Spychips: Are You Being Tracked?

http://www.alternet.org/story/29890/

Are You Being Tracked?

By Devanie Angel, Sacramento News & Review. Posted December 27, 2005.

Big business thinks Radio Frequency Identification tags are great. Privacy-rights advocates fear the tiny chips will invite corporations and the government into our personal lives.

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It looks fairly innocuous, a metal-and-plastic square with wires coiled up like an angular snail, a lot like the anti-theft tag you'd find if you pried apart a book you'd just bought at a chain store. But it's a Radio Frequency Identification tag, RFID for short, and each one has a tiny antenna that can broadcast information about the product, or person, to which it is attached.

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This small tag has, so far, largely flown under the radar of consumers and the mainstream press. But in early October, privacy-rights advocates Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre published a book, "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID," that has RFID proponents on the defensive.

The book holds up plenty of evidence to back up the fears of people who otherwise might be written off as tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists: IBM taking out a patent for a "person-tracking unit" that uses RFID tags to identify individuals, their movements and purchases in stores. Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart collaborating on a test that put cameras on a store shelf in Oklahoma and watched customers pluck lipsticks off an RFID-enabled shelf. A Sutter County grade school's experimental program requiring students to wear RFID-enabled badges to track their on-campus movements, thanks to supplies donated by the InCom Corp. based 50 miles northwest of Sacramento.

And the federal government plans to put RFID tags in passports, prescription medications and perhaps driver's licenses and postage stamps. One day, the "Spychips" authors fear, the tiny tags could be on everything from candy bars to dollar bills, compromising both privacy and personal security.
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If you are bothered by the NSA tracking you, you have to realize what is going on with RFID, it is going to be on every thing and you CANNOT DISABLE IT, at least at this point.

RFID has a unique serial number in every single teensy chip, which makes it different than a "class" based barcode which identifies a class of items. An RFID, which can be sewn into clothing, embedded in plastic, and is already in more items than you know about, uniquely identifies the item, and thus, YOU.

the passive tags are the tiny ones that dont use batteries. They can only be read by a powered reader, and only at a range of less than 3 feet. I'm not too worried about that.

The active one are much larger, the size of a small cell phone, but have a much wider range and are much more expensive. The Army was looking into using them to track vehicles, I dont know if they followed through on it.

and if you go down the freeway, you could be tracked by readers placed strategically along the road.

One example the book uses is shelves in the grocery store that might make decisions on what price YOU would pay based on the information collected on you via RFID (ala Store card collection only ratched up).

Why not require implants in children, so we can track them when they're kidnapped of course. We would never use these devices to do anything illegal (especially since we write the laws). :banghead:

just that with current RFID technology, it is impossible to track someone using only passive chips. Sure, a store can tell what you bought and when, but they can do that already.

I read about 8 years ago about Microsoft making "smart" refrigerators that could know the contents of everything in it and spit out a list or remind you when you were out of certain items. I wondered at the time how they could do this but the answer is a READER in the refrigerator and every item inside RFID tagged.

Or take medicine cabinets equipped with readers so that they could know every item.

developed from the beginning to do just that (track you and build a profile). The passivity means it is that much harder to detect and you just have to make the reader more sensitive to increase the range.

I've been researching them for a while now to do asset management. The best systems available now have a range of under 3 feet, you have to pass all items through a powered doorway to read the chips. They are also easily confused by magnetic interference, so you cant use them to track things like computers or electric items that are on at the time.

doomed. Just the thought of being tracked gives me the chills.

Use a debit/credit card, surf the net, have a E toll pass, use e-mail? Surveillance cameras are becoming omnipresent. It has happened.

freedom. Freedom to go where you want, as long as THEY know where you're going.

I asked the Park Ranger why they were there and he said for "surveillance". I said "What? do you have a problem with people not paying the $5 entrance fee?" Then told him that I did think that was a viable use of my tax dollars. He tried to laugh it off, I didn't think it was funny.

Because it ensures a police state where no one has freedom, certainly not to protest their government.

what a joke that is. Who is "keeping us safe" from our own government? It is up to 'we the people' to put an end to this.

If the Bush Criminal Empire's "investment division" is making these things, you know they have a purpose in mind for the tags. And any purpose they have can't be good. :scared:

There are a number of companies already that have taken out patents for collecting information on people via RFID for the purpose of marketing and tracking them, to sell more. In fact, the CASPIAN people have asked for volunteers to comb the patents being granted now because it's happening quickly and is big business.

They added the chip to package of razor blades to see what product was selling in what demographic area and how long it took the consumer to finish the package (how often they changed the blade) and dispose of it through their garbage collection system.

They claimed it would help them to develop targeted advertisements for the areas that purchased the different products. I was creeped out by the idea of it way back then.

You pretty much give away your position to anyone who is interested in following you if you talk on your cell if they have the proper equipment to hunt you down. Am I right or wrong here? Nevermind that the NSA has more than enough capability to listen in on you provided they decided to spy on domestic citizens.

You can buy programs that allow monitoring of your kids movements via their cell phones.
reedit: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9135838/site/newsweek/
edit to add: http://www.ezilon.com/information/article_13670.shtml

your buying habits, your use of time. If every item you wear is tagged, then any store can make decisions based on that as to what and how to market it to you. If you then add your own information via a plastic card that is chipped, they can collect information on you personally, ala "Minority Report".

actually i'd rather get offers that cater to me, why shouldn't i get a letter offering me three days suite, food, beverage comped at wynn (actual piece of junk mail received this summer), why shouldn't i get free coupons for victoria's secret panties (get those all the time), why shouldn't i get...but bragging is obnoxious

it's a done deal, if we have a certain lifestyle & live in certain zip codes, assumptions are made, if you don't like the assumptions, find a way to mess with it, garbage in garbage out still applies

i don't look forward to getting the geezer mail that comes when they figure out you're a certain age, but alas, the DMV and SSN pretty much insists our ages are public information, put in your name and city, you'll come up w. a private investigator's advertisement that blabs yr age right there online

we live in a goldfish bowl, this is a losing battle, i'm already a suspicious person as far as gov't is concerned, might as well at least look good to the advertisers who give out the goodies

their lives tracked, examined and manipulated via RFID ought to be able to easily OPT OUT. (or OPT IN, for that matter).

For example, when leaving a store, I ought to have the ability to disable/neutralize an RFID chip.

And, at least in Texas, you can tell the DMV you do NOT want your information to be given out.

And when you pay, unless it is cash, then they have a name to match to the items bought, and it is recorded.

Actually, that helped me out one time. I was accused of driving off without paying for the gas. I was able to use the credit card record to show that I had paid.

Caspian, which is against store cards.

Second, this is isn't just a matter of tracking what you bought on a generic, class basis. RFID individually chips an item-that is, 100 shoes of a certain manuf and style will not have ONE barcode but 100 individualized serial number. So that, when you leave the store, you could be uniquely identified by your particular pair of shoes.

that recently have been indicted in their country. The spooks thought there would be no way and freely used their cells phones. Duh......the only way to defeat/limit tracking is an older phone that does not have GPS program or to remove your battery.

Recently a news station in NY left a popular toy in a taxi to see if it would get turned in. They had a tracking device attached to it and after weeks it moved around then, it finally stopped at an address in N.J. They assumed it ended up under a Christmas tree.

own, they don't want citizens to track or exert ownership rights over personal information the corporations compile.

Why don't people have OWNERSHIP rights over thier own information?

Why don't people have OWNERSHIP rights over thier own information?

my subject title is the short answer

the long answer is, we gave our personal information away because we get benefits, sometimes real (we are allowed to operate a motor vehicle), sometimes maybe not so real, supposedly discounts on groceries that may or may not actually be offered

gamblers no longer protect their privacy at the casino, they line up to give their personal information, why, because you are rewarded w. everything from $5 and a free buffet for the little guy, to airfare, limo, suite, gourmet meals and beverages, shopping sprees, sports events, clothihg, crap, i can't even remember what-all i've gotten as rebates on my action, just for allowing ourselves to be tracked

it is too much money to leave on the ground, even if all you do is open a bank account, you have to give certain proof of who you are, and it's WORTH it, the first time you don't get robbed of all your cash because it's in the bank where it is FDIC insured, whereas cash money in your house is not covered by insurance above $200 worth

if we want to live the life of an unknown person and keep our information close, it costs us, so we give up the information

people WANT to be tracked by cell phone because what if, god forbid, YOU were buried under the twin towers, the last two people rescued were found because of their cells if i call correctly (if i don't a new yorker will correct me!)

people WANT to be found when they're having a heart attack on the free way and can't talk clearly to the operator

now as there is little or no perceived benefit to having the RFID tags in clothes, razors, etc. i can see people being p.o.'d but the camel is already in the tent, he ain't going anywhere now

the privacy advocates, and i used to be one, have already lost because we've been bought off

we did own our information but we sold it a long, long, long time ago

everybody on this thread has given away information to get a driver's license, a grocery card, or some other benefit of value that exposes their info to strangers

around.

I read the other day that DMVs are about to start putting tracking devices in cars that will disable the auto if it is removed. Your way of looking at this situation would be to throw your hands up because so much privacy intrusions have already happened, so what the heck is one more?

The same reasonings could cause us to say, about Bush's NSA spying, well, he's already BEEN doing it for a couple of years, so let's keep on data-mining because we're powerless.

IMO, the inroads made upon our privacy are because people don't fully understand the implications of a society where there is "no place to hide" because monitoring/detecting/tracking is ubiquitious.

Specifically, what was not disclosed at the time regarding the eventual use the information would be put to.

For example, when I go to the store to make a purchase and need to either write a check, and/or the store doesn't have the proper equimpment for me to use a debit card, usually they demand to see ID. For the purpose of conducting the transaction, I will show my ID and zip the debit card which is also a Visa or Mastercard. However, I never agreed to allow the use of any of the information given to the merchant for any purpose other than transferring the money from me to the merchant.

It seems to me there's a deception therein. Something wasn't fully disclosed prior to the transfer of info.

THEY want OUR money!! I wouldn't give up so easily, or assume that THEY have all the power. Just this week, I wanted to switch to Verizon from MCI because Verizon had a better deal, it would save me about 30 dollars a month.

Your theory, they had something I wanted so I would give up personal info to get it!!

Wrong!! When we were at the point of switching, they asked for one more thing 'we'll need your SS # in order to complete the transfer'. I asked 'why', I thought my SS# was for employment purposes only (of course I know this has been going on for quite a while now, but wanted to voice an objection and lose them a customer over it).

She said 'well, unless we have that # we can't complete the transfer'. I said 'well let me think about that, I'll get back to you'.

The transfer was supposed to happen by the end of this week, AFTER they got the SS#. But guess what, by the following day they had completed the transfer, one week earlier that agreed upon, even with the SS#. I have the cheaper service and they don't have my SS#. So, I guess they wanted a new customer more than the SS#. If everyone did that, we WOULD have privacy. But everyone doesn't. It works, they are greedy and that's how we can beat them.

Take a stand. A lot of people are not happy with this, but don't believe they have any power anymore. How sad! The more who stand up to this invasion of privacy, the more chance we have of stopping them. And it works, because they are as greedy as you say we are. It's a game of chicken really. I don't mind playing for a good cause.

put your tray tables back and seat backs up and kiss your free ass good-bye.

Minority Report? I think too many here are woefully ignorant of the capabilities of current technology. :freak: