "burn them if they weigh the same as a duck."

    • Nice strawman (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ElMiguel ( 117685 )
      Nobody is proposing to ban RFID, people here just don't want RFID forced on them. But hey, that wouldn't fit your argument so nicely, so I guess you can just ignore it.

    • Actually, all I see in the article are abuses of the system.

      The only one I might grant you as a good thing is tracking students. Not that it isn't an invasion of the privacy of students, because it is, but because as a society we've decided that that information MUST be available on-demand to parents, and if we've decided an invasion of privacy is important the least we can do is do it efficiently.

    • Half of the people supporting P2P are aboslutely against "piracy", but they care about P2P because they're tired of the RIAA trying to steal their fair use. RFID has hardly any uses that would help the average joe, so average joes here on slashdot generally don't like it. RFID definatly has it's positive uses, like tracking luggage with electric labels... The average airport traveller would likely not even be aware of this RFID though, and it wouldn't matter. I think you can see how RFID is untrusted be

  • The most important use of all (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TiMac ( 621390 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:09PM (#10877913)
    SPORTS!

    How about putting RFID tags in the end of footballs so that we can finally put an end to that oh-so-exact science of taking a timeout for a measurement?

    Seriously! They just toss the ball wherever the ref thinks it should be, and those chains aren't exactly placed perfectly either. How about something that can actually work for once?

  • E-tagging? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 )
    E-tagging students to provide them with security listed as a good thing? Roland Piquepaille, get the fuck out, you know nothing of geeks.

    College is about drinking, sleeping late, cutting class and still passing because you are smart enough to do it all without getting caught. It certainly isn't about being tagged like cattle and herded from one carefully controlled, spoon fed 'educational experience' to another.

    For all you Americans who don't want to suffer crap like that I suggest college in England wher

  • Did you know? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:09PM (#10877917)
    Did you know that you can use nuclear bombs to terraform mars? Or use snake venom to make antidote? Or use P2P networks for legit purposes? Everything has good uses and bad, it's just that the bad far outweigh the good for RFIDs. Or rather, they're so powerful that people WILL abuse them. Just like nuclear bombs, P2P networks and, err, snake venom.

    • Re:Did you know? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Idarubicin ( 579475 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @10:44PM (#10878385) Journal
      Everything has good uses and bad, it's just that the bad far outweigh the good for RFIDs. Or rather, they're so powerful that people WILL abuse them. Just like nuclear bombs, P2P networks and, err, snake venom.

      ...and electricity, and antibiotics, and recombinant DNA, and desktop publishing?

      I'm curious--how is the parent poster so certain that RFID's negative uses will outweigh the positive ones?

      • Re:Did you know? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by pdboddy ( 620164 )
        It's not that people are certain the negative uses will outweight the positives, it's the potential that they will. There's nothing in the law books preventing the abuse of RFID, and while some current laws protect use from a few gross abuses of RFID, the precedents have to be set first. Our personal information is traded and sold every day, usually without our permission or knowledge, and we don't benefit from it, the companies and corporations do. Why should we accept yet another way our information ca

  • RFID tags at my work (Score:4, Interesting)

    by scaaven ( 783465 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:10PM (#10877919)
    I work at a medical device company, and we're implanting RFID tags into the bases of our optical catheters so they aren't used for more than 72 hours. It's a liability thing, but it's just another instance of RFID. We track the product id of the catheter and the base station records the number and records how long it's been used in the body.

  • Religion versus technology (Score:3, Insightful)

    by totallygeek ( 263191 ) <sellis@totallygeek.com> on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:11PM (#10877922) Homepage
    I just cannot stand people like this [endtime.com] that fear RFID is a step toward "the mark of the beast". First, religious groups said that Social Security numbers [greaterthings.com] were evil, and now it is RFID targetted.


    Can anyone point to technology that religion embraced in its infancy? I really would be interested.


    Are you a good graphics designer [aloesoft.com]?

    • Re:Religion versus technology (Score:5, Informative)

      by zakezuke ( 229119 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:19PM (#10877980)
      Can anyone point to technology that religion embraced in its infancy? I really would be interested.

      The Printing press [wikipedia.org]

      • of course, each religion only embraced it as it applied to disseminating their own works. they burned the presses of those who printed hersey.
      • If I remember right, they were afraid that the printing press would disseminate crap (they were right) and corrupt peoples' minds.

        Don't assume that all religous people are of this opinion toward science/technology, though. I'm a fairly fundamentalist Christian and cautiously pro-technology. I hold to Neil Postman's [amazon.com] philosophy on technology: it's all in how you use it; it changes peoples' lives for good and ill, so neither fear nor hate it.

        Religious technophobia is a shame; I don't really understand
      • Um. No. Sorry. From the wiki link itself we see that the churches did not like the printing press at first -- mostly because it destroyed their near-monopoly on the written word.

        The supplantation of hand copied manuscripts with printed works was not received with unanimous encomium. Not only did the papal court contemplate making printing presses an industry requiring a licence from the Catholic Church (an idea rejected in the end), but as early as in the 15th century some nobles refused to have printe

    • Can anyone point to technology that religion embraced in its infancy? I really would be interested.

      The most obvious would be the printing press, in Europe (not just Western Europe--all of Europe). Markedly different from the acceptance of the printing press in other areas, such as Islamicate Ottoman Turkey. A distinction which, imho, has a lot to do with religious acceptance and usage of the technology.

    • Re:Religion versus technology (Score:5, Informative)

      by pdboddy ( 620164 ) <pdboddy.gmail@com> on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:42PM (#10878077) Journal
      Technology embraced in it's infancy? Other than the printing press?

      Anything having to do with construction (building churches, etc), communication (radio, tv, the internet) and transportation (bussing those seniors in for Sunday Mass).
    • I hate, err... 'just cannot stand' to get technical... ok, maybe I don't. But let's step back a bit and read what 'the mark of the beast' really is, at the core.

      A unique identifier of a person, used to control behavior (in this case, commerce), and those who refuse the identifier, ergo, the control, are "retired"

      The "mark of the beast", in this example, the RFID, is no more evil than the social security number. It is the USE of the number by a larger entity which has been 'evil'. The tattoos on people

  • Roland Piquepaille (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TrumpetPower! ( 190615 ) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:12PM (#10877930) Homepage

    So...how much d'ya figure he paid for this one?

    Cheers,

    b&

  • Check out this item [endtime.com], citing that:

    Audi AG employees have gone from six cards to one, thanks to Legic's smart card system. It merges parking, access control, time and attendance, and cashless payment ability at vending machines or in the cafeteria. In addition, the card has room for future biometric applications.

    This is in their Mark of the Beast Watch! World gone mad?!?!

    Want to make $ 500.00 [aloesoft.com]?

    • This "develop a logo for my company" thing is well and good, but can you put it in your sig, so that those of us who don't want to be bombarded with ad's/spam can choose not to see it?

      Also this competition you're promoting has a horrible condition - "The remaining entries' designs will remain the property of our company to be used or showcased as we see fit".

      This condition is rubbish. It is evil. It sounds like you're not thinking of actually paying anyone - and will use whatever logo you want, without co

  • Dunno (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:15PM (#10877955)
    When your newspapers write something about RFID tags, it's almost always about Wal-Mart or how these tags are threatening our privacy.

    I don't know if newspapers signficantly differ from online news, but the Wal-Mart and privacy issues seem to be more of a /. thing.

    http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=rfid&bt nG=Search+News [google.com]
  • RFID tags which could prevent surgical errors ...
    Oh, so that's why my liver keeps setting off the anti-theft alarm whenever I go into Future Shop...
    • How do you know it's your liver? Did you try crossing the threshold without it? Did you had it to someone else to take accross the threshold? "Excuse me, sir, will you hold this for a moment?"

      ew

      - Thomas;

  • Everything is a double edged sword... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NeuroManson ( 214835 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:24PM (#10877993) Homepage
    It cuts both ways. Back in the 70s and 80s, I recall seeing tons of conspiracy theories about how bar codes could be misused to observe whatever we did in our purchases.

    Additionally, there's the whole so-called conspiracy about how "shopping club" members who bought a frequent shopper club card was having vast and horrible statistics collected about how much Mountain Dew, et al, they were purchasing.

    Frankly, yes, it can all be used for wrong, but that depends on your definition of wrong. Do you spend sleepless nights wondering if your store is telling evil corporations how much Mountain Dew you drink?

    Chances are it's just the caffeine.
  • Sure. Tracking shipments, etc

    Can they be used for evil? Again, sure. Tracking me.

    The thing is to get privacy regulations in place before these things become too widespread. And questioning the uses of them is pivotal to getting those regulations. Because corporations/governments will want to use them to their benefit, not ours. If SearsMart can make 1/2 cent from selling your info to Nike/Hilfiger, you can bet your ass they'll do it.

    • Or insurance companies. According to our data, you drink heavily on the weekends, drive 10 kph over the speed limit constantly, and smoke occasionally. So, unfortunately sir, your health, fire and car insurance rates are going to have to be adjusted.

      Guess which way? ;)
  • A4Tech has a batter-free mouse that works by using RFID. Pretty neat, though I have doubts as to practicality. Link:

    http://www.a4tech.com/en/press2.asp?AID=69&ovmkt =2 3G00LDM1H7ED0D263HR5HBL84

  • timing road races and triathlons (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jldrew ( 629581 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @09:47PM (#10878101) Homepage

    My job is with a company [theendresultco.com] that times races (i.e. runners) using RFID technology. We use ChampionChip [championchip.com] products, but there are a couple of similar, up-and-coming solutions (AMB [amb-it.com], DAG [chronometrage.com]).

    The whole system is really impressive and versatile. We time marathons with tens of thousands of participants (Boston, Twin Cities, Grandma's, Columbus, Indianapolis Mini) and the systems catch 99.99% of the runners. The chips are waterproof (for triathlons) and quite rugged.

    Using RFID technology is TONS better than the old methods (tags and/or popsicle sticks, and lots of watching). If any of you has ever had to line up in chutes after a hard race, you'd know what kind of chaos can ensue when someone falls or gets out of line. Anyway, RFID means that runners only have to cross the finish line... then they can pass out as they please.

    • I also work for a timing company that uses ChampionChip. And one thing that the above poster would agree with is a chip alone is useless, you need some sort of database or software to relate the chip to usable data.

      This is a major issue that people seem to forget about with RFID. A passive RFID chip can transmit just a serial number, but what does that mean? If I take my Mobil Speedpass and pass it over the ChampionChip system it reads it, sure, but otherwise it's useless data. There is no way the syst
      • They aren't possible yet. If RFID were to be implemented on a large scale, each RFID would collect different types of data, and readers would be able to read the RFID and then access the proper databases. If they were to implant these into people, the RFID could contain your personal information (name, address, age, etc), plus your driver's license, health info, etc. A cop finding your mangled car after an accident could read your RFID to find out who you are, the paramedic could find out if you're aller
  • RFID has it's pro's and con's. It is great for doing shipping, I did a big report on it's uses for tracking products and controling distrubtion. IT could also be used for tracking people, which is bad. Everything in the history of this universe has both a good and bad side. If you can, please name just one thing that is only good or only bad. But for now, I say that when correctly implemented, RFID will be a great thing.
  • It's obvious that whining about RFD abuse won't change anything. Especially on Slashdot. It's equally obvious that RFID and other privacy invasion abuse really threatens our personal security, info and otherwise. Unfortunately, it's also painfully obvious that the way we handle these new scenarios, through laws limiting abuse of our rights, is right down the toilet. Politicians are interested only in corporate bribes, and have succeeded in scamming the people into caring more about laws to stop their neighb

  • Nuclear plants too (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jonathan Burns ( 717637 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @10:11PM (#10878215)

    RFIDs are a robot sense. They tell robots where and what things are, where to look for them, and what to do when they find them. if find(rfid) and ! if find(rfid) are very convenient directors of robot behaviour.

    Not, of course, that robots can run around wholly unsupervised; but with automation to hand for filtering and first-level logistics, all sorts of responsible people like cops, nurses and safety staff can shrug off their robotic chores and get on with making decisions.

    We all ought to be playing with this stuff; but the app I really want to see is, nuclear power plants and fuel recycling plants, with every fuel and waste element and every component accounted for. This is one area with universal support for absolute security. We've held off development of civilian breeders for fear of terrorists getting access at some stage of the fuel processing cycle, among other reasons. But turning, say, a 99% safe cycle with 20 critical inspection points into a 99.9% safe cycle with 200 points, 180 automated, is surely not beyond out current means.

  • wrong debate. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anne Honime ( 828246 )
    My belief is that whatever we feel about it, RFID is such a major improvement over paper tags that it WILL be used. So it's not a debate between ow, wonderful, look at ALL those neat uses and but that MIGHT be used wrongfully .

    The debate is how the consummers will organise to set limits on the use of it ; for instance refuse the rfid to be made PART of the good (molded in the plastic of a handle for instance), and force the producer to leave the possibility to rip it after purchase.

    Where not possible

  • Anything that can be forced on school children now can be forced on the whole population once the children grow up and form a significant fraction of the adult population, since they will be habituated to it and put up little resistance. Given this, the following comment near the end of the New York Times article [com.com] is very disturbing:

    "... they do see broader possibilities, such as implanting RFID tags under the skin of children to avoid problems with lost or forgotten tags. More immediately, they said, t

    • A telling bit from one of the articles (emphasis mine):

      Hoping to prevent the loss of a child through kidnapping or more innocent circumstances, a few schools have begun monitoring student arrivals and departures using technology similar to that used to track livestock and pallets of retail shipments.

  • I just lost my wallet, and am fairly certain it's somewhere in the mess of my house. I was just wishing it had an RFID tag so I could take, say, some sort of wand and sweep my house to locate which pile of clothes it's in. This would also be useful for keys, remote controls, eyeglasses, and other things people are constatly misplacing. Just stick a small RFID tag on the item and somehow tell your wand what item it is so it will know how to find it later. Just don't lose the wand :) Obviously, if my wallet i

  • RFID has been with us since WWII. It's not new technology, and like anything else, it can be abused. What Roland probably doesn't know is that detecting RFID tags is kids' play. He doesn't realize that the cutting edge in RFID technology is presence sensing: How is an RFID tag associated with its taggee? How do you track both the RFID tag and the thing it's supposed to track? And even more importantly: How do you track direction? Goods moving off a truck are a good example: How do you differentiate

  • Phone call from the near future... (Score:3, Funny)

    by untaken_name ( 660789 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @10:57PM (#10878447) Homepage
    *RING*

    Mister Jacobsen: Hello?
    Voice: Hello, Mr Jacobsen.
    Mr. J: Who are you?
    V: Mr. Jacobsen, our records indicate that you checked into the Inn 'n' Out motel last night with your wife.
    Mr. J: So? What's this all about?
    V: We verified that your charcoal suit indeed proceeded from your office to that hotel, but Mrs. Jacobsen's housedress moved around your home all evening.
    Mr. J: All right, who the hell is this?
    V: It's your cleaners, Mr. Jacobsen. Don't you think you really should have that suit cleaned? We'd hate to have to call Mrs. Jacobsen and ask her about it.
    Mr. J: No, no...that's okay...
    V: We have a full clean and press special going on today only. May we pick up the suit?
    Mr. J: *sigh* Yeah, it's at my office, corner of...
    V: That's ok, Mr. Jacobsen. We'll have someone there in a few minutes. Thank you for your business!

    *RING*
    Mr. J: Hello?
    Voice #2: Hi, Mr. Jacobsen! This is Eddie, from Lingerie Etc. We have a great special going on right now on black lace teddies.
    Mr. J: What the hell? So what?
    V2: Our records indicate that your last four mistresses all wore them. We just thought you'd be interested in our special pricing, in light of your recent...activities.
    Mr. J: Argggghhhhhhhh

    Yes, I'm scared of what the government *could* do with this technology. However, I'm even more scared of what the fucking marketeers will do. 1984? Hardly. More like $19.95.

  • TrustE "enforcement" now nonexistent (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @11:04PM (#10878484) Homepage
    Enforcement of privacy rules in the US is very weak, even where there are rules. A good example of non-enforcement is TrustE [truste.com], which claims to have an "enforcement" mechanism but no longer takes enforcement actions.

    TrustE's Watchdog Reports [truste.org] invariably results in a decision of "Issue Handled with no changes necessary to the Privacy Statement nor the Site". They get about a hundred complaints per month, but don't do anything. The last time TrustE made a site change anything was in 2002.

    In the early days of TrustE, their seal actually meant something. But they've totally sold out.

    There's also the Commerce Department's "Safe Harbor" list [export.gov]. No enforcement action has ever been taken under that.

    So don't believe any "privacy certifications" associated with RFID tag use. They're meaningless.

  • Roland (Score:3, Informative)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Saturday November 20, 2004 @11:10PM (#10878511) Homepage
    Joy, yet another Roland Piquepaille story.

    For those who don't know, he posts a lot of rehashed news on his blog and then by some act of god (or Benjamin Franklin) gets his stories constantly posted to Slashdot, which gets him massive ad revenue.

    I recommend that nobody visits the links in the story to deprive him of this ad revenue.

  • Actually, I think RFID technologies are neat -- clothing, products, vehicles, I actually can't wait to start experimenting with some of this stuff at home. As someone mentioned above, all kinds of new technology has potential applications, as well as potential abuses.

    We intend to explore RFID's location-based potential [wifimaps.com], but with an emphasis on privacy, which we've held to.

    There is lots of potential here, but there's a way to fight for our privacy and rights -- we can fight back by tracking the RFID tag

  • RFID tags which could prevent surgical errors (Score:3, Funny)

    by Unnngh! ( 731758 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @12:47AM (#10878943)
    I can see the security guard at the front doors now: "Whoa, hold on there sir, you can't leave the hospital--you have the wrong spleen. That's right, the RFID tag identifies it as the wrong one. Just hand it over nicely, sir, and we won't have to involve the authorities..."

  • RFID in custom guitars and music instruments (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ebusinessmedia1 ( 561777 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @01:17AM (#10879068)
    Here's a fascinating application that I came across. This little company is making big waves in the music instrument manufacturing sector. They're doing some cool R&D on tracking technologies that combine GPS and RFID as well.

    http://www.snagg.com

  • Been in Houston for quite some time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SpiceWare ( 3438 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @02:01AM (#10879235) Homepage
    Houston Real-Time Traffic Map [houstontranstar.org]. It reports on freeways as well as the tollroads. There's electronic signs along the roads informing you of traffic conditions ahead. You can view the signs online, first check the "Message Signs" option in the Map Control box on the lower left, the click a sign on the map to see what its currently displaying.

  • Congress (Score:3, Funny)

    by man_ls ( 248470 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @06:34AM (#10879958)
    How hard is it to get elected to Congress?

    I want to serve the people, by passing laws to protect personal freedoms, privacy, free speech, and consumer rights.

    This is the feeler of interest for my campaign; the real campaign will take place in about 10 years.

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