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October 4, 2006
Tracking Where You've Been
If you've read the foreward to Spychips, you know that sci-fi writer and futurist Bruce Sterling is up on all things RFID. He did a stint last year as Art Center College of Design's "Visionary in Residence," where he assigned his class to use their industrial and graphic design skills to come up with novel uses for RFID. Then he invited me to fly out to California and throw in my two cents at the end of the semester.
Some of the designs were nutty (a retirement home for the oversexed was one standout example, though the RFID connection was tenuous). Others were inventive, like the power diet that would turn you into Vince Lombardi if only you'd continually scan the spychips on all your food and workout equipment.
But one project really stood out in my mind, perhaps because the danger in it was so difficult for the students who'd created it to grasp. It was called "Kilroy," as in "Kilroy was here" of 1960's graffiti fame. The idea was to place passive RFID tags in the form of little stickers in public locations, like the doorways of clubs, music stores, restaurants, etc. as a sort of spychip graffiti. Whenever you saw one of these dots, you could aim your cellphone at it and download information about the venue from a social network, or add your own thoughts on the venue. ("The pad thai here is great, but avoid the duck salad," or "Look out, the bouncer at this place is a real jerk.".)
That all sounds pretty cool, but a very different scenario immediately occurred to me. "Wait a minute, guys," I said. "If you put these things everywhere, bad people will use them to keep track of where you've been."
"Huh?" they responded."These things aren't readers, they're tags. They can't track anything."
"Maybe not, but if you put them everywhere, they'll act like little real world cookies, and eventually some device you carry around with you will suck the data off these tags as you pass, as a way to monitor your travels and activities. Somebody could download the data and see everywhere you've been and when."
"Huh?" they replied again unfazed and uncomprehending. I tried a few more times then finally gave up with a sigh.
I'd almost forgotten about that incident until this morning, when I learned that someone else has been thinking along the same creepy lines as me. But it's not your friend Sarah or Jodie wanting to tell you about the pad thai down at the Siam Palace. It's NTT, the mobile phone provider to most of Japan, one of the planet's biggest megacorps.
"...NTT DoCoMo recently developed a system that utilizes mobile phones and RFID tags to monitor and infer people's behaviors and deliver relevant information. The system uses mobile phones that have the RFID reader capability. Those RFID reader phones read tags embedded in retail stores, for example, and the software running on the phones sends out information such as the stores people visited.."Source: Picturephoning.com (a trippy weblog with lots of RFID tidbits)
and Keitai Watch (In Japanese)
Sometimes it sucks to be right.
-Katherine Albrecht
Posted by Katherine Albrecht at October 4, 2006 4:58 AM
Comments
As an IDer [Industrial Designer] and engineer, this comes as no surprise to me. When fellow designers complain that my blog entries go over their head, it forces me to accept the fact that far too many don't think much further than the surface finish on the latest "must-have" electronic gadget. Sad but true.
Posted by: csven at October 6, 2006 10:59 PM
Just heard you on a Rense interview.
On explaining how these tags function, i haven't read your book, but, as far as my understanding of electronics goes, to function as an access memory (a'la RAM) device, as a tag, would be a technological concept that we have nothing in the convention world currently to compare to.
I think of how my Gold Detector works, by way of "discrimination, except that these things have ,
An inductor that works as a read only (a'la ROM) device, i can imagine would be much much less cumbersome a technology to integrate into a sort of consumer system Irvin Baxter is apprehensive about. But to store info., like a cookie, would require a device like a puter, to program the info.
Also, Check out Alan Goldstien: http://mikehagan.com/radiOrbit_Archives.htm
He seems to have some grasp of where things are at.
Having my critical faculties in tact, though, and considering what Alan says about technologies have potential abuse along WITH the fluffy side, my thinking would be along the lines of if I, for instance, were to exhibit compliance about having something foreign stuck into my body, then what does that say about the way i am allowing others to accept the possibility that they can reverse social engineer my activities in order to steer my lifestyle into their own agenda.
I mean, in terms of what resistance i do NOT put up against that, it's like somebody stopping to sell me something and me not telling them to fuck off. The fact that i'm even letting them talk at me is some acceptance by me to what they are selling, or their way of selling, or is at least me buying into, somewhat, their system of trying to sell.
Because once I do accept that, the technology can THEN be engineered around how much and in what ways I are willing to bend, in order to upgrade the implant or what have you.
If any of these emerging technological 'beasts' is supposed to be our great Satan, then this Satan is not nearly as imaginitive or deceptive or seductive as these Christians make out.
I mean, if this is part of the actions of a great Beast, and this is what taking the mark is, and that taking the mark is actually a choice made by individuals, i can't find in me the slightest motivation to be even associated with the same sort of system or agenda that these clowns are getting themselves into.
"Derrick Jensen" discusses well something along the lines of.. "okay, do you want to surrender your passport, or do you want us to jail you?"... "now, do you want to strip and put on these clothes, or do you want us to shoot you?"... and so on.. right up to the gas chamber itself..
Something i keep thinking about, more seriously, is setting up a system to detect and remove such tags, assuming they will be made of metal
Posted by: D. at October 9, 2006 12:14 AM
Katherine:Their comment:
Huh?" they responded."These things aren't readers, they're tags. They can't track anything."
According to http://www.epic.org they state that these chips read/write. See page of of http://www.epic.org/privacy/frid under heading Introductions around paragraph 4.
At present there is human chipping going on in Chicago conducted by law enforcement. No warrants have been obtained for this brutal, invasive, prevasive surveillance.
Myra
Posted by: Myra Jones at October 31, 2006 5:07 PM
damit dont you read the bible it says in the end times we will be branded with the number of the beast\rfid so whats the hold up lets see the only way for the mass murders running wasington to get this done is blow up some important places like the world trade centers shoot a missle into the pentagon have ya seen the new video from the hotel across the street and they said it was a plane that hit the pentagon...not
and then they send all are kids to fight and die for these lies that just keep spilling out of there mouths, war crimes, death, new world order, bush and the rest of his mass murdering family must be thinking by now that they "WILL" get away with there crimes because the amercan people must be too stupid 2 see whats really going on hell bush just bought 100,000 acres of land and it isnt here in the UNITED STATEs soon too be "The North Amercan Union" by the way just ask some senators that work in washington ...
WE THE PEOPLE need too wake up and fire all the retards that are destroying the Constitution of the United States before they pass the law where you will have too be chipped or else . the REAL "axis of evil" bush,channey,rumsfield,rove,rice can lie and lie and lie hell they are all pathalogical liers that have lied too all the people of the usa........
Posted by: The Demon Running the white house at December 7, 2006 9:48 PM
@DRWH: Sooo, rfid will usher in an apocalypse... i guess we can all stop holding our collective breath.
Posted by: christen at March 11, 2007 5:18 PM