Privacy World - The WORLD'S SHREWDEST PRIVACY NEWSLETTER

[helderheid]

*note to mods - this is an email newsletter so it is printed in it's entirety*

Privacy World - The WORLD'S SHREWDEST PRIVACY NEWSLETTER

Are your purchases spying on you? Radio Frequency Identification
tags containing microchips and tiny radio antennas can be embedded
in products or stuck on labels.

Has your electronics store (or drugstore or music store or
department store) recently replaced its metal shelves with plastic
ones?

Such a move could signal a switch to a type of product tracking that
has the potential to invade your privacy.

Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, is a wireless technology
that allows objects and even people to be tagged and tracked. RFID
tags contain microchips and tiny radio antennas and are embedded in
products or stuck on labels. (Tags slightly larger than a grain of
rice can be implanted under the skin.)

Once activated, they transmit a unique identifying number to an
electronic reader, which, in turn, links to a computer database
where information about the product or person is stored.

Metal, as in shelves, can interfere with transmissions between tags
and readers.

Although it sounds like science fiction, radio tagging is very much
a reality.

For years, railroads and the U.S. Department of Defense used radio
tags to track inventory. Cars outfitted with radio tags that mark
their passage have long breezed through tollbooths, while
ExxonMobil's Speedpass -- an RFID tag in the form of a key fob --
enables drivers to pay for gas without swiping a card or using a
PIN.

More recently, the technology has shown up in contactless payment
cards such as Chase's Blink or MasterCard PayPass, on individual
items at Wal-Mart and Best Buy, in library books and in U.S.
passports. The use of RFID tags is growing so explosively that
analysts forecast sales this year alone of 1.3 billion units -- more
than half as many tags as were sold in all years up through early
2006.

Part of the reason is that the price of the tags -- topping $1
apiece in 1999 -- is plummeting. Within five to seven years, radio
tags are expected to cost less than a penny each -- the magic point
at which nearly anything we buy is likely to be tagged.

To be sure, radio-tagging products from CDs to shampoos can offer
huge savings to businesses. (For one thing, it can alert stores to
merchandise shortages, preventing out-of-stock losses and other
supply-chain inefficiencies that cost retailers an estimated $40
billion annually.) And the technology can directly benefit consumers
by speeding them through checkouts, ensuring the genuineness of
often-counterfeited prescription drugs, and -- in the case of
medical-information implants -- providing data to doctors when
patients cannot.

But there are touchy privacy issues, too. Identity thieves and
other crooks can tap into the information transmitted from a radio
tag to a scanner, culling -- for example -- banking or medical
information. Researchers have already cracked the code in
ExxonMobil's Speedpass, demonstrating for the company how a hacker
could use mined data to charge gas on the Speedpass holder's
account. (Despite this January 2005 demonstration, ExxonMobil has
not changed the technology, claiming it knows of no fraudulent use
of Speedpass from cloning.)

Other researchers have copied an implantable RFID tag, which could
allow them to assume the implantee's identity and gain access to
high-security locations. (VeriChip, the tag's manufacturer, says
its product would serve as only one of several security layers
thwarting such incursions.)

Because it has moved so rapidly to the forefront, there are those
who would like to put the brakes on radio-tag technology. At least
seven states have introduced RFID-related legislation, including a
New Hampshire bill requiring that labels be placed on all items with
tracking devices. Indeed, some products are already flagged as
tagged, voluntarily displaying a thumbnail-sized Electronic Product
Code (EPC) logo on their packages. Yet few consumers recognize the
logo or understand its meaning.

So for now, at least, unless you are explicitly told by a merchant
-- or the product sits on a metal shelf -- you're unlikely to know
if the item you buy may be spying on you.

Want to protect your privacy? Get an private Internet bank account.
E-mail for discount and full particulars.

Until next issue stay cool and remain low profile!

Privacy World

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[acmavm]

1. George Orwell was so before his time. And I know that in the book it

was the government but hey, isn't corporate America really running our government now?