RFIDRadio frequency identification (RFID) is a method of remotely storing and retrieving data using devices called RFID tags. An RFID tag is a small object, such as an adhesive sticker, that can be attached to or incorporated into a product. RFID tags contain antennae to enable them to receive and respond to radio-frequency queries from an RFID transceiver.
History of RFID tagsAlthough some people think that the first known device may have been invented by Leon Theremin as an espionage tool for the Russian Government in 1945, the first real usage of RFID devices predates that. During World War II the United Kingdom used RFID devices to distinguish returning English airplanes from inbound German ones. RADAR was only able to signal the presence of a plane, not the kind of plane it was. Perhaps the first work exploring RFID is the landmark 1948 paper by Harry Stockman, entitled "Communication by Means of Reflected Power" (Proceedings of the IRE, pp1196-1204, October 1948). Stockman predicted that " ...considerable research and development work has to be done before the remaining basic problems in reflected-power communication are solved, and before the field of useful applications is explored." It required thirty years of advances in many different fields before RFID became a reality. Types of RFID tagsRFID tags can be either active or passive. Passive RFID tags do not have their own power supply: the minute electrical current induced in the antenna by the incoming radio-frequency scan provides enough power for the tag to send a response. Due to power and cost concerns, the response of a passive RFID tag is necessarily brief, typically just an ID number (GUID). Lack of its own power supply makes the device quite small: commercially available products exist that can be embedded under the skin. As of 2004, the smallest such devices commercially available measured 0.4 mm × 0.4 mm, and thinner than a sheet of paper; such devices are practically invisible. Passive tags have practical read ranges that vary from about 10 mm up to about 5 metres. Active RFID tags, on the other hand, must have a power source, and may have longer ranges and larger memories than passive tags, as well as the ability to store additional information sent by the transceiver. At present, the smallest active tags are about the size of a coin. Many active tags have practical ranges of tens of metres, and a battery life of up to several years. As passive tags are much cheaper to manufacture, the vast majority of RFID tags in existence are of the passive variety. As of 2004 tags cost from US$0.25. The aim is to produce tags for less than US$0.05 to make widespread RFID tagging commercially viable. There are four different kinds of tags commonly in use, their differences based on the level of their radio frequency: Low frequency tags (between 125 to 134 kilohertz), High frequency tags (13.56 megahertz), UHF tags (868 to 956 megahertz), and Microwave tags (2.45 gigahertz). See also for some Transponder devices which deliver a similar function, and contactless chipcards. Current usageLow-frequency RFID tags are commonly used for animal identification, beer keg tracking, and automobile key-and-lock, anti-theft systems. Pets are often embedded with small chips so that they may be returned to their owners if lost. In the United States, two RFID frequencies are used: 125kHz (the original standard) and 134.5kHz, the international standard. High-frequency RFID tags are used in library book or bookstore tracking, pallet tracking, building access control, airline baggage tracking, and apparel item tracking. High-frequency tags are widely used in identification badges, replacing earlier magnetic stripe cards. These badges need only be held within a certain distance of the reader to authenticate the holder. UHF RFID tags are commonly used commercially in pallet and container tracking, and truck and trailer tracking in shipping yards. Microwave RFID tags are used in long range access control for vehicles, an example being General Motors' OnStar system. Some toll booths, such as California's FasTrak system, use RFID tags for electronic toll collection. The tags are read as vehicles pass; the information is used to debit the toll from a prepaid account. The system helps to speed traffic through toll plazas. Sensors such as seismic sensors may be read using RFID transceivers, greatly simplifying remote data collection. In January 2003, Michelin announced that it has begun testing RFID transponders embedded into tires. After a testing period that is expected to last 18 months, the manufacturer will offer RFID-enabled tires to car-makers. Their primary purpose is tire-tracking in compliance with the United States Transportation, Recall, Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation Act (TREAD Act). Cards embedded with RFID chips are widely use as electronic cash, e.g. Octopus Card in Hong Kong and the Netherlands to pay fares in mass transit systems and/or retails. In August 2004, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRH) approved a $415,000 contract to trial the tracking technology with Alanco Technologies. Inmates will wear "wristwatch-sized" transmitters that can detect if prisoners have been trying to remove them and send an alert to prison computers. This project is not the first such rollout of tracking chips in US prisons. Facilities in Michigan, California and Illinois already employ the technology. Implantable RFID "chips", originally designed for animal tagging are being used and contemplated for humans as well. Applied Digital Solutions proposes their chip's "unique under-the-skin format" as a solution to identity fraud, secure building access, computer access, storage of medical records, anti-kidnapping initiatives and a variety of law-enforcement applications. Combined with sensors to monitor body functions, the Digital Angel device could provide monitoring for patients. The Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, Spain uses an implantable Verichip to identify their VIP customers, who in turn use it to pay for drinks. The Mexico City police department has implanted approximately 170 of their police officers with the Verichip, to allow access to police databases and possibly track them in case of kidnapping. Potential usesRFID tags are often envisioned as a replacement for UPC or EAN bar-codes, having a number of important advantages over the older bar-code technology. RFID codes are long enough that every RFID tag may have a unique code, while UPC codes are limited to a single code for all instances of a particular product. The uniqueness of RFID tags means that a product may be individually tracked as it moves from location to location, finally ending up in the consumer's hands. This may help companies to combat theft and other forms of product loss. It has also been proposed to use RFID for point-of-sale store checkout to replace the cashier with an automatic system, with the option of erasing all RFID tags at checkout and paying by credit card or inserting money into a payment machine. This has to a limited extent already been implemented at some stores[1] (http://www.ncr.com/repository/articles/pdf/sa_selfcheckout_integratedsolutions.pdf). An organization called EPCglobal is working on a proposed international standard for the use of RFID and the Electronic Product Code (EPC) in the identification of any item in the supply chain for companies in any industry, anywhere in the world. The organization's board of governors includes representatives from EAN International, Uniform Code Council, The Gillette Company, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, and Auto-ID Labs. In July 2004, the Food and Drug Administration issued a ruling that essentially begins a final review process that will determine whether hospitals can use RFID systems to identify patients and/or permit relevant hospital staff to access medical records. Many somewhat far-fetched uses, such as allowing a refrigerator to track the expiration dates of the food it contains, have also been proposed, but few have moved beyond the prototype stage. Controversy
The use of RFID technology has engendered considerable controversy and even product boycotts. The four main privacy concerns regarding RFID are:
Most concerns revolve around the fact that RFID tags affixed to products remain functional even after the products have been purchased and taken home, and thus can be used for surveillance, and other nefarious purposes unrelated to their supply chain inventory functions. Although RFID tags are only officially intended for short-distance use, they can be interrogated from greater distances by anyone with a high-gain antenna, potentially allowing the contents of a house to be scanned at a distance. Even short range scanning is a concern if all the items detected are logged in a database every time a person passes a reader, or if it is done for nefarious reasons (e.g., a mugger using a hand-held scanner to obtain an instant assessment of the wealth of potential victims). With permanent RFID serial numbers, an item leaks unexpected information about a person even after disposal; for example, items that are resold, or given away, enable mapping of a person's social network. Another privacy issue is due to RFID's support for a singulation (anti-collision) protocol. This is the means by which a reader enumerates all the tags responding to it without them mutually interfering. The structure of the most common version of this protocol is such that all but the last bit of each tag's serial number can be deduced by passively eavesdropping on just the reader's part of the protocol. Because of this, whenever RFID tags are near to readers, the distance at which a tag's signal can be eavesdropped is irrelevant; what counts is the distance at which the much more powerful reader can be received. Just how far this can be depends on the type of the reader, but in the extreme case some readers have a maximum power output (4 W) that could be received from tens of kilometres away. The potential for privacy violations with RFID was demonstrated by its use in a pilot program by the Gillette Company, which conducted a "smart shelf" test at a Tesco in Cambridge. They automatically photographed shoppers taking RFID-tagged safety razors off the shelf, to see if the technology could be used to deter shoplifting. [3] (http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=5363) In January 2004 a group of privacy advocates was invited to METRO Future Store in Germany, where an RFID pilot project was implemented. It was uncovered by accident that METRO "Payback" customer loyalty cards contained RFID tags with customer IDs, a fact that was disclosed neither to customers receiving the cards, nor to this group of privacy advocates. This happened despite assurances by METRO that no customer identification data was tracked and all RFID usage was clearly disclosed. [4] (http://www.spychips.com/metro/overview.html) The controversy was furthered by the accidental exposure of a proposed Auto-ID consortium public relations campaign that was designed to "neutralize opposition" and get consumers to "resign themselves to the inevitability of it" whilst merely pretending to address their concerns. [5] (http://www.spychips.com/press-releases/security_gaffe.html) The standard proposed by EPCglobal includes privacy-related guidelines for the use of RFID-based EPC. These guidelines [6] (http://www.epcglobalinc.org/public_policy/public_policy_guidelines.html) include the requirement to give consumers clear notice of the presence of EPC and to inform them of the choice that they have to discard, disable or remove EPC tags. These guidelines are non-binding, and only partly meet the joint position statement (http://www.spychips.com/jointrfid_position_paper.html) of 46 multi-national consumer rights and privacy groups. In 2004, Lukas Grunwald released a computer program RFDump which with suitable hardware allows reading and reprogramming the metadata contained in an RFID tag, although not the unchangeable serial number built into each tag. He said consumers could use this program to protect themselves, although it would also have significant malicious uses. PassportsA number of countries have proposed to embed RFID devices in new passports [7] (http://news.com.com/E-passports+to+put+new+face+on+old+documents/2100-7337_3-5313650.html), to facilitate efficient machine reading of biometric data. Security expert Bruce Schneier said of these proposals: "It's a clear threat to both privacy and personal safety. Quite simply, it's a bad idea." The RFID enabled passport uniquely identifies its holder, and in the proposal currently under consideration, will also include a variety of other personal information. This would greatly simplify some of the abuses of RFID technology just discussed, and expand them to include, for example, abuses based on machine reading of a person's race or nationality. For example, a mugger operating near an airport could target victims who have arrived from wealthy countries, or a terrorist could design a bomb which functioned when approached by persons of a particular race. Driver's LicensesThe US state of Virginia has considered putting RFID tags into drivers' licenses in order to make lookups faster for Police Officers and other government officials. The Virginia General Assembly also hopes that by including the tags fake identity documents would become much harder to obtain. The proposal was first introduced in the "Driver's License Modernization Act" of 2002, which lapsed without vote, but as of 2004 the concept is still under consideration by a committee. The idea was supposedly prompted by the fact that several of the September 11 hijackers held fake Virginia drivers' licenses. However the American Civil Liberties Union has claimed that in addition to being a risk to privacy and liberty, the proposal in fact would not have hindered the hijackers, since all their false documents were valid, officially issued documents obtained for a false identity. That is, the current weakness in the system is not inspecting documents in the field, but verifying identities before issuing documents. Under the proposal, no information would be stored on the tag other than a number corresponding to the holder's information in a database, only accessible by authorized personnel. Also, to deter identity thieves one would simply need to wrap ones driver's license in aluminium foil. [8] (http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVarticle.asp?ID=21006&pid=1202), [9] (http://washingtontimes.com/metro/20041006-113607-9806r.htm) External linksIn the news
Opposition
Industry associations
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