Microchips Everywhere

http://nonais.org/index.php/2008/01/26/microchips-everywhere/

January 26, 2008
Microchips Everywhere
News — walterj 5:01 pm
Interesting mainstream article. We have been point out these issues for a long time. Perhaps the public will finally wake up and smell the RFID tagged coffee…

Microchips with antennas will be embedded in virtually everything you buy, wear, drive and read, allowing retailers and law enforcement to track consumer items - and, by extension, consumers - wherever they go, from a distance. … microchips are turning up in some computer printers, car keys and tires, on shampoo bottles and department store clothing tags. They’re also in library books and “contactless” payment cards (such as American Express’”Blue” and ExxonMobil’s “Speedpass.”)
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With tags in so many objects, relaying information to databases that can be linked to credit and bank cards, almost no aspect of life may soon be safe from the prying eyes of corporations and governments, says Mark Rasch, former head of the computer-crime unit of the U.S. Justice Department. By placing sniffers in strategic areas, companies can invisibly “rifle through people’s pockets, purses, suitcases, briefcases, luggage - and possibly their kitchens and bedrooms - anytime of the day or night,” says Rasch, now managing director of technology at FTI Consulting Inc. (FCN), a Baltimore-based company.
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In an RFID world, “You’ve got the possibility of unauthorized people learning stuff about who you are, what you’ve bought, how and where you’ve bought it … It’s like saying, ‘Well, who wants to look through my medicine cabinet?’”
He imagines a time when anyone from police to identity thieves to stalkers might scan locked car trunks, garages or home offices from a distance. “Think of it as a high-tech form of Dumpster diving,” says Rasch, who’s also concerned about data gathered by “spy” appliances in the home. “It’s going to be used in unintended ways by third parties - not just the government, but private investigators, marketers, lawyers building a case against you …”
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As RFID goes mainstream and the range of readers increases, it will be “difficult to know who is gathering what data, who has access to it, what is being done with it, and who should be held responsible for it,” Maxwell wrote in RFID Journal, an industry publication. The recent growth of the RFID industry has been staggering: From 1955 to 2005, cumulative sales of radio tags totaled 2.4 billion; last year alone, 2.24 billion tags were sold worldwide, and analysts project that by 2017 cumulative sales will top 1 trillion - generating more than $25 billion in annual revenues for the industry.
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A 2005 patent application by American Express itself describes how RFID-embedded objects carried by shoppers could emit “identification signals” when queried by electronic “consumer trackers.” The system could identify people, record their movements, and send them video ads that might offer “incentives” or “even the emission of a scent.”
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In 2006, IBM received patent approval for an invention it called, “Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items.” One stated purpose: To collect information about people that could be “used to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas.”
Once somebody enters a store, a sniffer “scans all identifiable RFID tags carried on the person,” and correlates the tag information with sales records to determine the individual’s “exact identity.” A device known as a “person tracking unit” then assigns a tracking number to the shopper “to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas.”

But as the patent makes clear, IBM’s invention could work in other public places, “such as shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, restrooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, museums, etc.” (RFID could even help “follow a particular crime suspect through public areas.”)

Another patent, obtained in 2003 by NCR Corp. (NCR), details how camouflaged sensors and cameras would record customers’ wanderings through a store, film their facial expressions at displays, and time - to the second - how long shoppers hold and study items.

Why? Such monitoring “allows one to draw valuable inferences about the behavior of large numbers of shoppers,” the patent states.

Then there’s a 2001 patent application by Procter & Gamble, “Systems and methods for tracking consumers in a store environment.” This one lays out an idea to use heat sensors to track and record “where a consumer is looking, i.e., which way she is facing, whether she is bending over or crouching down to look at a lower shelf.”
The system could space sensors 8 feet apart, in ceilings, floors, shelving and displays, so they could capture signals transmitted every 1.5 seconds by microchipped shopping carts.

The documents “raise the hair on the back of your neck,” says Liz McIntyre, co-author of “Spychips,” a book that is critical of the industry. “The industry has long promised it would never use this technology to track people. But these patent records clearly suggest otherwise.”
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Still, the idea that tiny radio chips might be in their socks and shoes doesn’t sit well with Americans. At least, that’s what Fleishman-Hillard Inc., a public-relations firm in St. Louis, found in 2001 when it surveyed 317 consumers for the industry.

Seventy-eight percent of those queried reacted negatively to RFID when privacy was raised. “More than half claimed to be extremely or very concerned,” the report said, noting that the term “Big Brother” was “used in 15 separate cases to describe the technology.”

It also found that people bridled at the idea of having “Smart Tags” in their homes. One surveyed person remarked: “Where money is to be made the privacy of the individual will be compromised.”

In 2002, Fleishman-Hillard produced another report for the industry that counseled RFID makers to “convey (the) inevitability of technology,” and to develop a plan to “neutralize the opposition,” by adopting friendlier names for radio tags such as “Bar Code II” and “Green Tag.”
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[I]n the United States, RFID is not federally regulated. And while bar codes identify product categories, radio tags carry unique serial numbers that - when purchased with a credit card, frequent shopper card or contactless card - can be linked to specific shoppers. And, unlike bar codes, RFID tags can be read through almost anything except metal and water, without the holder’s knowledge.
-AP News

NAIS for shoppers. What is it going to take to wake up the public? Some people already get it but all to many turn a blank face when asked to care about farmers and homesteaders dealing with the USDA’s proposed National Animal Identification System.