Home | Forums | Article Search | Subscribe & Shop | Contact Us | Log Out Technically Speaking Email This Print This View My Personal Library What's Cooking June 2006 • Vol.6 Issue 6 Page(s) 104-105 in print issue Add To My Personal Library Technically Speaking An Interview With Katherine Albrecht, Author & RFID Watchdog Katherine Albrecht has been called the Erin Brockovich of RFID. She defines a consumer privacy expert, however, as “someone who pays attention to the risks that consumers run when they go about their regular business.” Albrecht’s actions would seem to back up her words. She’s the founder and director of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), a consumer watchdog group that has more than 12,000 subscribers to its Web site (www.nocards.org) and representatives in all 50 states and 30 countries. Albrecht, who’s finishing up a doctorate degree in consumer education at Harvard University, is also the co-author of “Spychips: How Major Corporations And Government Plan To Track Your Every Move With RFID.” by Barry Brenesal CPU: What is your main concern about RFID technology? Albrecht: It’s an incredibly powerful technology that easily lends itself to abuse. RFID readers can be placed invisibly in the environment. RFID tags can be placed on clothes and in people’s belongings. And maybe the most worrisome part is that the companies that are aiming to put the readers in the environment and the tags into people’s belongings have spelled out some pretty frightening plans for how they hope to abuse the technology—literally to use it to spy on people. CPU: What could RFID tagging track, for example? Albrecht: Probably the best example is a patent from IBM called “Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items.” They filed it a few years back. IBM has been in on the RFID/EPC (Electronic Product Code) formal plan for many years. Essentially, what they describe is a system whereby when a consumer made a purchase, the consumer’s identity would be linked with the unique number on the RFID tag at the point of sale. It’s stored in the database. Right now, there are companies that specialize in consolidating that point-of-sale information from various retailers. In fact, one company, IRI (Information Resources, Inc.), states that they consolidate information from over 30,000 different retail locations into centralized databases. The concern is that this information would be linked, so that instead of knowing that I wear size 7 Nike running shoes, they would know I wear size 7 Nike running shoes with a unique ID number. And as IBM goes on to explain it, now that you have this link between the individual and the item, when those people walk around, you capture the unique RFID numbers from their belongings by hiding reader devices in the environment. Then you can cross-reference them in your database and have a pretty good sense of who just walked by [the hidden reader]. They recommend it both for identifying and tracking people as they move around in public locations and quasi-public locations, such as retail stores. They also recommend using it for marketing purposes. One example they gave is looking in a woman’s bag because the radio waves from RFID travel directly through what we usually rely on to protect our privacy, like backpacks, bags, and purses. If she’s carrying a baby bottle, then they recommend interactive electronic advertising to spam her with environmental ads of other baby products. CPU: Any mention of looking inside someone’s bag is going to raise the hackles of a lot of people, but realistically how far away can a company track RFID tags? Albrecht: It depends on what kind of tag you have, what the frequency is, and the strength of the reader. For the 13.56MHz tags that they’re talking about doing item-level tagging and barcode replacement, you’d probably get about 3 to 5 feet of read range. And obviously, with 3 feet of read range, you could read tags on somebody going through such a doorway. We also found that Philips Electronics has developed an RFID antenna that can be invisibly woven into a shoe. It can be read from reader devices in the floor—and try getting more than an inch away from the floor. You don’t need a lot of read range to read somebody who’s literally standing on top of your reader. Not only does IBM want to use this to identify and track people for marketing purposes, they recommend putting this technology into the hands of law enforcement. They give their list of locations where they think it would be appropriate to place these [tag readers] that—the hair stands up on the back of most people’s necks—museums, libraries, shopping malls, sports arenas, theaters. They even talk about putting RFID readers in public restrooms. The concern is that as you walk around, you could be identified with a form of ‘virtual frisk’ based on all your possessions. That’s why I think RFID is particularly insidious—because you can do it invisibly, silently, and secretly. No one need ever know that you did it. So if you’re a marketer, you could use that in a lot of sneaky ways. If you’re a government agent, then it starts becoming downright chilling. CPU: We know of clubs that offer to inject members with RFID tags so as to avoid long entry queues. What other attempts have there been to inject RFID tags for whatever reason, besides in prisons? Albrecht: There’s a center for the mentally disabled called The Orange Grove Center outside of Chattanooga, Tenn., that considered this. The VeriChip folks did a big presentation, saying they wanted to chip the residents at this facility. These are people who aren’t in a position to really say no; they are obviously there because they’re in someone else’s care. And then, also, there are the victims of Hurricane Katrina. When the wards were having a hard time keeping track of the remains of the victims of that tragedy, they actually injected microchip implants, VeriChips, into the remains of individuals. We thought that was a form of desecration. CPU: Why? Albrecht: See, I think a lot of people really do have a deep sense of respect for the remains of their deceased loved ones. I think that’s why so much effort was extended in trying to identify the remains, so that people could have that proper burial and others could feel they laid their loves ones to rest. The idea that someone would go to their grave with a permanent microchip implant that in life they may not have approved of—you’re really not giving them the choice. Nor is it being extended to their relatives. CPU: Do you see positive benefits for some uses of RFID tags? What about tagging small children in a mall, which the Legoland Denmark theme park is reportedly pursuing? Tagging some pets? Tagging criminals in minimum-security facilities? Albrecht: I would raise the same concern as with the use of RFID tagging in hospitals to prevent baby abductions. When you use technology to do the care giving and supervision instead of people you actually run a greater risk, I believe, of not having people be cared for adequately. And do we really want to train our children that the best means of being safe is through technology tracking them? We also know that in Mexico the news reports suggest RFID will prevent kidnappings, so people are encouraged to sign up and get VeriChip implants. But I really think they’re relying on the misconception that an implant can be read from a satellite, as in finding a hiker lost in the woods. You’re not going to be able to read their implant from a satellite. You’re not even going to be able to read it from across the road. CPU: So the main problem isn’t the distance a RFID tag can be read but rather the quantity and quality of information that’s shared through the use of the technology? Albrecht: The developers of that technology are the people who actually envision a network of readers that would be everywhere. If and when that does occur, when every doorway is rigged with an RFID reader, when every doormat has one in it, when these are in shelving and ceiling tiles, it becomes an issue of distribution and instant computer analysis. CPU: On the Web site 463: Inside Tech Policy, it states, ‘. . . beyond electronic payments, RFID technology is still a far ways away from moving from the pallet to the product level.’ Would you object to RFID tags on packaging as opposed to the label or product? Albrecht: We oppose RFID tagging when it winds up in the hands of the consumer, period. As far as the packaging goes, we found one patent by an IBM-supplier company called Isogon [IBM acquired Isogon in July 2005] for a reader device that can be put on the side of a car. You can drive down the street on garbage collection day and scan people’s trash. CPU: But don’t you have to be within 18 inches of a passive chip for it to be scanned? Albrecht: You have to be within 18 inches of an implanted chip, one inside a human. The signal to read it is only operating at 125KHz, which is a different frequency and has a much lower read range. You see, the way you read an RFID tag, you blast a little electromagnetic radiation at it, and that stimulates it to send back a signal. If the tag is in the human body, water tends to absorb the radio waves instead of sending them back. That’s why you get a short-read range on tags in humans, animals, and anything that is largely liquid. But as far as scanning your garbage is concerned, I’m assuming they’ll have a 13.56 or 915MHz tag available, and those have a greater read range. In fact, the 915MHz tags have a read range of 10 to 20 feet. And, of course, the bigger the antenna and the more energy you’re willing to blast at it, the greater amount of a read range you can get. Oh, and let me add that BellSouth, the parent company of Cingular Wireless [AT&T and BellSouth recently announced a proposed merger], has actually developed plans for an apparatus that would individually scan each item at a garbage dump and link it up with point-of-sale purchase records to find out who had bought that item, where they bought it, how long it had been used before being thrown away, and whether the user had traveled with it. They gave an example of somebody who had a vacation home in the mountains and purchased something there, then threw it away in the city—and all the information they could acquire by just identifying the way-stream starting with where it came from and where it ended up. So they’ve got the problem of using RFID on packaging only instead of on products covered. CPU: You mentioned some impressive read ranges there. How far can RFID readers read now, and how far are companies projecting their future devices will be able to read? Albrecht: You know, I don’t think anybody is working right now on maxing out the read range on passive RFID tags. I think where the research is going is in the direction of changing passive tags into active ones. That simply means adding a battery. If you could do that, then you wouldn’t have to blast it with energy from your reader to power it up. It’s powered up automatically, like the transponder on your car that can be read as you go through the tollbooth. They can maximize that distance easily. In fact, there are some active RFID tags that can be read from low-orbiting satellites. Wildlife biologists use them on creatures in the ocean. The focus right now is on how do we make batteries small enough, cheap enough, unobtrusive enough? That would let them power up RFID tags and make them more robust, enabling them to do more complex things, such as write to the tag and store data on it, rather than having simply a ‘dumb tag’ that gives back a unique ID number. CPU: So is the RFID industry growing too quickly? Albrecht: Beyond a doubt. There have already been hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. It’s a sleeping giant because the industry has kept its growth and advancements out of the public eye. You’ve got corporations and governments pouring huge sums of money into developing the superstructure, and you’ve got the average citizen having no input into that decision-making process because they’re not even aware that this is going on. CPU: It is possible to put any kind of effective legislative controls on RFID tagging and reading? Albrecht: I really don’t believe that the answer to solving our privacy problems is going to the legislatures with our hats in our hands and asking for help. The one role I think is appropriate for legislation is to make sure people know where the RFID tags are. Some consumers will choose to embrace them and seek out products using RFID. I say more power to them. Other people will choose to avoid products containing RFID. But let consumers make that decision. Let the marketplace decide. CPU: Can you foresee a situation where the majority of consumers don’t care, and you’ll have to buy and use products that employ RFID tagging? Albrecht: That could happen. That’s one of the risks of letting the market decide. CPU: Then that gets back to the issue of legislation as a prophylactic. Albrecht: The heavy-handed legislative solution would say this stuff is dangerous, therefore ban it, limit it, control its use. And there are many privacy organizations out there that advocate that approach. CASPIAN just is not one of them. Want more information about a topic you found of interest while reading this article? Type a word or phrase that identifies the topic and click "Search" to find relevant articles from within our editorial database. 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