Are you ready to begin living a tagged life? If you are, the future is here, courtesy of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags.
Stage 1 of your tagged life is now here, in the form of new high-tech driver's licenses, which can be used at U.S. border crossings in Mexico and Canada. Each license incorporates a RFID tag encoded with a unique identification number.
As you approach a border crossing, a RFID reader sends out a signal that an antenna on the tag picks up. The tag in turn reveals its ID number. By the time you arrive at the border crossing, Customs agents already have your name, address, photo, and other details in front of them.
Ordinary U.S. passports also contain a RFID tag. The only difference is that the tag can't be read remotely, at least in theory.
States on the U.S. and Mexican border have now started to issue RFID-equipped licenses. The state of Washington now issues an RFID tagged "enhanced driver license," which can be used for border crossings to and from Canada. In the near future, Arizona, Michigan, New York, and Vermont will begin issuing them.
Although there's no law requiring you to obtain an enhanced driver license, once you sign up, you open the door to privacy invasion on an unprecedented scale. That's because the RFID tag number on your license is associated with your identity. Anyone with a RFID reader—an item you can pick up for a few hundred dollars—can interrogate the tag and access the data on it. Combine that with the growing number of products which contain RFID tags—credit cards, ATM cards, cell phones, key cards, etc.—and the potential grows exponentially for surreptitious tracking, wherever you go.
Some people don't believe that's a problem. I do, though, because the data on the RFID tags in enhanced drivers' licenses isn't encrypted. An identity thief, a stalker, a private investigator, or anyone else who wants to learn your identity, and potentially match it to the growing array of data tied to your tag number, can remotely interrogate the tag with a simple RFID reader. You won't even know when it happens. (In contrast, the data on the RFID tags in U.S. passports is encrypted--although hackers have already figured out how to clone the data).
Combine this potential for abuse with the huge plans corporations—and the government—have for "people tracking" via RFID tags, and the potential for 24/7 surveillance is obvious. For instance, an IBM patent granted in 2006 describes a network of interconnected RFID readers that IBM calls "person tracking units" (PTUs). IBM envisions installing PTUs everywhere that people go—in airports, shopping malls, sports arenas, theaters, etc. According to the patent, the PTU network would "keep records of different locations where the person has visited, as well as the visitation times."
How do corporate America and the U.S. government plan to use the massive amounts of data gathered through RFID tags? Essentially, to facilitate 24/7 surveillance of everything you do and everywhere you go. I'll have more to say about that in my next blog entry...stay tuned.
Copyright © 2008 by Mark Nestmann
Comments