Spychips
by Ian Simmons
[ bookreviews ]
So, the future... What's in it for us, then?
If you believe anyone bigging-up the latest cool tech, it's fridges that tell us when we've run out of wasabi and automatically put in an order to Tesco Online; it's green Road Tax, where we get charged for the miles we drive; it's ID cards for all; it's knowing where your stuff is, and who wouldn't kill for that? Actually, it's RFID (Radio Frequency IDentity) tags, the bits of kit that'll let us do all this.
A RFID tag is a tiny computer chip with an antenna. They're dead simple and can be produced by the ton for bobbins. You load them with info, bung them on (or in) anything you feel like, zap them with a reader, and – voilà! - up comes the info. They need no power source, as they run off the radio waves emitted by the reader; they're barcodes on steroids. And if you thought the people who railed against barcodes because their lines were equivalent to 666 were whacked-out conspiracy theorists, you will love what these authors - militant anti-RFID campaigners - claim RFID tags will do to your life.
But while the anti-barcode brigade were, for the most part, a mix of religious nut-jobs and aluminium-hatters, the RFID apocalypse Albrecht and MacIntyre predict is not only chillingly plausible, it is well nigh upon us, and it might be a good idea to take notice.
If RFID tags replace barcodes and are permanently mounted on items, as corporates plan, stores can link everything we buy to the info on our store and PIN cards, giving them a new level of customer profiling. And if they remain in our possessions when we are using them, they can simply scan us as we enter the store and get a picture of everything we're carrying too. And so can anyone else with an RFID scanner. Albrecht and MacIntyre suggest a scenario where creepy blokes could scan passing women to read the RFIDs in their underwear (you can do this from metres away), match them to a downloaded database, and then tell whether they were in Coco de Mer or M & S. Your car's location could be tracked by its tax chip (RFID is already used on fast-track tolls and booth readers can pick one up several miles away), and once you've been linked to your purchases, you can be tracked anywhere.
If you think CCTV is ubiquitous, imagine what RFID will be like: no grainy surveillance pictures - they'll know who you are. Is this a bad thing? It'll cut crime and make our possessions easier to identify. Maybe not if your government and corporations are benign and trustworthy; but once such a system is in place, it's here to stay. And if a less benign government takes over? There is a rather overblown chapter about what it would have been like if Hitler had had RFID (which ought to disqualify Albrecht and MacIntyre from the argument on the grounds that whoever invokes the Nazis first loses), but they have a point. Tag Jews and they can't hide. OK, they can throw their tags away, as some did their yellow stars. But the authors reproduce a patent diagram for deep-implant RFIDs, whose removal would be life-threatening. Shops could scan customers and refuse to serve Jews; doors could refuse them access; and turnstiles could lock. And as for rounding them up - just point and scan.
RFID tags will tell anyone with a scanner who you are, where you are, what you like, what you're doing… and all in the name of convenience. And, it seems, this is not a coincidence. Participants in focus groups gave early RFID a resounding thumbs-down when they were told the technology's implications. So of course, business shelved it, didn't they? Well, no. They hired a major PR company to develop a strategy to get it out to the market unobtrusively, which is precisely what is happening now. There's no big noise. We're not being told about the technology, just its convenient applications, which seem unconnected and uncontroversial. Companies reassure complainers that they switch the things off at the checkout scanner, but fail to mention they can be switched back on remotely.
It is surprising how easy it is to turn an RFID tag into a surveillance technology, almost without thinking.
I was involved in an RFID project at a hands-on science centre. We had readers in the interactive displays and issued visiting schoolchildren with tagged cards. When they approached a machine, it recognised them, greeted them by name, delivered level-appropriate text on the electronic label and let them gather info for a personal web page to access off site, all of which seems pretty cool.
Someone had the idea that teachers could access the info to see what follow-up work was needed to reinforce the concepts learned, which seemed sensible; this developed into providing data on which child had done what to ensure they had covered all the activities in the required way. Suddenly it switched from being a tool to help a child learn to one that enabled the teacher to track and control their activity and call them to account for any deficiency afterwards. It wasn't that big a step: it just came logically out of the device's capabilities.
RFID isn't going to take infringe our freedoms through some great surveillance conspiracy. It will be small steps like this, but we will wake up being tracked by the second one day unless we are very, very wary of RFID. Spychips makes for sobering reading, and you would do well to check it out for yourself.
But pay for it in cash - your purchases can't be tracked.
