HP reveals tiny, tiny wireless chip

HP reveals tiny, tiny wireless chip discusses a new chip designed by Hewlett-Packard engineers. The article has one important feature, a visual demonstration of the tiny size of the chip. It is a device between 2mm and 4mm square, which can hold between 256kb and 4mb of memory, plus an antenna, plus wireless communications capability of transmitting 10mb/second. The visual demonstration shows it circled by pencils, demonstrating the chip is slightly larger than the size of a pencil tip.

That's tiny.

And, to think, the 4mb of memory is just the beginning. With further development it no doubt can hold far more memory.

The HP Newsroom has more information in the press release.

Power comes from inductive coupling with the read write device. It doesn't have any CPU of its own, it is merely a memory storage device. In use it will be similar to the RFID chips, but the memory size makes them very different animals. The standard RFID chip merely stores a 128=bit number, letting it serve as a digitally readable barcode. In fact, that's all Walmart wants of the RFID chips, digitally readable barcodes.

HP sees further uses, so let's examine what they claim in their press release.

Some of the potential applications include storing medical records on a hospital patient’s wristband; providing audio-visual supplements to postcards and photos; helping fight counterfeiting in the pharmaceutical industry; adding security to identity cards and passports; and supplying additional information for printed documents.

Medical records...? Hurm, I suspect there's a lot more data in typical medical records than 4mb. A typical x-ray is gonna be many megapixels of data, for example. Plus, it isn't described how the data is updated into the chip. As the patient goes through the rigors of being in the hospital, doesn't that add data to their records? Shouldn't those records in the wristband be updated?

I would think the normal RFID chip would be perfectly adequate for medical records access in a wristband. One would embed an RFID chip into the wristband, then a reader can access the number and use that as a key to bring up records on a computer screen. Since the network can store far more data than 4mb, this makes the accessible medical records far more comprehensive.

Audio-visual supplements ...? now here's something that's rather interesting. Later in the press release they discuss these ideas:

• Audio photo: Attach a chip to the prints of photographs and add music, commentary or ambient sound to enhance the enjoyment of viewing photos.
• Digital postcards: Send a traditional holiday postcard to family and friends with a chip containing digital pictures of a vacation, plus sounds and even video clips.

One can imagine a printer that automatically downloads data into one of these chips and automatically glues the chip onto the paper as it is being printed. e.g. an MP3 file could be transferred into the chip. Then HP could sell a gizmo that reads the chip data, like a digital picture frame, playing back the MP3 sound.

Sounds like a natural for HP and how they've basically become a printer company.

Document notes...? Perfect photocopies...?: The press release offers these two explanations:

• Document notes: A Memory Spot chip attached to a paper document can include a history of all the corrections and additions made to the text, as well as voice notes and graphical images.
• Perfect photocopies: A Memory Spot chip attached to a cover sheet eliminates the need to copy the original document. Just read the perfect digital version into the photocopier and the result will be sharp output every time, no matter how many copies are needed, and avoiding any possibility of the originals jamming in the feeder.

Again this implies an easy capability to record data into one of these chips and easily glue the chip to paper as the paper passes through a printer.

It does sound useful to have the paper be digitally readable and useful to a photocopier. As they suggest, sometimes photocopiers jam and it's frustrating. One can imagine a printer (again, HP has become a printer company) that lets you copy documents without having to have a scanner in the printer. Instead it would have a memory spot reader, and read the data off the paper printing whatever it read. Sounds cool.

But, what about photocopying of ad-hoc documents? Suppose you're at lunch with colleagues and scribble some brilliant ideas on a napkin or similar piece of scratch paper? A photocopier that can only read these chips would be unable to copy that brilliant idea. You need some kind of scanner to do that.

And, this document notes idea ... if you scribble on paper with a pen, how is the document notes chip supposed to know what you've scribbled on it? Or is the idea that the chip will hold editable document data, and then you re-record new data onto the chip? It's rather confusing here.

Counterfeited pharmaceuticals...? I guess they were thinking supplements and went for a different kind of supplement. Uhm, I don't follow them on this one.

In the press release they did suggest: Counterfeit drugs are a significant problem globally. Memory Spot chips can contain secure information about the manufacture and quality of pharmaceuticals. When added to a drug container, this can prove their authenticity. A similar process could be used to verify high-value engineering and aviation components.

But, like the medical records, I don't see how the memory spot chip is an advantage over a regular RFID chip. If data can be recorded onto these chips with the ease required to sell a consumer printer that automatically records data into a chip and glues it onto paper, then doesn't it seem that this isn't a very strong counterfeiting deterrent? Wouldn't it be trivial to record any data you want into one of these chips?

Security passes...? Same story ... They claim: Add a chip to an identity card or security pass for the best of both worlds --- a handy card with secure, relevant digital information included. Just how easy will it be to produce one of these chips with any data you want on it? Hence, how easy would it be to produce a forged security pass?

I should note in passing that Sun Microsystems, the company I work for, sells the Java Card concept. Our employee badges are Java Cards. It is a simple RFID system, and you hold the employee badge up to a reader, the reader communicates with a computer system, checks your RFID number, and uses that to determine whether to open the door or not. Each door has individualized access control so that the company security can be controlled down to individual rooms.

Police store DNA records of 24,000 innocent kids

Police store DNA records of 24,000 innocent kids provides an alarming overview of police surveillance activity in the UK. As the article says "Britain already has the largest network of CCTV cameras in the world", and they intend to go further. The main issue in the article is DNA profiling, where it's known the police have DNA records of 24,000 young people who have never been even accused of anything. Where there's great room for concern, the article claims "most people are already resigned to the whole population having its DNA held in police and government databases". SIGH

The article details several projects which, taken together, amount to the same end goal as the Total Information Awareness System (TIA). Since that's in the UK, this would be the British equivalent to TIA. And perhaps since some aspects of British and American government are joined at the hip, maybe MI5/6 and the NSA/CIA/DOD are working together to implement TIA?

You, the reader, may have believed the TIA project was shut down. What happened is that one of the sub-projects in TIA (it was either FutureMap or Wargaming the Asymmetric Environment) was unveiled to the public, and it offended officialdom, and enough of them went on a harumphing storm that the DoD made a show of shutting down TIA. But it's obvious that most of the subprojects to TIA continued on being funded, as they would be very useful to a surveillance system.

Now, let's go through the projects reported by The Register and align them with the TIA projects which I recorded back in 2002.

DNA Profiling: There isn't a direct analogue to a TIA project. One problem with DNA profiling, however, is the expense of doing DNA testing. Doing a full sequencing of the DNA in a tissue sample currently costs many thousands of dollars. Perhaps forensic DNA testing doesn't do full sequencing, but it still isn't going to be cheap. Be aware, though, that the government is funding research to decrease the cost of DNA testing.

The currently understood methods of DNA testing involve tissue culturing steps. For example, they take a tissue sample, grow a tissue culture in a laboratory, then kill the tissue sample, and study it under microscopes. That means identifying someone from DNA in a tissue sample will take several days.

The Bio-Surveillance project in TIA is very different from any DNA profiling system.

CCTV cameras on the roads and streets: Associated with this is number plate recognition, and face recognition. This is clearly associated with Human ID at a Distance with the addition of number plate recognition.

Implementation involves installing closed-circuit TV cameras (CCTV) in desired areas. The more cameras, the more intrusive and comprehensive is the monitoring system. You might think "oh, monitoring TV is manual, there's going to be a human looking at every video feed". No, if you have a city full of video cameras, there's no way a staff of humans can effectively scan them all. The cameras might be ignored most of the time, and only used when a call arives in the neighborhood of a given camera.

But what's possible is for the video feeds from these cameras to be analyzed by computers. That's what the Human ID at a Distance project is intended to be doing. And face recognition systems have been under test for several years. For example a public test was performed at a Super Bowl game a couple years ago, but apparently the test results were very disappointing.

The technique is to use image analysis to look for patterns that let the computer software zero in on the information of interest. The problem is computers are rather dumb. Human bodies have zillions of years of evolution to our image recognition hardware, and we recognize such things very readily. But computers have only 60 years of development (or so) behind them, and all they can deal with are numbers. It may look like they deal with words, and pictures, and sounds, and movies, and whatnot, but the software developers have to invent ways to turn all that into streams of numbers, because computers only know how to deal with numbers. This makes image analysis tricky.

Take face recognition. There's probably some pattern of pixels that usually indicate a human face. There's a small range of skin pigmentations, and then the shape of a face is generally the same with two eyes, nose, mouth, etc. It's made tricky because faces have a lot of variability, even when there's a lot of similarity. Recognizing license plates (number plates, as the British call them) would be simpler. There's a fairly well known set of colors to look for, and you know ahead of time what shape the license plate will have, and its location on a car.

Once you've got software that can reliably recognize what you're looking for ... car license plates ... you connect a fleet of computers to the CCTV cameras. They'd constantly be looking for motion, when they see motion the software looks for a license plate, and records whatever it sees. Assuming reliable software the computers can register all cars that pass by a CCTV camera.

The next step is to install multiple cameras throughout the city. Each camera gets connected to the computers. The computers register each car that passes by each camera. Or, if reliable face recognition software exists, the computers can also register each pedestrian as they pass by each camera. Hence, these computers could easily track the movement of every car or every pedestrian where-ever they (we) go in the city.

Less waiting, fingerprint check coming to your bank - Yahoo! News

The hook to get us to give up privacy is through dangling convenience in front of us. The common wisdom is it's easier to get someone to do something via bribery than intimidation. It's the old carrot-or-stick approach.

Less waiting, fingerprint check coming to your bank (Jan 19, 2006, Reuters via Yahoo!News!) and via cio.com

The plan is to have RFID chips in some kind of identity card associated with the bank. e.g. embedded in your ATM card. The bank will have RFID readers in the doorway into the bank, and they'll be able to instantly identify which of the people entering the building have accounts with the bank, instantly identify who they are, etc. This will be done simply by reading the RFID chip in the ATM card, running a check in the computers, etc.

The movie Minority Report gives an interesting approximation of how it will work. Except it won't involve retinal scans. Well, not initially. If you remember from the movie, there are several scenes where people are entering a store or other public place, and everybody stops for a moment, looks up, has their eyes scanned, and then a computerized welcoming voice says something like "So nice to see you again Harry" and they enter the store to go about their business.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a technology being developed by retailers that should migrate to banks. Customers would be automatically identified by the RFID-encrypted card in their wallet as they pass through the door, prompting a personalised welcome to flash up on a computer screen.

By the time the customer reaches the counter all his or her details are on the screen of the teller, who can discuss specific requirements without asking a lot of redundant questions.

"The bank wants to be able to identify the customer the minute they walk in and understand why they are there," said Mike Redding, head of development for Accenture Technology Labs.

"The most innovative banks will then combine the data they already have and the new information they get and simplify it and make it usable."

RFID is also likely to feature in bank cards, key rings or mobile phones as a payment option. The process is already under way in many countries and oil major Exxon Mobil has issued 6 million SpeedPasses to allow users to pay for gasoline easily at the pump, Redding said.

This will be interesting to see how it plays out.

A couple years ago certain retailers began to put RFID chips in clothing etc. That caused a huge uproar, and so the chips were taken back out. But that hasn't stopped the retailers and others from moving forward with RFID plans. They're just taking this as requiring some finesse to get the public to accept the chips.

For example my employee badge with Sun has an RFID chip in it. The badge gets waved over a reader, and it proactively checks with a computer who I am etc. It's a very short range RFID reader (about 2 inches) but RFID chips can be read at long distances given enough power.

Here's a thought which may be scary. Suppose government issued ID cards (driver licenses, etc) had an RFID chip in them, and they were to install RFID readers in sidewalks, in streetlight poles, etc. If the RFID reader had enough range to read the chip as you drive by, you could be tracked "everywhere". Certainly it would be easy to track pedestrians as they walk around on sidewalks with embedded readers.

There's a whole literature of books and movies about Big Brother (e.g. 1984: book, DVD, Audio CD; Brave New World; Fahrenheit 451) ... these books, and their kin, and the long term popularity of them indicates a serious concern among the people about overly intrusive governments. We value our freedom.

Is this the future we want?

Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey -- The Independent

Apparently in England the government is very open about wanting to track every citizens every movement. For example they're planning a national ID card that presumably will be required everywhere. But the article in question, Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey From 2006 Britain will be the first country where every journey by every car will be monitored (By Steve Connor, Science Editor, The Independant) concerns automatically monitoring cars and other vehicles driving down the road. They'll be using TV cameras monitoring the roads, connecting them to computers which can identify and read license plates. Hence, all cars driving the roads will be identified and tracked.

Hmm... I guess Big Brother is arriving a little later than predicted.

For that matter, this capability is one of the ones to be developed under the Total Information Awareness system. Under TIA it's not just license plates which would be recognized and tracked, but faces. For example if you have a crowd of people going into a sports arena, it would be "helpful" to do face capture and recognition of everybody entering the arena. Well, "helpful" so long as you can clearly identify culprits.

What occurs to me of why this is disturbing, is this makes a broad presumption that everybody is a criminal. Until now the only time Police would stop and identify you is if they had reasonable cause to believe you were some kind of criminal. For example if your driving is weaving all over the road, they might think you're drunk, pull you over, and in the process identify you.

But under this system, the police is going to be identifying everyone regardless of any determination of whether they're a criminal. Every car driving the road, or everybody walking down the sidewalk, everybody will be inspected by a computer and identified.

In the Independant article they talk about caravaning. Criminals will sometimes steal a car, then the stolen car plus several others (a.k.a. caravan) elsewhere to commit a crime using the stolen car as some kind of subterfuge to hide their tracks. A caravan is several cars driving together, so one pattern they could program into their BigBrotherPro software is "has this group of cars been together for more than 'n' miles of driving". But, isn't it possible to accidentally caravan with someone? And if you accidentally caravan with the 'wrong' people, ones who later commit a crime, might you not be accidentally caught up in their crime?

Think the police don't make mistakes?

Just last month it was revealed a German tourist was mistakenly identified as an al Qaeda operative. He was kidnapped by U.S. agents, illegally renditioned to Afghanistan, where he was tortured for several months. Once they realized their mistake they flew him to Kosovo and dumped him on the street with no money. And that's just one mistake that happened to get into the mainstream news.

The potential for grave mistake is very high here.

RFID, the one 'Chip' to bind them all?

"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name" Revelation 13:16-17

For years the typical paranoid lunatic was one who feared that the government was going to put chips in us all for mass crontrol and tracking. Well, paranoid lunatics or not, it's well on its way to being a reality.

RFID (or Auto-ID) chips are, as of this writing, actively being deployed as a replacement to the bar-code system that's been widely used for the last 20 years. These aren't, yet, being considered for widespread insertion into people, but that's merely a matter of time, and the technology does exist to insert tracking chips into people. They are currently being inserted into people for specific purposes, such as people with extreme medical conditions, in high class business executives prone to being kidnapped, or parents worried about their children getting lost. And, of course, it's starting to be big business to put chips into the family pets in case they go wandering.

Resources

[Guardian Unlimited; Sep 21, 2003] 500 paedophiles to be tracked by satellite tags (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1046614,00.html) Paedophiles are to be electronically tagged in the UK for the first time in a move that could prompt a revolution in the treatment and monitoring of sex offenders. A British company is to hold talks with Ministers in the next few weeks with a view to launching a Home Office-backed trial involving between 100 and 500 child sex offenders. It is also talking to government officials in the United States, Italy and Ireland and is to tag a number of paedophiles who have volunteered to wear the device. ... Civil liberty groups expressed deep concerns last night. 'If they have been released, they should be free to live their life in liberty. This muddies the waters between guilt and innocence,' said Mark Littlewood, campaigns director of Liberty.

Sky Guardians: http://www.skyguardian.freeserve.co.uk/ and http://skyguardian.net/

[C|NET August 29, 2003] MIT to uncork futuristic bar code (news.com.com/2100-1019_3-5069619.html) A group of academics and business executives is planning to introduce next month a next-generation bar code system, which could someday replace with a microchip the series of black vertical lines found on most merchandise. The so-called EPC Network, which has been under development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for nearly five years, will make its debut in Chicago on Sept. 15, at the EPC Symposium. ... There are several key differences between an EPC and a bar code. First, the EPC is designed to provide a unique serial number for every item in the system. By contrast, bar codes only identify groups of products. So, all cans of Diet Coke have the same bar code more or less. Under EPC, every can of Coke would have a one-of-a-kind identifier. Retailers and consumer-goods companies think a one-of-a-kind product code could help them to reduce theft and counterfeit goods and to juggle inventory more effectively. ... "Put tags on every can of Coke and every car axle, and suddenly the world changes," boasts the Web site of the Auto-ID Center, the research group at MIT leading the charge on the project. "No more inventory counts. No more lost or misdirected shipments. No more guessing how much material is in the supply chain--or how much product is on the store shelves." Another feature of the EPC is its 96-bit format, which some say is large enough to generate a unique code for every grain of rice on the planet. "Every molecule on Earth is what the MIT boys said," Abell said.

EPC Symposium (show.epcsymposium.com/epcsymposium/V40/index.cvn): The symposium has two tracks, one for CEO's the other for CIO's, and apparently none for normal people.

Planning committee is (as listed in http://www.autoidcenter.org/media/symposium_2003.pdf)

• AdvanStar
• American Trucking Association (ATA)
• Association of Automatic Identification & Data Capture Technology (AIM)
• Auto-ID Center (AIDC)
• Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors (CCGD)
• Defense Logistics Agency (DLA)
• Electronic Commerce Council of Canada (ECCC)
• Food Marketing Institute (FMI)
• Fleishman Hillard
• Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA)
• International Mass Retail Association (IMRA)
• National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS)
• National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS)
• Point of Purchase Advertising International (POPAI)
• Uniform & Textile Service Association (UTSA)
• Uniform Code Council (UCC)

[C|NET August 18, 2003] Privacy advocates call for RFID regulation news.com.com/2100-1020_3-5065388.html A handful of technology and consumer privacy experts testifying at a California Senate hearing Monday called for regulation of a controversial technology designed to wirelessly monitor everything from clothing to currency. The hearing, presided over by state Sen. Debra Bowen, focused on an emerging area of technology that's known as radio frequency identification (RFID). Retailers and manufacturers in the United States and Europe, including Wal-Mart Stores, have begun testing RFID systems, which use millions of special sensors to automatically detect the movement of merchandise in stores and monitor inventory in warehouses.

[C|NET July 9, 2003] Wal-Mart cancels 'smart-shelf' trial news.com.com/2100-1019_3-1023934.html Wal-Mart Stores has unexpectedly canceled testing for an experimental wireless inventory control system, ending one of the first and most closely watched efforts to bring controversial radio frequency identification technology to store shelves in the United States. ... A Wal-Mart representative this week told CNET News.com that the retail giant will not conduct a planned trial of a so-called smart-shelf system with partner Gillette that was scheduled to begin last month at an outlet in Brockton, Mass., a Boston suburb.

[C|NET] Big picture page around the above story: http://news.com.com/2104-1019_3-1023934.html?tag=bigpic

[CNN Online, July 9, 2003] Goodbye UPC bar codes cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/07/09/beamed.barcodes.ap/index.html Razor blades and medicines packaged with pinpoint-sized computer chips and tiny antennae to send retailers and manufacturers a wealth of information about the products -- and those who buy them -- will start appearing in grocery stores and pharmacies this year. Within two decades, the minuscule transmitters are expected to replace the familiar product bar codes, and retailers are already envisioning the conveniences the new technology, called "radio frequency identification," will bring -- even as others are raising privacy concerns. ... "It would help you manage your inventory a lot better," says Todd Andrews, spokesman for the Rhode Island-based CVS pharmacy ... "If you could utilize RFID technology to tell you that a prescription is in the waiting bin, maybe the product could say: 'I've been here 10 days and I haven't been picked up yet.' Then, you could call the patient," Andrews says. ... "Simply stated, I don't think most people want their clothes spying on them," Rotenberg said.

[The Register June 27, 2003] RFID Chips Are Here theregister.co.uk/content/55/31461.html Bar codes are something most of us never think about. We go to the grocery store to buy dog food, the checkout person runs our selection over the scanner, there's an audible beep or boop, and then we're told how much money we owe. Bar codes in that sense are an invisible technology that we see all the time, but without thinking about what's in front of our eyes. ... Surveillance is getting easier, cheaper, smaller, and ubiquitous. Sure, it's possible to destroy an RFID tag. You can crush it, puncture it, or microwave it (but be careful of fires!). You can't drown it, however, and you can't demagnetize it. And washing RFID-tagged clothes won't remove the chips, since they're specifically designed to withstand years of wearing, washing, and drying. You could remove the chip from your jeans, but you'd have to find it first.

This article is a compendium of activities and links to articles describing each one, as follows:

• They're designed to be read at 2-3 foot distances, but the range can be exteded with a more sensitive RFID receiver. news.com.com/2100-1020-995744.html
• Current uses: Chipping pets, EZPass cards to zip through toll booths, or automatically pay for gasoline at Exxon/Mobile using SpeedPass.
• Delta Airlines is tagging some baggage to help route it, reduce baggage loss. rfidjournal.com/index.php/article/articleview/468/1/1/
• Some seaport operators are tagging containers passing through shipping terminals (17,000 containers arrive each day at U.S. ports, and only 2% are inspected). rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/26/1/1/
• US DOD is using RFID tags to track military shipments. news.com.com/2100-1017-984391.html
• Star City Casino (Sydney Australia) has chipped their employee uniforms, to stop theft. alientechnology.com/news/The_Internet_of_Things.htm
• Visa is combining "smart card" technology and RFID chips to allow people to conduct transactions without having to use cash or coins. news.com.com/2100-1017-958612.html
• Michelin is going to insert RFID chips in every tire it makes (800,000 a day). rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/269/1/1/
• The Euro may have RFID chips embedded, ostensibly to combat counterfeiters and money-launderers, and enabling banks to count large amounts of cash in seconds. news.com.com/2100-1019-1009155.html and eetimes.com/printableArticle?doc_id=OEG20011219S0016
• RFID tags are seen as a panacea in managing the supply chain at every step from manufacturing, to shipping, and to stocking store shelves. news.com.com/2100-1017-984391.html and news.com.com/2100-1022-1013767.html and cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,5867|S,00.html and alientechnology.com/news/The_Internet_of_Things.htm
• Walmart is working with Gillette to create "smart shelves" that automatically transmit to the backroom stocking levels of items on the shelves, and enable them to automatically know what's in the shipments coming to the stores. salon.com/tech/feature/2003/04/17/recode2/ and zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-979710.html and news.com.com/2100-1022-1013767.html and rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/462/1/1/
• There's no law requiring notification that RFID tags are in the packaging or product. stoprfid.org/faqs.html
• Everything you own could be invisibly and unknowingly numbered, identified, catalogued and tracked, with tracking being run by services on the Internet. nocards.org/AutoID/overview.shtml
• RFID chips embedded in all "important documents" (e.g. drivers licenses, passports, stock certificates, etc) would create a great huge hurdle to counterfeiters. iapplianceweb.com/story/OEG20030604S0047
• Applied Digital Solutions has an RFID tag designed, and approved, for use in humans. It's injected under the skin, and is marketed to keep track of children, Alzheimers patients, and others in danger of "wandering". adsx.com/prodservpart/verichip.html
• In May 2003, attendees at the Chinese Communist Party Congress were required to wear RFID equipped badges at all times. 216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:faqvMvMcnrUJ:news.com.com/2009-1088-984352.html%3Ftag%3Dlh+china+raises+the+red+tag&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8
• RFID chips don't care who owns the transceiver it's responding to. The transceiver can just as easily be a bad-guy as the good-guy who's meant to be receiving the information. doxpara.com/read.php/security/rfid.html

[Computerworld; APRIL 01, 2004; Bob Brewin; computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/privacy/story/0,10801,91830,00.html?nas=PM-91830]

TSA eyes RFID boarding passes to track airline passengers

APRIL 01, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - CHICAGO -- The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is examining the use of RFID-tagged airline boarding passes that could allow passenger tracking within airports, a proposal some privacy advocates called a potentially "outrageous" violation of civil liberties.

Anthony "Buzz" Cerino, communications security technology lead at the TSA, said the agency believes the use of boarding passes with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips could speed up the movement of passengers who sign on to the agency's "registered traveler" program. This would permit them to pass through a secure "special lane" during the boarding process.

Under the registered traveler program, frequent fliers would provide the TSA with detailed personal information that would be correlated by a background check. Privacy advocates said they believe the RFID boarding pass would then serve as an automatic link to the registered traveler database. Details about how the system might work haven't been released by the TSA, and Cerino couldn't be reached today for further comment. ... The TSA has already started to work on deploying RFID boarding passes in Africa under the Federal Aviation Administration's Safe Skies for Africa Initiative (http://www.ssfa.net/), Cerino said. He didn't say which countries would use the boarding passes or when the project would start. The initiative identifies Angola, Cameroon, Cape Verde, the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mali, Namibia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe as member countries.

Links to related sites

EPCglobal (epcglobalinc.org/): "EPCglobal is leading the development of industry-driven standards for the Electronic Product Code (EPC) Network to support the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in today’s fast-moving, information rich trading networks. We are a member-driven organisation comprised of leading firms and industries focused on creating global standards for the EPCglobal Network. Our goal is increased visibility and efficiency throughout the supply chain and higher quality information flow between your company and its key trading partners."

Auto-ID center (autoidcenter.org/): DEFUNCT industry consortium driving the development of the RFID / Auto-ID system. NOTE: The web site now has a notice saying the Auto-ID Center has closed down, and been replaced by EPCglobal and the Auto-ID Labs (www.autoidlabs.org). The Auto-ID labs web site is not responding as of this writing.

STOP RFID (www.stoprfid.org/): Activist organization aimed to stop the spread of RFID and related technology.

RFID Journal (rfidjournal.com/): RFID Journal is an independent, online daily devoted to one thing: educating business people about radio frequency identification and its many business applications.

Combat Zones That See (CTS; dtsn.darpa.mil/ixo/solicitations/cts/index.htm): A US DoD project to develop to track "everything", supposedly to be used in combat zones apparently. Village Voice article (villagevoice.com/issues/0328/shachtman.php): Big Brother Gets a Brain: The Pentagon's Plan for Tracking Everything That Moves

Safe Skies for Africa Initiative (http://www.ssfa.net/) A project run by TSA to establish RFID use in African airports. This is likely a beta test outside the eyes of privacy advocates in the U.S. of something which will be fielded in the U.S. eventually.

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