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Sun Joins RFID Program 155

Posted by michael from the tag-'em-and-bag-'em dept.
per unit analyzer writes: "C|Net is running an interesting article on Sun's recent affiliation with MIT's Auto-ID initiative. The article is a layman's intoduction to passive RF tag technology. The concept is to replace the ubiquitous UPC bar code with a 5-cent RF-tag. When hit with the right excitation signal, the tag emits its own RF signal encoded with a 96-bit number. The privacy concerns are obvious; items people buy could be tracked anywhere they happen to go. How would you like the security scanners at airports or even the local high school be able to generate a complete inventory of the consumer products carried by each person coming through the door? (OK Johnny, hand over that pr0n magazine in your backpack...) The Auto-ID ilk includes many of the major consumer product manufacturers and retailers. Incidently, the American Radio Relay League is also currently fighting an uphill battle to keep the RF-tag technology of Audo-ID Technology Board member Savi Technology out of the 70cm Amateur Radio band in the US." We have a couple of earlier stories about RFID tags.
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Sun Joins RFID Program More

Sun Joins RFID Program

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  • The FCC costs of regulating even more frequencies for consumer goods makes this only a gimmick.
    • Well, if they are trying to get the 70cm amatuer band, they most likely won't get it. For those who don't know, that's roughly 440MHz. It has become the next focus of local amatuer activity since 2m (147Mhz) is getting full of repeaters. Granted the FCC could just give it away anyway, but considering how us amatuers like to fight to keep our bands (read really hate when people try to take them claiming they aren't put to use), I doubt any company will ever get it.

      Also, I bet the ARRL server won't be up for quite sometime. Yes, they are a big radio group, but internet wise slashdot probably blew their bandwidth cap for the next millenium.
      • Well, if they are trying to get the 70cm amatuer band, they most likely won't get it.

        Isn't that what the amateurs said about the 1.25 meter (220 MHz) band before part of it was taken away?
        • Yes, although the regulation has always been a problem in the US, too many fingers in the pie. The GHz auctions in the UK were an example of a myopic although correct way of doing it.
        • Honestly, the 220Mhz band was never used for much. For local stuff, 2m works wonders, for metro areas, 70cm is great. 1.25m just didn't quite fill a niche and the equipment was really expensive.

          The only thing that 220Mhz is going to be used for by the club I am a member of is PBBS forwarding. There are a few FM repeaters, but PBBS is about the only thing on 220, at least here.
  • I find all the little radio transmitters in my stuff and have a little fun with my microwave oven? Maybe they'll send the mattress tag people after me..
  • I don't really see this as being a privacy problem. And implanted chip could easily me removed, or disabled. Just overload it with a particularly strong signal. At 5-cents I doubt there will be sophisticated circuitry to prevent this. Plus with the technology freely available, it should be easy for anyone to be able to detect what RF-tags would be on their person.

    • Actually, you'd be surprised... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Svartalf ( 2997 ) on Saturday February 09, 2002 @01:44PM (#2979528) Homepage
      At 5 cents a chip, they're mass-producing them for that cheap.

      They're usually capable of withstanding some 200-500 or so watts of RF power before blowing out the chip's circuitry. The only way to really discombobulate these things is to detatch the chip from the antenna or remove the whole affair from the thing you're wanting it to no longer be tagged.

      As for detecting them, unless you're knowing how they make the chip's transponder work, you're going to have a FUN time catching all of them.

      There's very few tags out there that are like bugs that can be immediately detected with common stuff.

      There's inductive loop tags (a' la Mobil Speedpass)- they will only respond when powered by a magic frequency and when triggered by the right modulation/data sequence.

      There's the dual frequency units, where you send one signal and then the chip responds at a different frequency. These will usually only work in the same manner as the Speedpass type of tag.

      Then there's the backscatter type of tags, commonly used by the toll tag systems. They act as a special mirror to the RF signal, re-radiating what they're recieving with a modulation carrier on it. If you don't have the right frequency, they don't work at all- and some of the more sophisticated tags (like the ones we're talking about here...) do handshaking with the RFID base system before re-radiating.

      There's several other schemes out there, to be sure- I'm just naming the few I've had to work with in the past. (I worked for a division of Intermec (now owned by TransCore) that did RFID systems for parking, ground transportation management, railcar identification, and these little things they called "gamma" tags that they licensed the technology from IBM that are used for this very thing we're discussing- so I know a little something about it...).

  • Disabling the RF Tags (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rben ( 542324 )
    Couldn't the retailer be required to disable the RF-Tags at the point of purchase? I would think that would help alleviate privacy concerns. I'm still not thrilled about this technology, either the privacy concerns or taking bandwith from the radio amateurs, but perhaps it can be done in a way that is less intrusive.

    Ray Benjamin
    • Even if they were, would they? I work at a chain retail store that uses EAS (Electronic Article Surveillance) tagging. Every one of those little mothers is supposed to be disabled or removed at the checkout stand. But the doors still go off a surprising number of times over the course of the day.

      (What's really fun is when someone forgot to disable the tag built into a particular brand of shoe. So the poor fellow will set off every EAS scanner of every store he enters or exits until someone figures out why.)
      • For some reason my Honeywell alarm system card (the kind you just hold up to the scanner rather than swiping) tripped some of those EAS scanners.

        That caused some fun on a store visit once (we sold retailing-related systems). I didn't even buy anything and I tripped the alarm on the way out.

      • Even if they were, would they? I work at a chain retail store that uses EAS (Electronic Article Surveillance) tagging. Every one of those little mothers is supposed to be disabled or removed at the checkout stand. But the doors still go off a surprising number of times over the course of the day.

        Wouldn't most of these RF tags be on a sticker of some sort? Some stores, Eckerd's comes to mind as one, have the security tags built in to a UPC/price sticker. When you buy the item, it's disabled. But, if it were an RF tag, then you'd just peel it off and toss it in the trash. Of course, I suppose someone could scan my trash to find out what I had bought...but I don't think anyone with a UPC database would care enough to do that.

  • Great opportunity for hackers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by reemul ( 1554 ) on Saturday February 09, 2002 @10:20AM (#2979016)
    Sure its a total bastard of an idea from a privacy standpoint, but just think of the fun hackers can have with this once the stores go automated. Just pick off the signal for a product, and rebroadcast using a stronger signal whenever folks go through the scanner. If every single person leaving the store on a given day gets charged for 5 boxes of extra-small condoms and a snickers bar, I'd imagine they'll just go back to barcodes. Or maybe a small personal jammer, so that you can walk through with your heaping cart of geekfuel, and only get charged for a small jar of peanut butter. A cheap 5-cent tag just can't incorporate many security features, and any wireless system is an open invitation to hackers.

    The folks who are really concerned about this as a privacy issue need to go visit and abuse all of the test sites they can identify. Drop the confidence level far enough, and the tech won't be adopted.

    -reemul
    • Sounds perfect with the other part of the story of the 70cm HAM equipment. Just key up while walking through the door. I'm sure a few watts coming out of the antenna would overpower a passively transmitting bar tag. Even if a deadkey wouldn't do it, its relatively easy to build a radio jammer across a small spread of frequencies. And go through the doors once with a frequency counter, and you'll know exactly what channel to use.

    • Re:Great opportunity for hackers (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Robotech_Master ( 14247 ) on Saturday February 09, 2002 @11:24AM (#2979142) Homepage Journal
      The folks who are really concerned about this as a privacy issue need to go visit and abuse all of the test sites they can identify. Drop the confidence level far enough, and the tech won't be adopted.
      Sounds good, but just be sure to abuse them in a way that they overcharge you, not that you slip out with more goods than you've paid for--because if they catch you intentionally hacking the system to take a bunch of stuff out without paying for it, you'll find yourself charged with shoplifting so fast your head will spin, and no amount of claiming "I was just proving a point" will get them to see it otherwise. (q.v. the fellow who worked for Intel and was arrested for running a password cracker on an Intel machine to demonstrate how lax their security was.)

  • Rf readers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mudslayre ( 557699 ) on Saturday February 09, 2002 @10:21AM (#2979018)
    The issue of the cost of the tags is looked at heavily in the article, but that's a long run consideration. In order for the cost of the tags to really be applicable the stores have to have the readers installed in the checkouts. Readers which are likely to be horribly expensive - and management drones are notoriously tight when it comes to spending money on "new" (to them) technology.
  • How about lead lined backpacks? I don't know if lead would be ideal but (weight is not a concern, lead is not that heavy) shielding is what I'm thinking about. Is there a material that blocks the RFID signals? If so how do I sew it into my pants?
    • Nawh. A fine wire mesh should do the job. Size of the holes should be half the size of the RF.
    • I've forgotten where I found this but I thought it amusing at the time:

      Colorado Springs, Colorado, Jun 27, 2001 -- If you're thinking
      about going to the mall in that snappy aluminum-lined underwear in the back of your dresser drawer, think again.
      Beginning Sunday, it will be illegal in Colorado to wear aluminum underwear.OK, there's a caveat. You can wear aluminum
      briefs and lingerie as long as it's for personal amusement - but not if it is to help steal by foiling stores' anti-shoplifting devices.
      The new law is no laughing matter ... really."This is serious business," said Sen. Stephanie Takis, one of the bill's sponsors.
      "We have laws against using crowbars as theft devices, but if you were lining your underwear with aluminum foil, that
      was not a crime."And by golly, said Takis, it should be.She cited several Denver-area malls that have caught
      shoplifters with aluminum-lined shopping bags and even the so-called "iron pants" and could do nothing to stop it.
      Steve Miller, an attorney who helped draft the bill:"I don't know if it was the highlight of my career, but I got the
      assignment."Miller said the bill went through several evolutions - "or devolutions depending on your viewpoint" -
      before it received Gov. Bill Owens' approval.Essentially, it makes it a misdemeanor to make, wear or know others
      are wearing aluminum underwear if they intend to use it to fool stores' theft-protection devices.Those devices
      electronically sense when merchandise leaving the store hasn't been handled by a cashier, and foil can interfere with that detection.
      Miller said the new law also gives store employees civil and criminal immunity if they stop shoppers who crackle
      when they walk.
      • She cited several Denver-area malls that have caught shoplifters with aluminum-lined shopping bags and even the so-called "iron pants" and could do nothing to stop it.

        I don't understand. If they caught shoplifters, that means they had some evidence of shoplifting other than aluminum attire. Therefore it is not true that they "could do nothing to stop it." They (the malls) could arrest the shoplifters and charge them with theft. They did not need an additional law against aluminum attire.

        If, as I suspect, there was no evidence that the aluminum-clad were shoplifting, then it is wrong to refer to them as shoplifters.
    • I can remember some interesting conversations with Emerson Tan, who used to knock up HERF guns with microwave magnatrons. I imagine his plans are still on the web somewhere.
  • So I can find my TV remote !
  • that 5 cent tag is 50 times more expensive than the barcode. so if the manufacturer is happy with increasing the manufacturuing costs as they now also have to buy a machine to apply these (or hire a person) that 5 cent tage just became a 10 cent tag and is now 10 times more expensive than just including a 1 inch by 1 inch graphic in the printing process for the box already.

    sorry, it might help retailers but it doesnt help a manufacturer at all.
    • To be fair, you have to look at this not just as replacing bar codes, but also as replacing EAS (Electronic Article Surveillance) stickers and EAS "gator tags" (the paintbomb doohickeys that clip to clothing and other expensive items with a place to clip them). Those, and the equipment to read them, are also expensive, not to mention unreliable (cashiers can miss taking them off; once they're disabled they're permanently disabled; if they're attached to magnetic media (e.g. VHS), disabling them in the wrong way can also wipe the media), and they also require manpower to apply. (Speaking as someone who's been told more than once, "Hey, you're not busy, stick these stickers on all those items.")

      Plus, there's the issue of the SCOTS (Self Check-Out Terminal System) registers, that almost nobody seems to want to use at my store. They require customers to scan and bag the items themselves, then involve weight sensors in the bagging table to try to make sure that the customer didn't "sweetheart" himself and bag more items than he scanned. These are often unreliable as well. ("Wrong item bagged." "What do you mean wrong item? I just bagged the one I scanned!") A radio-ID tag would make this class of device a lot more accurate.

      Some folks (who are older than I am) will probably recall the similar furor surrounding the adoption of UPC bar codes. I recall hearing about all sorts of privacy concerns, mostly from nutcases who thought these were the Mark of the Beast talked of in Revelations. (In my BBS days, I once downloaded a Tetris clone called Quatris, that included a lengthy readme file "explaining" this, complete with ASCII graphics of a morose-looking fellow with a bar code on his forehead.)

      But by and large, bar codes seem to have done okay by us, privacywise, and they're used in the manufacturing and distribution of almost everything, from nonprescription medicine to package delivery. Similarly, I don't think that the people developing this system are secretly chortling and snickering at how this will take away everyone's privacy...well, hmm, maybe Scott "you have no privacy, get over it" McNealy is, but I don't think the other people are. Perhaps some sort of a compromise can be worked out.
  • I'm against privacy violations as much as most people here, but for the paranoid the solution to this seems simple enough:

    Find tag.
    Destroy tag.
    • Yes...although that bastion of white trash products,Wal-Mart has an interesting system,perhaps set up with their suppliers...I bought a 2.4Ghz BellSouth cordless there(simply for cheap thrills@$23.99...opened the thing up and found no less than 3!magnetic security strips..the kind made of plastic with myriad little seperate strips within...handset+base+adapter???..so be careful liberating without a ferrous purse......Fun4all...

  • Useful (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    While individuals might not like the sound of that, for company inventory/stock/asset management systems, a standardised rf tagging system would be great. Currently, most companies either have to tag their own iventory, or rely on a multitude of different barcode inventory tagging schemes that manufacturers have - and, for outdoor inventory, a barcode can quickly wear off...

  • DOS attack? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ChadAmberg ( 460099 )
    I wonder if its possible to buy these tags in bulk. Carry a bag of 10,000 into the store with you. Something like that would have to overload the system. You would be in your car before the computer could process all the tags at once.

  • Imagine this... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Timid_Monkey ( 125284 ) on Saturday February 09, 2002 @10:43AM (#2979053)
    Just think if these tags are somehow included in everything including clothing. Now, let's say I'm scanning people (with or without their knowledge). You could know as much as whether or not the girl next to you has a Victoria's Secret thong on, or some Jockey's brief. Perhaps even whether she has on any at all.


    And same in reverse. What if it's a laundry day and you have to go commando? Do you really want people to know?

  • Just buy a mag tape eraser or any powerful electormagnet.
    • Duh, hammer is the best
    • Disabling a Sensormatic tag like the ones Wal-Mart and others use would work with that. A true RFID tag won't work that way- you'd have to generate an EM pulse that would take out the electronics in your house or the store to do what you're suggesting.
      • Maybe microwaving all non-electronic purchases briefly would work.
        • Depends. Some non-electronic things have some nice, nasty conductive runs of metal on them.

          You don't want to microwave things like candles (there is a zinc wire in the wick of many of them these days for ensuring the wick stays upright throughout the life of the candle...) or gilt-edged china, etc.

          Microwaving might work, but the best, most effective way of dealing with the RFID stuff is to take the tags off of the item. All other methods have some drawbacks- some more severe than others.

  • RF ID tags are not a big problem for those who don't want to participate. It's like Internet browser cookies. You can let anyone put cookies on your hard drive. But, you didn't sign a contract with web site owners to give back the same cookies that they recorded. You could have software that gave back, not the correct cookies, but something subtly different.

    Similarly, you can allow them to irradiate your possessions with radio frequency signals. But you don't have to give back the signals they expect. If they ping your possessions, your own electronics can respond that you are carrying three large elephants from the zoo. If anyone questions you about this, you can confess that you have never stolen anything before, but that you carried the elephants away in an unusual moment of weakness.

    --
    Links to respected news sources show that U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence? [hevanet.com]
    • Good point. What's to really stop a terrorist from changing the tag on a real gun to that of a novelty gun or a pager? Okay...that's an extreme example, but hell somebody got on a plane with a shoe bomb for crying out loud. (Better yet, what about those jokers changing tags to something that would be of a concern to security personnel? If it's that easy to ping the things in the first place, it's probably that easy to change what it replies as well--at least for somebody bored enough--and unless there is some type of recourse/law against changing it, there's not much you can do to people that do this...are they going to make you sign a contract before you buy something? or do you know agree to a license for just walking into a store now? like a store-entrance license (if you do not agree to the terms of this store, exit from the store immediately)

      I just can't see this actually helping security at all. It would be too expensive to implement, (not to mention all the old products that don't have them), and would really have no great benefits in terms of security other than to lull naive people into a falser sense of it than we already have. This just seems like another stupid scheme to invade our privacy further, while not really providing any benefits to security personnel or consumers.

      The only way I could see this working is if they don't notify consumers about it. I could see them attempting this, but the way the manufacturing process is described (replace the bar-code) I wouldn't think it'd take that long for somebody to figure it out. (How long did those copy-protected CD's go before word was out? Oh yeah [fatchucks.com] that's right.)

      Hell even if it does what its supposed to, what good does that do? Uhh...sir, we see that you have a cell phone on you...well...umm...carry on I guess. (and if they actually got the point of putting it on handguns or weapons, then god help us if we need RF barcodes to detect them).

      Maybe I'm just missing something really obvious here...please correct me if I'm wrong.
      • Whelp, missed one of the whole points of this. Not sure how I got so focused on the security aspect. Feel free to mod the previous post down due to stupidity.

        It'd be useful, but again can't see it becoming mainstream, be kind of convenient in the whole (SpeedPass concept of the NY/PA/etc turnpike. Load up your basket and drive.

        I need caffeine
    • Similarly, you can allow them to irradiate your possessions with radio frequency signals. But you don't have to give back the signals they expect.

      Well, unless you've agreed not to screw with the signals, as part of your RF credit card contract. Presumably there'd be a no-tampering clause somewhere or other in there, so if you did go through a checkout line and mess with the checkout system in any way, you'd get in trouble.

    • Your idea has already been legislated. In many U.S. states, it's illegal to carry a device known as a "passive radiator," which is a non-powered electronic device that can modify a radar signal and re-generate it (but not amplify it) with slightly different characteristics, which would indicated a speed on a cop's radar gun different from what you are actually traveling.

      Give it time: Legislation will no doubt be passed which will prohibit you from carrying on your person RFIDs with the intent of bypassing or otherwise interfering with RFID detection systems.

  • If this goes on credit cards and drivers licenses (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wytcld ( 179112 ) on Saturday February 09, 2002 @11:09AM (#2979108) Homepage
    If this goes on credit cards and drivers licenses then I can scan you and get everything but your signature and (perhaps) the expiration dates. I can check that you're not carrying cards or IDs in more than one name (useful for airport security). I can scan you as you walk in the door of my rug store and check whether your cards are gold or platinum, and have my systems check whether a purchase of a certain amount can be covered. This means in many situations it won't matter if you dress up or dress down, because there will be a more accurate metric of your worth available - presuming you aren't carrying someone else's stolen wallet. Clothing would be an obvious use for this since many stores already have bar code plus security tag on each item - this would replace both. Serve 'em right if the introduction of the technology drives down sales by subtracting from the semiotic value of rags as wealth indicators.
    • I can't see why it would go on credit cards. Credit card companies aren't stupid, they know that anything that can provide information about the card to anyone other than the retailer is a bad thing. Why? Because they're the ones who have to eat the cost of credit card fraud. In part, this is why modern cash registers don't print the full card number on customers' receipts.

      There's no problem to be solved here the way there is with replacing bar codes/EAS tags. Credit card swiping is already a perfectly serviceable way of paying.

      Driver's licenses, OTOH...well, as much as they're "national ID card"ifying these, I could see it happening. I could see a cop checking your license plate and reading your driver's license (to be sure it's not suspended or out of date and matches to the list of people authorized to drive the car) at the same time he hits you with a radar gun...
      • I can't see why it would go on credit cards.

        One word: Speedpass [speedpass.com]. It's nothing other than a keyfob RFID tag that you carry around and use in lieu of a credit card. For all intents and purposes it is your credit card to a Speedpass reader.

        Mobil and Exxon use these things at their pumps. McDonalds is testing them in the Chicago area. If it catches on I expect to see the readers in more places.

        And, I expect someone to devise a little portable interrogator for these suckers. Stand in line next to your target, interrogate his Speedpass tag to get its ID, then use the ID yourself to make your own purchase. Hopefully some sort of challenge/response protocol is used to prevent this sort of abuse, but I haven't come across any sort of information about it.

    • I can scan you as you walk in the door of my rug store
      A simple farady cage (card sleeve) takes care of the snoops. Not a problem, just a new line of security products for the business traveler.
  • I keep seeing people say that all you have to do is locate and destroy the tags. The only problem is that the government could make it a crime to destroy the tags in items you buy. I don't think they will, but enough big companies pressing, et cetera might get them to do something of the sorts. Of course many wouldn't pay heed to such a law, but it's just a thought...

  • Hrumph (Score:1)

    by volkris ( 694 )
    It seems that everyone here is overlooking the benefits of these things because of, I think, overplayed concerns for privacy.

    First of all, I'm sure the readers for these things, particularly ones that can read without a person's knowledge, would be horribly expensive and simply beyond the reach of most of the people involved in examples people have been proposing on here.

    And that's not even considering how easy it would be to disable these things. For many things you remove the packaging from your groceries, and the RF tag would be thrown away with the package. If you were really paranoid you could follow the suggestions of some people here and EM blast your trash to hell before it goes out.

    For things like your porno mags simply deliver a swift holepunch right through the tag.

    The real negative of this thing is the cost. 5 cents is still huge compaired to the cost of a UPC. The payoff in convienience to consumers is great, though.
  • <imagin>
    So, with my RF equipment, I walk into the store, making sure I get to within a couple of meters of every product in the store.

    When I (innocently, mind you), walk through the checkout I hapily respond with all product codes I recorded.
    </imagin>

  • VERY dangerous, but don't forget the benefits (Score:5, Insightful)

    by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <[slashdot] [at] [keirstead.org]> on Saturday February 09, 2002 @11:28AM (#2979148)

    Ever see that IBM commercial where the guy grabs all this stuff, hides it under the jacket, and starts to walk out of the store? The security gruard grabs him, and you're supposed to think he's going to arrest him, but he really just says something stupid. Then the guy keeps walking, and these scanners pick up all the stuff he bought, and he just pays for the stuff. He's out of the store in like 15 seconds, none of this waiting in line for 15 mins.

    Now, I know I may be speaking to the wrong crowd here (who in slashdot actually COOKS stuff???) but I HATE grocery store lineups (Can I have a pricecheck on canned tomatores????) and the delays they cause.

    If these tags were somehow keyed to a specific store (with something like a public encryption key?), so that once you exited the premises they became disabled and/or useless, I can see no real privicy concerns. After all, they are just tags or stickers, if you're really paranoid just trash em when you get home. But the benefits to shopping would be immense. Not only would it speed up checkouts, it would be a very effective shoplifting deterrant (alot like existing systems that have a magnetic tag, but these ones you cant "sneak" around the scanners, cause they run on RF.)

    • Re:VERY dangerous, but don't forget the benefits (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Robotech_Master ( 14247 ) on Saturday February 09, 2002 @11:59AM (#2979235) Homepage Journal
      My retail-store place of employment has a system which is occasionally used during the busiest of times when all the available cashiers are on-line and there are still long queues. A manager uses his hand-held bar code scanner to zap all the items in a customer's cart while he's waiting in line, then all the cashier has to do is scan the bar code on a little card and the register rings up every item that the manager zapped.

      Speaking as a cashier who's worked with this system, I would find it very convenient not to have to scan every item before I bagged it (especially with the arcane "rings per minute" efficiency monitoring system my store uses, which requires pressing weird button combinations to stop the clock when we're not doing something). And speaking as a customer, I would find that sort of speedy checkout much more enticing.

      They just have to balance the convenience with privacy concerns somehow...
      • In the UK we have had RF tags for years but not permanent ones. I worked for a well known news agency once, their stock cupboards had RF tags.

        But these things are insidious, one minute its RF tags, then next its iris based passports controlled directly by politicians.
      • Being a cashier, you would be out of a job. You know that, right?

        I suspect all the cashiers would be replaced with a couple of guards to make sure nobody "jumps the gate" (so to speak).

        • Not really. Even the Self-Checkout lanes need an attendant, and even with the attendant, many customers feel they're too impersonal and just don't want to use them. Cashiers will still be required to process checks (since the computer hasn't yet been invented that can economically recognize all handwriting and verify that the check is written in the right amounts and to the right entity), to correct prices that aren't in the computer properly or manually enter the UPC for items whose bar codes are unreadable, to deactivate security tags (especially the ones that need to be physically removed), and, last but not least, to give the customer a smile and a have-a-nice-day-please-come-back.
          • Interesting, I thought they we're there to make sure minors weren't buying beer and tobacco. Checks are a different story, you can now have the cashier print the amount on your check, all you do is sign. But I agreee, there still needs to be a way to match the person with the id/credit card/check via visual or password verification.
    • (alot like existing systems that have a magnetic tag, but these ones you cant "sneak" around the scanners, cause they run on RF.)

      In fact, a lot of the current anti-theft tags DO work on RF already - they just resonate at a particular frequency. The detectors on the doors emit that frequency, and detect an "echo" which sounds the alarm. To deactivate the tag, when an item goes through the barcode scanner a much stronger pulse at the same frequency burns out the little tag, so it no longer echoes.

      This system could be used in a similar way: as you walk through a detector arch, the computer identifies and deactivates each tag it senses. Once there are no more tags present, everything you're carrying has been scanned and charged for - and you aren't carrying any working tags any more, so there are no privacy concerns: once you've paid for the items, the tag is deactivated.

      • as you walk through a detector arch, the computer identifies and deactivates each tag it senses.

        So if a person in a mall walks up to an item with a homebrew pocket RFID transceiver which accepts payments (into /dev/null), that person is then free to leave the store with goods in hand?

        To avoid suspicion, it wouldn't even have to be carried out of the store on the same day or even by the same person.

        Even video camera surveillance could be defeated as long as people trust such a system - for example, to remove a sweater from the store, wear modest clothing, just pick up two already-paid-for sweaters off the rack (a little slight-of-hand to make it look like you're just taking one helps), go into the changing room, put one of the sweaters underneath what you were wearing, return the other one to the shelf, perhaps buy something else, and walk out the store wearing the paid-for sweater.

    • Have you ever put some weird things in other peoples shopping carts when they're not looking?

      "WTF! - pickled pigs feet!?"...So I can imagine that people might wind up paying for stuff that they didn't want (Little kid chucks stuff into the cart, etc..)
    • ...who in slashdot actually COOKS stuff???

      Cooking is science you can eat [goodeatsfanpage.com]. There's a lot to like there.

    • The security gruard grabs him, and you're supposed to think he's going to arrest him, but he really just says something stupid. Then the guy keeps walking, and these scanners pick up all the stuff he bought, and he just pays for the stuff.

      The security guard said "Sir, you forgot your receipt" and gave it to him. He'd already been scanned and had paid.

      I always wondered why the receipt wasn't sent to him electronically...

  • Opt-out shopping bags and backpacks (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lildogie ( 54998 ) on Saturday February 09, 2002 @11:36AM (#2979167)
    This would create a market for 5-cent bags that screen out the tagged signals from the 5-cent tags.

    Spy vs. spy ==> tag vs. bag
    • I wonder if the 5 cent tags are in the same league as Cd's cheaper than cassettes, Lastedisks cheaper than videotape etc. etc. (Royalties and refusal to release something that may price cut the current cash cow were the biggest preventers of seeing these) These are not a 5 cent item yet. I doubt they ever will. Someone will want their cut of the pie. Too many pieces add up. Royalties, manufacturing, distribution, licensing, marketing, etc....

  • An excellent source of information on RFID basics (quite technical, actually) is Microchip, Inc.
    RFID Design Guides [microchip.com]

    NB, they're in PDF format.

    Ken
  • This is another one of those Star Trek ideas that sounds so wild but is really just too wild to really make it.

    First, $0.05 is a lot of money. Yes, I actually said that. Screw you, I've been poor, depression poor. Someone else pointed out that $0.05 is 50 times the cost of a UPC print and the manufacturers cost would actually be double that anyway. What I need to survive is the milk, flour, eggs, and cheese and I'm willing to pay for that. But at the end of my shopping trip you've tried to extract about $2.00 for some tags that don't do me, the consumer, squat? No, I don't think so.

    Spoofing is another reason it just isn't going to work. Say I'm wearing a coat I purchased last year and I go into a store to buy my brother the same coat this year as a gift because he liked mine so much. I'm in the checkout line and they're gonna scan two tags (the one I want to buy and the one I've had for a year). Sorting out stuff like that is going to be a costly nightmare for the retailer, especially if it goes so far that we have to go to small claims court in the end.

    Bait and switch spoofing will be as bad or worse than it is now with UPC scanning. For those of you who don't know, that's where you put a copy of a UPC (or the RF tag) of a products low end cousin on the package of the high end model. Checkers are trained for speed these days and told not compare scan reads with the product being scanned. I know one guy who got out of Wal Mart with a $500 TV for only $90 doing that.

    Bad idea. Very bad.

  • RF Tags already used (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Klatma ( 302045 ) on Saturday February 09, 2002 @11:59AM (#2979233)

    I am an engineer with a systems integrator, and I can say I have used these sorts of things many times. Many manufacturing plants use an rf tag that transmits a signal when excited with a certain frequency. They also have the ability to write to the tags as well. These tags generally have to be real close to the transmitter/receiver in order to work, and they don't work quite right if more than one tag is in range. Since all the transponders will most likely resond on the same frequency, there is going to have to be some tricky decoding going on to capture all the transponders within range.

    As for privacy, I don't see the problem. Like has been pointed out before, you just remove the transponder when you get home. Heck they could even have a transpoder return program similar to the can/bottle return in some states. Then the transponders can be reused and cut costs even more.

  • I think this is a great idea, myself. I wrote a paper in college about how wireless devices will change the future, what effect pervasive computing will have, about blahblahblahblah. Anyway, one of the points I made was that your refrigerator will use these RFID tags to determine what you have and don't have in your fridge. It could evaluate your buying and consumption habits for you automatically. That way, you take your Linux-based handheld to the grocery store and automatically download your fridge-generated shopping list. That was just one of the scenarios I presented, but I think that RFID tags will go a long way in making computing ubiquitous.

    • I would take that one step better, and say that your frig. could read the transponders and know the optimum temperature to keep that compartment, thus making your food fresher for longer. Also your cooker (oven, toaster, microwave, etc.) could read the transponder and know the optimum cook time and temp. for that hungry man dinner. Then when you are done, recycle the transponder for a $0.05 refund, similar to cans/bottle in many states.

  • how about getting home with the groceries and having them all inventoried within seconds? or you could walk out of the house and forget something you need every day and could be reminded. there are some neat sides to this too, you just have to find them.
  • ...uh, maybe, um, *remove* the RF tags after you've purchased the items?

    Is that not possible with these tags, or is this whole discussion one big retardathon?
  • Man, some of you guys get way too paranoid. These things have a range of a few feet at best. They're "passive", meaning that the electricity they have is generated from the signal sent to them. That's not a whole lot of energy, so the range is very limited. It would be like walking through those things they have at stores to detect shoplifters.

    It would be just as obvious, so you'd be able to choose whether or not you wanted to be scanned.
    • These things have a range of a few feet at best. They're "passive", meaning that the electricity they have is generated from the signal sent to them.

      First, with a sufficiently directional antenna on the querying unit you can appear quite "close" to the tag while being physically distant. This applies to both sending the power signal which is rectified to power the tag, and receiving the information signal from the tag.
      Second, even if that weren't true, during the 70's the Soviets (and probably the US) used dangerously high power levels of RF targetted at adversary facilities to excite passive listening devices inside the target facility such as flourescent ballasts and even simple diodes. Of course a rig like that would not get FCC approval, so it would not power a commercial threat to privacy.
      Third, this creates a niche for a DoubleClick-like company which would install scanner frames around the doors of retail shops. This would provide physical "walk trails" of shoppers and show the correlation between shopping at diferent stores. Participating merchants would have access to the data. This would be great data to have because it would tell the merchant about the non-buyers - those who looked around and didn't see anything they really liked. Every RFID on the person's body represents a buying decision he made in the past - couldn't that provide some clues about what the merchant should be selling/promoting/discounting?
  • Most people on slashdot are quite aware of the danger ESD poses to expensive electronic components. I would feel a lot safer with my expensive laptop tucked away in a bag that is lined with fine conductive mesh.

    There is one other nice thing about constructions like that: they block RF emissions. :-)

    I still have to figure out what to do with tagged clothing... I don't fancy walking around in something that closely resembles chainmail (except when I also get to wield a sword and a shield).
  • RFID = dongle of the future?
  • Make a so called "booster bag" it's what they use to get around the store detecters (I do not advocate this at all, it's your ass if you're caught with it) They simply take a bag and line it with aluminum foil, this prevents the tags from setting off the alarm. Any clue on what those strips are in barcodes, my suspicion is they're Americium or something to the likes. The thieves will be able to help us break this tech if people are afraid of it, they'll have to if they want to survive.
  • You don't have privacy anyway, so get over it.

  • washing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mountain_penguin ( 43679 )
    If all your clothing had rf tags then with an internet enabled washing machine you can be informed that you have left a red sock in with your washing. Correct washing of all the items and if you buy new stuff the washing instructions can be downloaded over the net from the clothing manufactures web sight. This also means that they can tell how often you wash what cloths but would still be very cool
  • Like many technologies, there's a lot of potential here, both good and bad. But it's not just stores that want products to have RF tags -- consumers could benefit greatly from them. What's needed is just enough cooperation with the stores to allow a handoff of the "ownership" of those tags; this would protect my privacy once I've left the store, and make the tags useful to me once I own the product they're attached to.

    I want a protocol that looks something like this:

    1. BigStoreCo RF tags all its products, programming in a unique id, product info, and an unlock code [per item].
    2. When I check out, the store's computer sends the unlock codes, along with useful information like product info and price I paid, for all the stuff I bought to my wallet's embedded computer (via RF, protected from evesdroppers by my public key).
    3. My wallet (or when I get home, my house) reprograms all the tags with new unique ids and unlock codes, and stores them in my personal database.
    Now my fridge tracks my food inventory. My trash can lets my house know when I'm down to the last pack of toilet paper. My wallet keeps an up-to-date shopping list in its tiny brain all the time, so when I'm out I know what I need.

    Just a thought,

  • 2^96 (2 to the 96th power), or
    79 octillion, or
    79,228,162,514,264,337 trillion, or
    79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,336
    unique identifiers.

    According to the Population Reference Bureau [prb.org] there are 6.137 billion people on earth [prb.org], 1.193 billion of those in "more developed countries".

    Doing a little quick math:

    Each human can be equally assigned
    12,909,917,307,196,405,017 IDs, or
    12 quintillion ID's, or
    12,909,917 trillion ID's per person, equally distributed among all humans.

    I don't think I have that much stuff in my house, even if you break down every item into its simplest parts. And I have 6 PC's!

    So my question is, can someone drive by in a van, by my house, and get an entire inventory of what I have in my house? Or does it only work within a few feet?

    Could the Gas Man (natural gas) with a little wand walk around my house and get a good idea of what I have? Yikes!
  • So that company wants this on 70cm? I'm prettys sure the FCC won't remove that band, it's about second in usage to 2m. Now, when one gets an amateur radio license, he signs a document saying that the FCC can revoke any frequency privleges he previously had. That doesn't mean that if I've got some old radios hanging around I'm going to ditch 'em. Now, let's just say that they make the 70cm band shared. Let's say that I'm also having a nice conversation and sign off as I walk in to a store. I clip my HT on my belt and walk around picking up all the stuff I want to get. When I walk up to the counter, what if I, not thihnking of course, decide to key up on 440. I doubt that the readers are more powerful than a few hundred mW. If I've got an HT that can do 6W, every passive device for a couple of isles next to me will be transmitting their ID code.

    Actually, that sounds like fun, 440 has a tendency to mess with stuff anyways. I wonder what product it would report if I decided to say "kc8qrm* monitering" on the right frequency with a good amount of power? I'm thinking it might just report back by giving some nice Magic Smoke.

    Ok, granted that's all a bit tongue-in-cheak, but the truth is that just because some company can't figure out how to get this to work on another band (2.4Ghz? 900MHz?) correctly, we shouldn't be allocating them new frequencies. Radio Amateurs perform public service and are there in case of emergencies. Take a look at amateur radio everyone, it's really pretty easy to get involved these days. There is no morse code requirement now for a Tech. license, and the highest requirement is only 5wpm. It's a fun hobby, and it'll help you get a higher geek rating on your score card ;-)

    --Josh

    *kc8qrm isn't my callsign. It's in a different regon than I live, and they'll never give those 3 letters in a call, QRM is a Q-code that means interferiance.
  • I gather from the artical that this is to replace bar codes. So why would it still be activated when you leav the stor? And what prevents people from trashing them when thay get home. I real don't see what all this privacy stuff is about. Companys are trying to make products that will be cool, fun, what have to talk to the chasier any more. These will actul be hard to hack. From the looks of it. The numbers are hard coded into the tags like bar codes. so you can not reprogram them easly. I guess you could jam the signal althou I think that will take a good deal of work and have to explane to the chase why you eminating RF's signales everytime you go through the the check out. sig-- who needs to spell anyway
  • Simply zap your purchases with your handheld EMP generator.

    Uh, you do have a handheld EMP generator don't you?

    (A Stargate Zat gun will do in a pinch.)

  • Current Applications (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adamjone ( 412980 ) on Saturday February 09, 2002 @03:15PM (#2979827) Homepage

    I work for a systems integrator [flexint.com] and I have evaluated and used RFID in a couple of systems. There are only a handful of scenarios where using the RFIDs makes sense right now.

    One scenario where RFIDs do make sense is in large warehouses and storage systems. With barcodes, the fork truck operator must be fairly accurate in his aim to get a proper ID back. With the RFIDs, he has a lot more room for error. A single RFID can identify what is in a skid of product, so the cost is relatively small.

    A situation where RFIDs don't work well is in the consumer market. Currently, beverage makers are able to print the barcode directly onto the container (case, can, bottle). With RFIDs, the manufacturing must add an extra step in order to apply the ID. The additional cost of the ID, plus the cost of modifying the packaging system is far too great right now to justify using RFIDs. Add to this the fact that most supermarkets will need to install new equipment at the checkout for identifying the products. It is a change that is not worth making when the current barcode system works very well.

    For those concerned about someone scanning all of your products in a single sweep, don't be (at least not with today's version of RFID). You have to be within a couple of feet of the ID to get it to respond. Also, several brands of the RFIDs are reprogrammable, so you could simply reset all of the IDs when you got home. Most likely, the ID is applied to the packaging, and not the product itself, so you could just throw out the box as well. I have found in my testing that if more than one ID is within the activation range of the reader, the reader will not get the right value. So you can rest your fears (at least until a better RFID tag is created).

  • various ham bands - I can imagine driving by a super market and having someones package of doritos out do my qso.
  • I did a paper in college on various methods used by stores to prevent shoplifting. Most of the systems use some sort of RFID. Perhaps not as elaborate as the one they are proposing, but similar. They all have the common charactaristic of being able to be disabled by a short high intensity burst of RF waves. Basically they work from a capacitor and antenna, the high power burst burns out the capacitor and theyre usless. I suspect that if this ever comes to pass, some enterprising geek will come up with a high intensity RF machine that can disable any tag.
  • I hope this is not too off-topic, but I think it's interesting and it uses the same physics.

    You can make passive radio frequency, RF, tags with diode arrays. Semiconductor diodes fluoresce in RF when illuminated by microwaves. The fluorescence wavelength is determined by the energy band gap of the diode. Combinations of diodes with different energy gaps fluoresce in different combinations of radio frequencies.

    There is a technique for making microscopic (tens to hundreds of nanometers) dust from the surface of a silicon wafer. I forget who invented it but it's years old... you use hydrofluoric acid, hydrogen peroxide, and ultrasound. I think Science News did a piece on it.

    Here's the part I thought of:

    A very diffuse cloud of this diode dust has interesting properties. You can illuminate it from one direction with a microwave beam and you can observe the cloud with a RF receiver. Now, any sound waves in the cloud cause the RF signal from the suspended diode particles to oscillate (Doppler effect)... it's straight frequency modulation.

    You can hear everything within the cloud and only sounds passing through the cloud. You just have to demodulate the RF coming from the dust.

    Spread the dust through a building and you can listen anywhere in the building by controlling the volume of overlap between the microwave emitter field and the RF receiver antenna field.

    I don't have the money to do this but I'll bet any one $5 that it would work.

  • Computer users need an ARRL (Score:3, Insightful)

    by crucini ( 98210 ) on Saturday February 09, 2002 @05:30PM (#2980197)
    Never mind the RF tags. What I find interesting is:
    1. The ARRL saw a threat to the RF commons (a "band threat" as they term it).
    2. ARRL complained to the relevant authority (the FCC) using the words, procedures and scientific context with which the FCC is comfortable. They provided an argument which FCC officials might feel comfortable adopting as an official position.

    Now contrast this with how the same drama would play itself out in computer-land:
    1. We would learn of the threat after the ruling had been passed, or maybe two days before a deadline for comments.
    2. We would not understand the context or language of the legislators/regulators. Our arguments would be framed in terms of abstract ideas of liberty or justice, based on quotes from the founding fathers. This is painfully illustrated by the quantity of irrelevant comments received in response to the proposed Microsoft settlement (although we are not told what proportion of the irrelevant comments are pro- or anti-settlement).
    3. Having no credible, agreed-upon spokesman, we would simply barrage legislators with angry, incoherent, badly spelled emails.
    4. We would probably send our email to the wrong address, for example a legislator who has no direct bearing on this particular process.
    5. Inevitably, we would be defeated and retreat into sullen mumbling about the "corruption" of the government.

    Anyhow, I respect the ARRL for understanding the rules of engagement and for not waiting until the enemy brings the fight to them. Whether they win or lose this specific battle is not as important - the important thing is that they have preserved the right of ordinary citizens to operate radios. Looks like that right may outlast the right of ordinary citizens to operate computers.

    What would it take for the computer world to grow an ARRL?

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