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| Apparently, the
photos I took at the Frontline conference hit a nerve, as now there has
been a request (see the Advanstar letter below) not to share them with
anyone. These photos depict item-level RFID tagging of consumer items including: Calvin Klein, Champion, and Abercrombie & Fitch clothing, Huggies baby wipes, Kimberly Clark diapers, Nyquil cold medicine, CVS vitamins, Similac baby formula, and Lanacane cream. (Click for photos) The RFID tagging of these items is quite shocking from a consumer privacy standpoint, since the RFID industry has been telling lawmakers and the press that they are interested in only "supply side" inventory tracking on crates and pallets. They have claimed that item-level tagging of consumer goods is not feasible for the near term, thus there is no need to worry about its consumer privacy implications. Over 40 consumer groups (including CASPIAN) came out against item-level RFID tagging of consumer goods in a position statement issued last November. Since that time, the RFID industry has carefully kept any item-level tagging far from public view. The fact that vendors were openly promoting item-level tagging among themselves at this "private conference" is huge news -- news that I am sure they would prefer not be discovered by the public. The RFID industry's desire to keep these images hidden underscores the dangers the public faces from this powerful and insidious surveillance technology and the companies that would deploy it in secrecy. FROM: http://www.spychips.com/frontline-letter.html
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8-29-04 - DREAM - I found myself laying in bed. I moved a large
board - about 2 ft across by 3 feet long. On the bottom, it was covered
with big black spiders. There were hundreds of them on the board. They
were thick bodied, really black, about 1/2" across. (Rather
like black widow spiders, but these didn't have any marking on them)
I screamed for Joe to get the spider spray and kill the spiders. He was
out in the livingroom and the door was closed between us. He heard me
and came running and opened the door. I was screaming for him to kill
the spiders and I already had the spider spray can in my hand so I
handed it to him.
He started spraying and killing the spiders but they were multiplying
and crawling up the wall by the thousands. The more he sprayed, the more
they grew and spread across the wall. Some were dropping to the
floor like they were dead, but then I noticed that each spider had a
colored ribbon around its neck and started looking like little brown
Teddy Bears and I noticed there was a sale tag on each spider that read,
"Made in China" on it attached to the neck.
I said, "We are going to have to fumigate", then realized we'd
have to get rid of my finches (birds) if we would fumigate and felt
reluctant to do that. I told him, "I just can't handle this
many all by myself."
End of dream
Note: Recently in the news there have been articles about Wal-Mart
putting RFID
tags (bugs) into their products for sale in the U.S.
This dream was probably about Wal-Mart and RFID tags.
Dee
3-17-06 - This past year, I bought two lovely puppies and they are registered AKC. Within a 6 month period legislation was put through in my county (Stanislaus) California that all dogs had to be ID chipped. They tried to get in cats too but there was a big protest about that. Good thing because I had 12 cats that were all strays that people dumped off at my house. Had they passed that law, I probably would have ended up with 30 dumped off cats. Once I had my ID chips put in my puppies and got them licensed, they came to my door and wanted to know if I was going to breed my dogs. I said, "Yes! I plan to breed my dogs". The uniformed woman handed me a small brochure and told me that if I did that, I had to get permission from the country to breed the dog (only one breeding per year) and I had to pay them a fee of $100 to do so, and get a license number for that breeding. The license number has to be placed into the newspaper ad or the newspaper will not print it, 'and' I will be fined $500 for breeding without their knowledge. So much for dogs! Now, I find out from http://www.spychips.com/ that they want to ID tag every animal used for food in this country, including if you have your own chickens or pigs or goats or cows, etc. and they will not only track what you eat, buy for the animals, but every visitor that comes to your property, 'AND' there is a gps satellite that takes a photo of your property from the air so they can take a photo once a trip around the earth and track your property to make sure you don't have more animals than you say you do, etc. Also, you have to file paperwork on all this even if you just have one chicken, or one goat or one pig. This is just the beginning! Get free newsletters here: What is coming is that your cell phone will be chipped so that you can't even get into a store unless you are completely registered in advance so they have your credit card number, social security number and/or ID number when these get issued to people in this country. That is coming too! ~~~~~ 2-28-08 - DREAM - I went to visit a relative in a southeastern state. She did artistic work for a living. She was working on a design for a new I.D. card that everyone would have to carry. She said that the I.D. card would be the same size as a driver's license. She showed me the drawing she had made which she said left room to have our own signatures placed prominently over the figure of white horse called Pegasus.
May 24, 2007
By Jason Szep
BOSTON (Reuters) - New Hampshire on Thursday joined a growing list of states to reject a controversial U.S. identification card that opponents say will cost billions of dollars to administer and present a risk to privacy. The Democratic-controlled state Senate approved legislation to prohibit the Real ID program in a 24-0 vote, and Gov. John Lynch said he would sign the bill, which passed the state House of Representatives on April 6. New Hampshire becomes the 13th state to oppose the identification card. Another 22 states are considering similar legislation or resolutions to reject it, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. "I applaud the Senate for overwhelmingly rejecting Real ID and for sending a strong message to the federal government," Lynch, a Democrat, said in a statement. "I look forward to signing this legislation, which will ensure the interests of the people of New Hampshire are protected." The U.S. Congress in 2004 passed a law calling for the national digital identification system. It is intended as a post-September 11 security measure to make more secure the state-issued driver's license that are an ubiquitous form of identification in the United States. Under the program, states would be required to verify documents presented with license applications and to link their license databases into a national electronic network. The federal law that created the program did not provide states with funds to carry it out. "We are tremendously concerned that everyone's most sensitive, personally identifiable information is going to be in a database that is wide open, unprotected and will draw identify thieves like bees to honey," said Tim Sparapani, senior counsel at the ACLU. But backers say the driver's license -- a primary means of identification in the United States -- is fundamentally insecure because of widespread identity theft.
Some 227 million people hold
drivers' licenses or identity cards given out by
states, which issue or renew about 70 million each
year.
Lawmakers in neighboring Maine passed a resolution demanding repeal of the Real ID Act in January -- making the New England state the first in the nation to do so. The program would also require states to verify that people receiving the cards are in the country legally, though they would have the ability to issue other forms of driving permits to illegal aliens. National ID: Biometrics Pinned to Social Security Cards
The Social Security card faces its
first major upgrade in 70 years under
two immigration-reform proposals
slated for debate this week that would
add biometric information to the card
and finally complete its slow
metamorphosis into a national ID.
The leading immigration proposal with traction in Congress would force employers to accept only a very limited range of approved documents as proof of work eligibility, including a driver's license that meets new federal Real ID standards, a high-tech temporary work visa or a U.S. passport with an RFID chip. A fourth option is the notional tamper-proof biometric Social Security card, which would replace the text-only design that's been issued to Americans almost without change for more than 70 years. A second proposal under consideration would add high-tech features to the Social Security card allowing employers to scan it with specially equipped laptop computers. Under that proposal, called the "Bonner Plan," the revamped Social Security card would be the only legal form of identification for employment purposes. Neither bill specifies what the biometric would be, but it could range from a simple digital photo to a fingerprint or even an iris scan. The proposals would seem to require major changes to how Social Security cards are issued: Currently, new and replacement cards are sent in the mail. And parents typically apply for their children before they're old enough to give a decent fingerprint. There are also logistical problems to overcome before forcing all of the nation's employers to verify a biometric card -- given the nation has millions of employers, many of whom may not have computer equipment at all. "This is an exact example of why IDs are so ludicrous as a form of security," American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Tim Sparapani said. "Do we really think the migrant workers are going to show up at the pickle farm and the farmer is going to demand ID and have a laptop in the field to check their ID?" That's one of the problems that Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-California), who heads a key House immigration subcommittee, says she's thinking about. "There seems to be a fairly strong sentiment that there needs to be an easy way to reliably enforce whatever rules we adopt and the biometric is something being discussed in all the House bills," Lofgren told Wired News. "Obviously every small business isn't going to have a biometric card reader, but perhaps the post office might have a reader since every community in America has a post office." The proposed biometric feature would apply to newly issued or replaced Social Security cards -- you won't be asked to hand in your old one. Nevertheless, the plan doesn't sit well with privacy and civil liberties advocates like Sparapani. And immigrant-rights groups foresee rampant database errors, and an inevitable mission drift, with biometric cards -- whether the Social Security card or one of the other cards pushed in the proposals -- being used for purposes other than employment. Currently, U.S. employers can accept a range of documents, including expired U.S. passports, tribal documents, refugee documents, birth certificates, driver's licenses and even school report cards, to establish an employee's eligibility for work. Michele Waslin, the policy research director at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights group, supports immigration reform but emphasizes that employment-eligibility verification must be effective and have safeguards. "This is one provision that would impact every single person that gets a job in the United States," Waslin said. "Given the inaccuracy of government databases, it is likely that some Americans will show documents and the answer will come back as a 'non-confirmation' and (they) could be denied employment based on a government mistake." Waslin also fears that the existence of a document that proves immigration status will lead to widespread document checks, even from shop clerks. "You can imagine arriving at a polling place and some people are being asked for a Real ID, while people who look 'American' aren't asked for a Real ID," Waslin said. The controversy is likely to heat up this week. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is set to schedule two weeks of immigration-reform debate Tuesday, setting a deadline for a bipartisan panel of lawmakers to craft legislation that combines tighter border enforcement, avenues for current undocumented workers to earn legal status, and stringent employee-verification requirements for employers. If they succeed, the bill will probably have roughly the same contours as the leading House bill, known as the Strive Act, co-authored by Reps. John Flake (R-Arizona) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois). The Strive Act would require employers to verify a new employee's credentials -- by telephone or the internet -- against databases maintained by the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. If the answer comes back as a "non-confirmation," the new hire would have the opportunity to update any incorrect records. The Strive Act's verification system is based on the Basic Pilot Program, a currently voluntary program that lets businesses verify new employees' work eligibility over the web. But that program relies on databases prone to inaccuracy, according to Tyler Moran, the employment policy director at the National Immigration Law Center. "The Basic Pilot program has given more power to employers to oppress workers," Moran said. "It's the worker's burden to prove they are work-authorized, and employers are taking adverse action when there is a problem, such as demoting or firing workers before they have a chance to correct the database." A recent report by the Social Security Administration's inspector general backs up Moran's criticism with findings that 17.8 million records in the government's employment databases contained inaccuracies that could initially and erroneously flag individuals as ineligible for employment.
AT THE AIRPORT Clearly, Some Are DifferentA New ID Lets You Skip The Line at the Airport. But Just How Fast Are You?By Hank StueverSunday, January 27, 2008; Page M01
Two of Washington's airports --
Dulles and
Reagan National -- will soon be part of the federal
government's Registered Traveler program, which offers
passengers the happy prospect of getting through security
lines faster, swifter, better. (Ninety thousand of them and
counting have enrolled.) All you need do is pay an annual fee
-- $100 to start, plus a $28 shakedown so the government can
make sure you're, you know, okay. Next you submit all
sorts of personal information, fingerprints and, because the
future is now, an eyeball scan.
Then you are all clear.
In fact, the company that clears you is called Clear, and once you're good to go, they mail you a clear plastic ID card with a square blue logo that says Clear. ("The wait is over," proclaims the company's slogan.) The mind immediately goes either way on this, first to a dark place: Depressingly, America potentially becomes still less like "America," where everyone was supposedly equal, no matter how bad things got. It's the "Lexus lane" syndrome over and over, where special people buy special access to get ahead of the losers. And yet, hasn't this been the essential human narrative all along? Me before you. People becoming Clear is simply another chapter in the self-deterministic struggle. Ayn Rand would totally have one. After that comes a more tantalizing thought: Can we get a Clear card for everything else? Some pre-Clears (if you'll excuse the Scientology undertones) have been waiting for this -- impatiently, of course. Clears are already the fastest people at airports even without the cards: shoes and coat off, laptop out of the case, X-ray buckets lined up on the conveyor belt, waiting for everybody else to get it together. A few thousand people in the Washington area have already applied, and on a recent weekday, 35 people visited the American Express office downtown at 15th and K streets NW, to get cleared by Clear, says Clear spokeswoman Cindy Rosenthal. "What we hear most from people is that they want predictability," she says. "These are people who don't like waiting on line." Clears are the simple and speedy people, who tend to know the price of things before they get to the register and always have the cash or debit card ready, and step out of the way immediately to a place where they can put away their change and receipt and reassemble themselves without obstructing the flow. Clears do not dig into their purses in search of engorged wallets into which they go a-huntin' for six cents so as not to break a bill, or to look for that Subway sandwich stamp card. Clears have amazingly uncomplicated business to do at banks and in post office lines -- places they almost never go to anymore -- conducting transactions so fast the teller or clerk barely has time to wish them a good day. Clears tend to order only sodas in movie concession lines. (Clears also get to movies 20 minutes early.) Clears have written pamphlet-length diatribes in their minds about a certain drugstore chain that rhymes with "Skeevy Mess" and the lackadaisical inabilities of not only its incredibly slow employees but its equally slow customers. So why stop with airports? Clear is already thinking about that. "Major crowd events, like a 60,000-person football game," Rosenthal says, could be conducted more efficiently with Clear cards. Clears are sometimes confused with "high-maintenance" customers, when, in fact, it is low maintenance that defines the true Clear. (Clears have doubtless eaten their share of the kitchen staff's spit for only suggesting that things could be going faster.) Clears can give you a very long lecture about the economic concept known as opportunity cost, which is just another way of saying time is money, so why clip coupons? Beyond a swift exchange of pleasantries, Clears never
make chitchat with cashiers, because there are people in
line behind the Clear, and the Clear is doing them the favor
of clearing out. They almost never cause malfunction of the
process, and are never more disappointed in themselves as on
the rare occasion when they do take too long. Clears almost
never special-order or substitute menu items, and are
quietly horrified when their dining companions do. Clears
love stores with names like Grab-N'-Go, or Git-N'-Gone, and
long for the day when such establishments can honestly and
consistently live up to such ideals. Corporate America
invented self-checkout lines for Clears, which worked well
for about five minutes, until someone who wasn't a Clear
caused yet another human paper jam.
There is only one long line Clears accept, and that
is the line to vote.
Clears come in all ages, but they get more Clear
the closer they get to 40. (And less Clear after 60.
You can always tell an old Clear by his polite
resignation: Go ahead, all of you, he or she
says, as the plane is disembarking. I'm just
slowing you down.)
So far, the people who run Clear have only learned the obvious about their customer base: He is a he, a business traveler
and he's generally between 35 and 45 years old, Rosenthal
says -- adding that the profile may change as Clear lanes
open in other airports. He is affluent and may have a second
home. He isn't merely antsy-pantsy. He just flies a lot and
is sick of the lines. Clear gets him through airport
security in about four minutes. In high-tourist travel
markets -- such as
Orlando or
Denver -- he never knows if the security lines are going
to be a matter of a few minutes or an hour, which makes him
bonkers with Clear worry. One Clear customer, Rosenthal
says, forgot important papers in his car and was able to
cross back out into the terminal, retrieve the papers from
his secretary, and go back through security in a matter of
minutes. This is held up as the definitive Clear success
story: zip, zip, zip.
Life, meanwhile, is not as zippy as all that. A Clear finds himself standing in line at a 7-Eleven, with a Big Gulp in one hand and a couple of dollar bills in the other, and realizes that he's going to have to wait for six Un-Clears in front of him to buy lottery tickets and the exact pack of cigarettes that the Un-Clear clerk cannot seem to locate. Shouldn't a Clear's Clear card work in this situation? Shouldn't a Clear be able to go to the front of the line at Starbucks when all the Clear ever orders ( ever!) is a simple grande coffee? If a Clear knows exactly what he wants in the Au Bon Pain or the Taco Bell, can he not flash his Clear card and grab-n-go, git-n-gone? Not in America. Not yet. The Clear gets his airport privileges (and so far, he gets them only in airports like Albany or Indianapolis -- but also Newark and JFK at certain hours and certain gates), and he gets the nasty looks, too. Clears are sometimes troubled by this. They aren't so self-absorbed as to not feel true remorse and class consciousness. It's not like a country club or a gated neighborhood or first class. Clears encourage clarity in all people. Here's the rub: The world is ending. Things are getting tight, desperate, short. Clearness is coming to airport security lines just in time for chaos to wipe out everything. Clears are good at things like mass evacuation, but not so great in soup lines. (Just listen to how loudly and repeatedly a Clear sighs when the express lane at Giant is too long.) In the apocalypse, it's a good idea to stick close to your favorite Clear, but you should also fully expect to be left behind.
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NEWS RFID & Chip ImplantsConsumer privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht presented an update on RFID and chip implants. Around 300 people have voluntarily had an RFID chip implanted in them, but they could be at an increased risk for cancer, she said. Studies of animals who've been chipped show that up to 10% of them come down with tumors at the site of the implant. The microchipping of pets preys on owners love for their animals, she commented. A plan is also in the works to chip all farm animals, Albrecht added.She expressed concerns about Border Crossing IDs issued in various states which can be read as far as 20 feet away. Personal information could possibly be gleaned from these cards by electronic readers not associated with the government. Companies such as Checkpoint Systems and Sensormatic Electronics plan to offer RFID tags hidden in clothing and shoes, but legislation is under consideration that would force stores to disclose that the tags were there, said Albrecht. She also talked about the biblical connections to the issue, noting that for the first time technology is now in place to create the 'mark of the beast.' A small minority of citizens can bring about change, Albrecht pointed out, and she offered a list of ways people can protest or get involved. Thursday 15 July 2004 |
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| Technology: Security Products | |||
| RFID users say no to privacy law |
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Retail giant Walmart has said a US law enforcing privacy rules for RFID is not needed because companies experimenting with the technology are committed to protecting privacy. Wal-Mart Stores continues to move forward with plans for case- and pallet-level tagging of products with RFID chips. But item-level tagging, where individual products are identified with RFID chips, is about 10 years away, Linda Dillman, executive vice-president and chief information officer of Wal-Mart, told the US House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection. Privacy advocates said that legislation is needed to protect consumers from potential uses of RFID. They offered few current examples of privacy concerns caused by RFID, but as the range of RFID scanning grows beyond the current 10-20ft RFID could allow corporations and governments to track people's movements and purchases, they said. A United Nations-affiliated group, the International Civil Aviation Organization, is already developing global standards for passports that include RFID chips, with the group looking for a chip that could be read up to a metre away, said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Program for the American Civil Liberties Union. In the hands of a dictatorial government, RFID-chipped passports or other identification could be used to track visitors to the country or identify people attending a political rally, Steinhardt said. Such uses could create "a whole new surveillance regime", Steinhardt added. Users of RFID defended it, however, saying that its range was too small and its cost too prohibitive to use on most consumer products. Others at the hearing noted that Wal-Mart had conducted product tests on lipstick in an Oklahoma store in early 2003. Representative Jan Schakowsky questioned whether consumers had been adequately warned about the lipstick tests. With the potential to use RFID chips in passports and other government identification, as well as consumer products such as clothing, the misuse of RFID tracking raises "seriously Orwellian concerns", she said. "Soon we could have Big Brother and big business tuning into the same frequency, where not only will they know where you are, but what you're wearing," Schakowsky added. The Wal-Mart test on lipstick had the RFID tags on large packages, not individual products, said Sandra Hughes, global privacy executive for Proctor & Gamble, Wal-Mart's partner in the test. Consumers were notified of the RFID test, and although the lipstick display was monitored by a web cam, the purpose was to track the supply of lipstick, not consumers, Hughes said. Hughes and other defenders of RFID said the technology has great
potential to lower With RFID chips in the ears of cattle, livestock sold could be tracked within hours instead of the weeks it can take to track down a paper-based sale, said John Molloy, managing director of ViaTrace, a maker of tracking technologies. The US is ahead of the rest of the world in experimenting with RFID, he said, and its use could end threats of diseases like BSE. "This is the opportunity [for the US] to lead the world in traceability," Molloy said. But safeguards are needed so that the potential of RFID is not misused, privacy advocates said. Witnesses at the hearing disagreed about what kind of legislation is needed, however, with the Electronic Privacy Information Center calling for RFID-specific legislation, and the Center for Democracy and Technology repeating its call for general privacy legislation that would cover all kinds of technologies. When Representative Darrell Issa suggested that legislation should focus on what companies and government agencies do with the information they collect, instead of what technology is used to collect the information, Paula Bruening, staff counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, agreed. Recent debates about a House spyware bill showed how difficult it is to legislate based on specific technologies, she added. "You end up with a better result if you have baseline privacy legislation that focuses on the information itself," Bruening said. Hughes said legislation is premature because companies are being
responsible about In the case of a product sale, the company keeps the data only long enough to complete the transaction, but in the case of an opt-in customer newsletter, the company retains the data as long as the consumer is subscribed. Dillman also opposed RFID-specific legislation. "We don't believe that data collected by RFID should be different," she said. "We believe there should be a single standard." Grant
Gross writes for IDG News Service |
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Metro sets-up European RFID center
One of the world's largest retailers, Metro AG, has launched a new
innovation center in Europe to showcase its RFID (radio frequency
identification) initiatives.
8 Jul 2004, 10:26 GMT -
RFID
is touted as the next big technology that will revolutionize retail supply
chains by tracking pallet and individual goods throughout the supply
chain using embedded chip reading devices - also commonly referred to as
"smart-tags." The technology promises to squeeze more costs from the
chain through the minimization of inventory losses and reduction in labor
costs.
Many expect RFID tags to replace traditional barcode technology in the next ten years. Metro is at the forefront of RFID trials in Europe, having already tested RFID in its so-called Future Store for about a year now. The German retailer's 1,300 square meter RFID center is located in Neuss, (near Dusseldorf) Germany and will help suppliers to prepare for Metro's initial roll out of smart-tag technology across its German stores this November. According to Metro officials, the center will showcase RFID applications for logistics and retail shop floor management. Around 20 suppliers will be involved in the first phase of the roll-out, which will focus on pallet level tagging of packaged goods. A second phase will add 80 more suppliers, eight centralized warehouses and around 270 stores. The center will also provide a conduit for discussion between Metro's main IT partners and its suppliers. Metro recently signed up IBM Corp and Intermec Technologies Inc to supply it with smart-tag RFID technology. IBM brings to the table its WebSphere-based RFID and data management system and Intermec its RFID inventory tracking system. Metro is also working with SAP AG and Intel Corp to supply technology for its system. Metro operates over 2,300 stores mainly in Germany and the rest of Europe. It plans to extend its RFID rollouts to these stores in the future barring concerns over consumer privacy issues and the cost of RFID tags that threaten to stunt the technology's uptake. As a result, most RFID initiatives today remain focused on pallet-level (warehouses and store backrooms) rather than item-level (consumer) level tagging. Metro is by no means the only company driving forward RFID. In the US, Walmart Stores Inc and the US Department of Defense have laid down a January 2005 deadline for all its major suppliers to adopt RFID standards if they want to continue doing business with them. |
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| Wireless Facilities,
Inc. Acquires Defense Systems, Incorporated |
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PR Newswire via NewsEdge Corporation : Acquisition Launches WFI Into the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Logistics Automation Markets; Enhances Services for Department of Defense, Commercial Customers SAN DIEGO, Calif., Aug. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Wireless Facilities, Inc. (Nasdaq: WFII), a global leader in the design, deployment, and management of wireless communication networks and security systems, today announced that it has acquired Defense Systems, Incorporated (DSI). Headquartered in Manassas, Virginia, DSI provides a full range of information technology and logistics automation services to federal government and commercial clients, with a strategic focus on providing end-to-end total RFID solutions.The cash transaction is valued at approximately $6.6 million, subject to certain post-closing adjustments. Additional consideration of up to $3.2 million can be earned by the former major stockholders of DSI over an 18 month period based upon performance milestones related to certain specified contracts. WFI expects no material impact to its 2004 revenues and profit as a result of this acquisition. Founded in 1997, DSI's services include system architecture design, system software development, software and data integration/synchronization, database development, and systems integration. Key areas of expertise include functional logistics management, asset tracking, supply chain management, data mining and data warehousing. An emerging player in the growing RFID market, DSI leverages its functional understanding of the logistics process with its core competency in data integration/synchronization to assist customers with RFID compliance and with ensuring in-transit and total asset visibility. "The acquisition of DSI is a very strategic and important move for WFI," said Eric M. DeMarco, President and CEO of WFI. "DSI has done an exceptional job of building a solid customer base that includes both the Army's Program Executive Office for Automatic Identification Technology and the Defense Information Systems Agency. The Company has also been very successful at establishing a stake hold in the rapidly growing logistics automation market. As the need for RFID solutions expands, WFI will now be able to leverage its fundamental expertise in RF engineering, wireless data networks, and the integration of in-building technologies to provide complete network design, deployment and maintenance solutions to both government and commercial customers." "We are excited to be part of a technology-rich, customer-savvy company such as Wireless Facilities," commented Ken Jensen, Co-Founder and President of DSI. "We believe that the combination of our RFID, Logistics and technology consulting expertise with WFI's leadership in wireless engineering and systems integration will provide a comprehensive and extremely attractive solution offering." Logistics automation and RFID technology are being adopted rapidly, fueled largely by government agencies such as the Department of Defense, and large commercial enterprises such as WalMart, who require that vendors move to an RFID-based system in the future. By their very design, RFID solutions pose unique RF engineering and implementation challenges: tags made of various materials are encoded with digital information that must be read in a variety of adverse physical and environmental conditions. WFI's longstanding experience in RF engineering and systems integration for wireless telecommunications carriers and enterprise customers provides an ideal solution to the variety of challenges inherent in deploying RFID systems. The RFID market is currently estimated to be valued at $1.5-2 billion in 2005. DSI will become part of WFI's growing Government Services Division. This latest move follows WFI's January purchase of High Technology Solutions, Inc (HTS), a provider of communications systems engineering and operational outsourcing services to federal government agencies. The acquisition of HTS and the formation of WFI's Government Services Division demonstrate the Company's ongoing commitment to providing both government and commercial markets with a complete range of valuable communications network solutions. "This acquisition is a terrific example of building synergies across our government and commercial divisions," continued DeMarco. "With our government and commercial divisions working together, WFI is well positioned to capture a share of the growing RFID market," DeMarco concluded. About Wireless Facilities Headquartered in San Diego, CA, Wireless Facilities, Inc. is an independent provider of systems engineering, network services and technical outsourcing for the world's largest wireless carriers, enterprise customers and for government agencies. The company provides the design, deployment, integration, and the overall management of wired and wireless networks which deliver voice and data communication, and which support advanced security systems. WFI has performed work in over 100 countries since its founding in 1994. News and information are available at www.wfinet.com. Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains certain forward-looking statements including, without limitation, express or implied statements concerning the Company's expectations regarding future financial performance, market developments, and the acquisition of DSI that involve risks and uncertainties. Such statements are only predictions, and the Company's actual results may differ materially. Factors that may cause the Company's results to differ include, but are not limited to: the risks associated with the successful integration of DSI's business; the inability of WFI to retain key employees of DSI; the anticipated benefits of this acquisition may not be realized; the Company's inability to win federal government contracts or achieve the synergies expected from the DSI acquisition; changes in the scope or timing of the Company's projects which could effect future profitability; the timing, rescheduling or cancellation of significant customer contracts and agreements; the rate of growth of adoption of RFID technology; and competition in the marketplace which could reduce revenues and profit margins. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. These and other risk factors are more fully discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on March 8, 2004 and in other filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For further information please contact: media, Michael Baehr, Director of Communications, +1-858-228-2799, michael.baehr@wfinet.com, or investors, Rochelle Bold, Senior VP of Corporate Development & Investor Relations, +1-858-228-2649, rochelle.bold@wfinet.com, both of Wireless Facilities, Inc. SOURCE Wireless Facilities, Inc. -0- 08/04/2004 /CONTACT: media, Michael Baehr, Director of Communications, +1-858-228-2799, michael.baehr@wfinet.com, or investors, Rochelle Bold, Senior VP of Corporate Development & Investor Relations, +1-858-228-2649, rochelle.bold@wfinet.com, both of Wireless Facilities, Inc./ /Web site: http://www.wfinet.com /
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The New Slavery30/07/2004 16:49:05 “We are turning our bodies into data. Since information can confer both power and wealth, we are at risk of a new slavery, with its attendants of old: loss of self-sovereignty, discrimination, corrosion of individual identity, dignity denied. At risk only — this is not a prediction — but sufficiently at risk to make it prudent pre-emptively to develop the language of a new emancipation.” So writes Paul Chadwick in a compelling article, “The new slavery, body as data” in the fourth issue of the Griffith Review, a joint venture between Griffith University and the ABC. Chadwick worries that increasingly sophisticated information communication technologies are facilitating the determination of commerce and government to collect, sift, match, trade, use and store information about us; he worries too about newer methods of data collection about our bodies such as biometrics and genetics. “We slough off data like skin, unnoticed and constantly,” he writes. “Someone usually vacuums it up.” He points out that how we collect samples, conduct tests, interpret and communicate results, and then act on our understanding of results, involves public policy issues of profound significance. “The risk of a new slavery lies in this realm,” he says. It seems a fair point. As technology advances, privacy advocates and civil libertarians fear they are losing control. Technologists seem determined to push the privacy boundaries, despite mounting concern amongst some privacy advocates about the dangers of such potentially privacy-invasive technologies as RFID chips. The war looks to be ongoing, and ultimately unwinnable. And the potential for technology to play havoc with our personal privacy seems to grow by the day. Reports earlier this year about a Copenhagen-based firm, EmpireNorth, supposedly demonstrating a modified sniper rifle as a means to inject unsuspecting targets with an RFID tag in order to track their movements, mercifully proved to be a hoax. That reports of governments secretly planning to insert miniature tracking chips into persons deemed enemies of the state proved false should have come as a blessed relief. Instead, civil libertarian John Gilmore, posting on the Politech mailing list, quickly drew a vision of another, even more horrid dystopia. “Nice hoax,” Gilmore wrote. “But the opposite is more likely to come true. Rather than shooting RFID chips into people, people with RFID chips already in or on them will be shot. People with RFID chips in their clothing, books, bags or bodies could be targeted by “smart projectiles” that will zero in on that particular Smart.” On the other side, Gilmore points out, freedom fighters could also use RFIDs mounted on tyres to ensure roadside bombs only went off when enemy troops were driving over them. “Welcome to automated personal death,” Gilmore writes. “Courtesy of RFID and leading shortsighted global corporations, with government encouragement.” If civil libertarians and privacy advocates can envision
such nightmares, shouldn’t governments start planning to prevent such ill
dreams from coming true?
RFID News Roundup
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04 August 2004
commentary RFID is moving from a much-talked about technology to a much-used technology, with many companies about to share RFID trials. The last 12 months or so has been an interesting outing for RFID. For a technology that has been working fairly innoculously for many years now -- on electronic toll gates and even on pets -- it was suddenly elevated to notorious status when companies started finding new uses for the technology, such as supply tracking in the warehouse. As you probably know, the controversy came about when the idea was floated of chipping products on retail shelves and tracking their use after they have left the store -- obviously this would have serious privacy concerns for consumers. For a while there if a company said it was looking into using RFID, it was perceived that the company was engaging in unscruplous acts to invade the privacy of unsuspecting consumers.
Lately RFID is getting more coverage for its uses in the supply chain than it is for its privacy concerns. Also, having major vendors -- such as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, just to name a few -- jump on board and work on developing RFID technology hasn't harmed its reputation. Now instead of talking about the technology, more and more companies are seriously considering using it, and some are trialling it. Eelco de Jong of LogicaCMG says where last year there was a lot of talk and no action, this year it is quite different. "It has snowballed in Europe, everyone now understands that RFID will roll -- it is not a question of if, but of when," he says. LogicaCMG surveyed 50 companies in Europe, focusing on the use of RFID in the retail sector. According the results, 50 percent of the companies surveyed said they will conduct pilots this year, and 30 percent said they were conducting pilots right now. Certainly a few of those companies involved in trials would have been pressured by large retailers, but still the interest reported in the survey is not insignificant and it says a lot about the changing attitude towards RFID. In the August issue of IT in the Supply Chain -- a regular supplement produced by Technology & Business -- we discuss the current uses and drawbacks of RFID. One spokesperson, Andrew Osbourne of e.centre, a supply chain efficiency organisation in the UK, says all companies supplying to major retailers should at least be looking into RFID, if only to keep up with the market. Geoff Barraclough, of BT Auto Devices, says in the publication that his company is advising customers to start trialling RFID, saying a small implementation isn't prohibitively expensive. Following this theme, de Jong says the RFID pilots being conducted in Europe are not all driven by a business case, instead it is more that companies want to actually test the technology and see what it is like in action. While spending money on IT projects without a business case is something that is often found on the list of what not to do, in this case de Jong says it has value. "Often we see a more technology driven pilot at an early stage because they want to make sure that the technology works for them before they spend a lot of money on it, so it absolutely makes sense," he says. Cost is an issue, which should come as a relief to privacy advocates. While LogicaCMG predicts that the tagging of crates and pallets will become standard as of 2005, the company says retailers won't be chipping consumer goods until at least 2008 because of the high price of the tags. Of course price won't stop everybody, if the recent news about a Japanese school chipping its students is anything to by. The school plans to put chips on the clothing and bags of students and have readers at the school gates -- working on the same principle as stock visibility, the school wants to know where its students are and when they arrive and leave. So much for a lack of controversy... This article was first published in Technology & Business
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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 27, 2006 VERICHIP RFID IMPLANT HACKED! Will Security Problems Quash IPO Plans for Controversial Company? The VeriChip can be hacked! This revelation along with other worrisome details could put a crimp in VeriChip Corporation's planned initial public offering (IPO) of its common stock, say Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre. The anti-RFID activists and authors of "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID" make no bones about their objection to VeriChip's plans to inject glass encapsulated RFID tags into people. But now they've discovered information that could call VeriChip's entire business model into question. "If you look at the VeriChip purely from the business angle, it's a ridiculously flawed product," says McIntyre. She notes that security researcher Jonathan Westhues has shown how easy it is to clone a VeriChip implanted in a person's arm and program a new chip with the same number. Westhues, known for his prior work cloning RFID-based proximity cards, has posted his VeriChip cloning demo online at http://cq.cx/verichip.pl The
VeriChip "is not good for anything," says Westhues,
has absolutely no security and "solves a number of
different non-problems badly." February 28, 2006 When Big Brother Gets Under Your Skin Elsa Lion RFID: exposing databases to new security threats? CBR Online reports that a team of three researchers presented at this week's IEE international Conference in Amsterdam a paper entitled "Is your cat infected with a computer virus?", which highlights the potential threats associated with the use of RFID tags. In particular, the paper shows how RFID tags can carry malware and propagate via databases along the supply chain.Mar 17, 2006The Bugs in the Rug are RFIDOne of Germany’s best-known makers of vacuum cleaners and carpets aims to tap a new market: intelligent flooring embedded with wireless chips. Vorwerk & Co. Teppichwerke GmbH & Co. is launching a textile flooring underlay equipped with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, Vorwerk spokesman Thomas Weber said Friday. "After three years of research, we’re launching field tests with several companies that intend to use our smart-floor technology," he said. "We’re now able to mass-produce the product." The RFID-enabled flooring underlay is the result of a "thinking carpet" project launched together with German chip maker Infineon Technologies in 2003. The smart-floor underlay can be used to perform a number of tasks, such as navigating automated transport systems in buildings, according to Weber. In a first step, together with InMach Intelligente Maschinen GmbH, a robot manufacturer, Vorwerk is offering a bundled "smart-floor" package consisting of the RFID-enabled underlay, robots and software. The underlay enables robots to orient themselves in a room and move toward precise targets on the floor, using information stored in the embedded RFID tags, according to Weber. Systems administrators can manage the robots from a central point, sending data to them from a control PC via Wi-Fi or Bl |
