Surpriv: RFID Surveillance and Privacy

CIO Magazine describes plans to deploy RFID in Seattle, to allow visitors (and focusing initially on the blind, as requiring more navigational support) to be informed by local businesses:

Some cafes and retail stores in Seattle are about to start individually marketing products and services to bypassers in Seattle using RFID (radio frequency identification) technology. The first target group is visually and hearing-impaired individuals who can benefit from positioning and navigation applications added to the system.

Six wireless public areas, called activation fields, will go live next week throughout downtown Seattle and at the city’s ferry terminal. Over a few months 15 more city areas will be added. Users carrying an active tag and entering the activation field are recognized as the tag is read, and then are presented with announcements….

Similar to the idea of authenticating individuals for “extreme marketing” discussed previously, or previous research on geospatial awareness at places like Xerox PARC, where one could have the phone nearest you (using active RFID badges on individuals for awareness) deliver your calls, with a user-specific distinctive ring. (This before the ubiquity of cell phones, of course!)

Chief Executive magazine provides an interesting snapshot of RFID deployment in DOD, during the conflict in Iraq:

The lesson for CEOs: Don�t worry so much about where your shipments are, but take care where you place RFID interrogators. A more important lesson is to have the RFID system fully ramped up before you try to use it. Meanwhile, [Centcom logistics chief Maj. Gen. William] Mortensen says, don�t sweat the small stuff. Executives shouldn�t worry every minute while the shipment is in transit. �How many points along the continuum do I really need to know where it is?� he asks. There are exceptions, of course, notably with precision munitions, which are tracked constantly by satellite.

�[In general], I have to know what it is that I�m moving,� says Mortensen, �and I have to be able to ascribe in detail how much data I really need. In some cases, there�s more data out there than you may need. So the smaller amount of data in that environment, the less cost or the less effort you spend because you don�t have to filter out the nonrequired data�…

ExtremeTech op-ed on proposals for RFID in U.S. passports:

It’s welcome news that the State Department is now rethinking its ill-advised effort to embed RFID tags in U.S. passports, but by all indications, the government isn’t backing off the idea completely and is looking instead for ways to soothe the concerns of security experts and civil libertarians.

There is, however, only one right way to treat the concept of these de facto national identification cards in the form of high-tech travel documents: Put a spike in them.

…

The Associated Press is reporting on innovations in road traffic monitoring and alerting, with pointers to efforts to collect traffic data points from GPS-equipped vehicles, and from cell phones:

List, director of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Infrastructure and Transportation Studies, co-heads a federally funded project examining a potential high-tech solution to highway congestion. Traffic is tracked through Global Positioning System devices in cars that are connected wirelessly. Drivers participating in the pilot project essentially act as highway probes, receiving continual feedback from in-car computers intoning commands like “Just ahead, turn right.”

“They’re benefiting from each other being eyes and ears in the network,” List said.

…

GPS is one of several technologies being studied by transportation officials and private companies looking to update traffic systems, said Neil Schuster, president of the not-for-profit Intelligent Transportation Society of America. AirSage, an Atlanta-based company, has developed a system that uses cell phones as anonymous “traffic probes.” Its first customer will be the Virginia Department of Transportation, which will use it in Norfolk this summer, said company president and chief executive officer Cy Smith.

The ACLU comments on the issue of RFID in passports:

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Jim Harper, of Privacilla.org and the Cato Institute, provided comments to the U.S. State Department’s solicitation of views on RFID-tagged passports:

“A financial statement delivered on paper by U.S. mail carries one set of security and privacy risks. A financial statement delivered over the Internet carries a different set of security and privacy risks, just as a financial statement delivered via a roadside billboard would have a different set,” the letter said.

“Data on an RFID chip is more easily revealed surreptitiously than data printed on sheets of paper that are folded together,” the statement continued…

“The department should recognize that RFID is good for products, not people.”

Though, of course, State isn’t proposing to directly tag people, just a document that would generally be on their person; we might expand Harper’s comment to address products that implicate people, e.g., the RFID tag in a library book that, when noted in association with an individual, would reveal something of the individual’s interests, associations, etc.

IDG News Service reports that some 2.9 million tickets to next year’s FIFA World Cup soccer tournament in Germany will bear RFIDs, as the largest public event use of such tags. Some criticisms have been expressed:

“We’re really concerned about what is being required of fans to attend the games,” said Rena Tangens, a spokeswoman for the privacy group FoeBud e.V. in Bielefeld, Germany. “First of all, they’re being asked for all sorts of personal data, such as address, phone number, birth date and passport number. Then they have to accept a card with an RFID chip, which supposedly will be used to let them into the stadium.”

Tickets with bar codes would suffice, according to Tangens. “I don’t understand why so much personal data is required to attend a soccer game; such information isn’t required for a large concert,” she said. “What bothers us is that with a bar-coded ticket, a cardholder has control over who or what sees the ticket. This isn’t the case with an RFID smart tag.”

FoeBud also has an issue with the RFID scanners in the stadiums.

Although Graus said the scanners will have a reading range of about six inches and will be located only at the gates — not inside or outside the stadiums — Tangens was doubtful.

“Who says that is really the case?” she asked. “Ticket holders won’t be able to tell if hidden scanners in doors or floors are tracking their whereabouts.”

(Scanners in doors certainly being one possible means of “point surveillance.”)

InformationWeek discusses the current status of plans for RFID in US passports, and opposition to same, including from business travel groups:

Some groups are trying to raise widespread opposition to the plan, saying it could make U.S. citizens more vulnerable to terrorist attacks because the chips would broadcast the passport holder’s information. One site, RFID Kills.com, reports that “the State Department wants to turn all U.S. passports into terrorist beacons.”

Some information that’s being disseminated does not sync up with what the government says. For example, the Association of Corporate Travel Executives released a statement Monday that includes this sentence: “The [RFID] signal can be detected up to dozens of feet to tens of yards.” The Office of Passport Policy, Planning, and Advisory Services says the data stored on the chip is secure and only readable within 4 inches.

A group called the Business Travel Coalition also has stated its opposition, saying it’s a “deeply flawed policy and will put American business travelers at risk of identity theft and physical harm.”