Surpriv: RFID Surveillance and Privacy

According to RFID Journal, UCLA’s Wireless Internet for the Mobile Enterprise Consortium (WINMEC) is investigating use of RFID to secure digital content on DVDs:

The UCLA research group is developing the software and hardware components of a system that would embed DVDs with an RFID tag and DVD players with an RFID reader so that the tagged DVDs would play only in RFID-enabled players and only if the reader could authenticate the DVD’s tag. In order to authenticate, the player would also need to link to some type of online network, similar to the EPCglobal Network, that would associate the DVD with a legal sale. Through this system, the copyright owners (the film production company and any other license-holders of the content) would have digital rights management over the work. But viewers would not be able to play the DVDs without an RFID-enabled player because the tag would essentially lock the disc.

But why? A DVD is nothing if not a big data storage device, intended to be read. Rather than encumber a DVD player with an additional RFID reader input device, just have the DVD player read the DVD, and refuse to play it unless it passes some sort of handshaking. What? People hack that sort of security? Hmmmm… not like that won’t happen with RFIDs attached either…

It feels like a proposal to apply RFID to an insoluble problem; no great gains, but some potential downside, as more and more physical objects become surveillable through RFID.

As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Shaken by scandals involving the black-market sale of body parts, University of California officials are considering inserting supermarket-style barcodes or radio frequency devices in cadavers to keep track of them.”

The article goes on to note that simply tagging corpses (or parts of corpses) isn’t much of a deterrent to the determined thief, and that audits and other security measures are required.

The U.S. House of Representatives has issued a solicitation for information on RFID applications for personnel tracking:

“The United States House of Representatives (USHR) is soliciting industry for commercially available products that can provide an integrated technological solution for accounting for building occupants immediately following building evacuations and, during the immediate 24-hour period thereafter, the status of all House building occupants (Members, staff, contractors/vendors and visitors)…”

Of course, for every use there’s a potential abuse… if this were implemented as some sort of “active badge” scheme to track individuals (albeit through a kind of “point surveillance,” knowing that they’re near/passing given points, and not a continuous awareness), one could imagine being able to intuit interesting things from traffic patterns. The sense of the solicitation is for a system that would turned on only upon need (e.g., to know if everyone in the building is safely out of the building); some care ought to be taken in system design to ensure that all data not necessary to that primary purpose is deidentified or destroyed.

“The Congressional Internet Caucus — in conjunction with its Advisory Committee — is organizing an RFID Technology Exhibition & Policy Primer for Members of Congress and staff on Wednesday, March 9, 2005 in the Hart Senate Office Building. The event will feature demonstrations of RFID technology designed to introduce policymakers to the technology and to the burgeoning marketplace.

The policy primer portion of the event will introduce policymakers to the associated policy considerations that may include privacy, security, health, and spectrum…”

http://www.netcaucus.org/events/2005/rfid/demo.shtml

Ran across this little gem… Skannerz!

I’m just kicking myself for not inventing it first…

“It may seem odd that a game could combine elements of Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering, and grocery store shopping, but Skannerz does just this. Here’s how it works: All UPC symbols scanned into this device are converted into virtual monsters, some of which join your team voluntarily, some of which you must electronically defeat in order to conscript them. From there, you can play special games that train your monsters to become more powerful and compete against other players. We had some difficulty at first figuring out how to scan the items, and wouldn’t recommend this for younger children for whom the technology might be frustrating.”

Of course, the next generation of this will be in using these and other technologies (and I think it’ll be RFID and/or GPS, e.g., to render an environment based on either proximity to an RFID tag, or within a specific distance of a geocoordinate) to overlay fantasy play on the physical world.

Lest the discussion get too unbalanced, it’s important to acknowledge that RFID might be quite useful as a tool for consensual monitoring… tracking those who want to be tracked.

Or, in the case of kids, those whose parents would like them to be tracked. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel covers use of RFID-based tracking bracelets for keeping tabs on children in amusement parks:

Here’s how it works: Everyone in a group gets a plastic bracelet holding a wristwatch-sized device. At Wannado — where kids pretend to work in different occupations, including doctor, firefighter and news reporter — about 40 electronic frequency readers on the walls send out signals every five seconds to find the location of the bracelets.

The bracelets can be scanned at video monitors stationed throughout the park. The monitors give the location of everyone in the same party. Visitors can locate only members of their own group.

In a rather constrained domain, fairly benign monitoring (though doubtless the park owners might also mine the transactional data for information useful in figuring out where best to place the gift store, and the refreshment stands).