Braced for Impact

New Book on RFID: Bruce Sterling preface too!

The new book Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID is out.

Bruce Sterling from the foreword (or is it a preface?):

It's like watching Big Brother come home and get a rolling pin broken over his head by Mrs. Big Brother, who knows that, even though he thinks he's everybody's daddy, he's a stalker, and a voyeur, and a crook, and a cheat, and a drunk on his own ego, and a handwashing, sniveling deadbeat who out to be ashamed of himself.'

This tome ought to liven things up a bit just as the biggest players are getting ready to make their play.

Note: it is not at all clear to me why Amazon offers me special pricing if I purchase this book along with The Nephilim and the Pyramid of the Apocaplypse . . . perhaps Amazon applies its "raving loon" algorithm to books about RFID, since several of the recent ones appear to link the chips with the Mark of the Beast, etc.

Pentagon Creating Student Database

Link: Pentagon Creating Student Database.

From the Washington Post --

The program is provoking a furor among privacy advocates. The new database will include personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying.

How does a newly empowered, distributed populace respond to this? Does it require a defensive response?

Bruce Sterling on the Newest RFID Dustup

Wired News Blog

Bruce does a one man Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary on the Arphid Wars. Maybe someone will do a claymation Celebrity Death Match version next. Watch BoingBoing for that one ---

Supporters say they will help retailers to run their supply chains and protect their goods from shoplifters. Opponents label them as a privacy nightmare that would give governments and big business the opportunity to monitor the behaviour and movement of citizens. (((They're both dead right. That's why it's a war!)))

RFID tags get a little congressional scrutiny

Tracking tags may get congressional scrutiny | CNET News.com

Senator Leahy is at least aware of some of the privacy and consumer issues, and seems to be proposing that RFID, at least as a surveillance technology, could use a little federal regulation.

"We are on the verge of a revolution in micro-monitoring--the capability for the highly detailed, largely automatic, widespread surveillance of our daily lives," Leahy said, according a transcript of the speech.

"RFIDs seem poised to become the catalyst that will launch the age of micro-monitoring," he added.

An Overview of Ubiquitous Computing issues: Utility v. Privacy

From Wired News: Balancing Utility With Privacy

There's a conference . . .

Designers of ubiquitous computing systems envision seeding private and public places with sensors and transmitters, embedded in objects and hidden from view.
The tiny devices, some the size of a postage stamp, could help cognitively impaired seniors take care of themselves, for example, by quietly watching and recording all of their activities, making decisions based on their personal histories, and communicating with their caregivers via mobile phones or other wireless handheld devices.

The AudioTag, which allows people to leave whispered messages floating around in the walls, sounds pretty cool for about the first 30 seconds --

The Audio Tag, said Future Applications Lab researcher Lalya Gaye, is only as risky to a person's privacy as the message the individual records. Most people playing with the device leave short poems and messages for lovers, Gaye said, like, "This is where we kissed for the first time."

The first time I get spammed by one of those suckers, it's coming out of the wall with my trusty crowbar....

Is that an RFID in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

out-law.com - legal news and business guides

Once again, the English lead the way (first, omnipresent camera surveillance -- now facing a bit of a backlash, and now RFID-tagging your drawers):

Marks & Spencer is including radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in clothes at one of its shops in a trial to improve stock accuracy and product availability. But the company is being careful to steer clear of privacy concerns.

The trial began on 13th October in its High Wycombe, England store and will last four weeks, with RFID tags embedded in some men's suits, shirts and ties.

CASPIAN weighs in:

Crucially, as far as privacy activists are concerned, there will be no scanners at the checkouts, and therefore no way in which purchaser details can be connected to the garment number.

Katharine Albrecht, director of Privacy group CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) has taken a measured view of the M&S approach, telling CNet:

"We stand firm in our opposition to item-level RFID tagging of consumer products and encourage consumers not to purchase them. But we do want to recognize Marks & Spencer's responsible attitude toward the trial. Other retailers have simply chosen to ignore the serious privacy and health concerns of their customers."

Finns Get Ready to Track Kids Via Cellphone Position

Yahoo! News - Finns Ready Law for Tracking Young Cellphone Users

Wow. When I started posting a few things on the surveillance of children, I had no idea that there was such a worldwide drive to do this.

Finland has proposed a new law that would let parents track the movements of their young children via mobile phone, even without their consent, in a move that could set an EU benchmark in privacy and handset use.

The proposal is part of new law on privacy in electronic communications and could still be changed in parliament hearings, although the Nordic country's coalition government accepted it unanimously this week.

And it's not just Finland (which up until now, I have always seen portrayed in the media as a sort of Celltopia for young un-wireds)

"Roughly similar legislation will be a reality in the European Union area in the near future," said Juhapekka Ristola, an official at the transport and communications ministry.

. . .

According to the draft, individuals aged 15 or older could only be tracked after giving their consent, but for children under 15 such consent could also be given by their parents or guardians.

In emergency situations people can still be tracked without their consent regardless of their age.

Finland's top mobile operators offer positioning services already.

So why kids? Because we can justify the intrusion based on our concern for their safety? Because they don't have a full set of rights? (Is that also true in the EU? Don't know...)

So . . . even if we'd never tolerate this treatment of adults (i.e., us) the next generation of adults and policy-makers will be thoroughly conditioned to think that it's normal.

Man, my copy of The Transparent Society is going to be worn out by the end of the year....

More Goodness on Digital ID

There's a whole bunch of yummy goodness about Digital ID World, and the huge range of discussions that any thinking on the subject engenders over at Marc's Voice. Lots of pictures too, if you want to see what all these folks look like.

(One of the amazing things about this blog stuff is that I don't know any of these folks, but here I am, if not part of the conversation, at least part of the peanut gallery...
. . .
As they used to say in the old days -- "on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog ..." but, uhh, I guess good digital ID would change all that....)

The other really amazing thing is that here are all of these people, none of whom are (as far as I can tell) elected officials, mega-biz bigwigs, or hollywood celeb types. Yet they are thinking important thoughts, saying what seem to be intelligent things, and generally having a good time.

So, two questions:
1) where are all of the aforementioned bigwigs? Are they thinking similar thoughts? Having similar conversations? If so, where and with whom???
2) If the people with the visible money and power are off somewhere else actually designing these systems (and I think they are), are they a) paying attention to the conversation here; and b) do they give a shit what anybody else thinks?

I think that the answers to those questions will tell us a lot about what the future is going to look like.

More Digital ID -- The need for a bigger picture of what it means

WERBLOG
posted a preface to the Digital ID World conference last week:

There will soon be significant battles over digital ID. The danger is that they won't be seen for what they are, but as isolated fights specific to a particular industry or situation. The essential objective should be balance -- anonymity vs. identity, openness vs. control, unification vs. segmentation. Too far in any direction, and we'll suffer unintended consequences that far exceed the benefits.

The lack of a big picture view -- concentrating on the battle, not the war -- is what I see as the gravest danger in every major issue we face. Despite all the connectedness of the web, most people still don't (or can't, or won't) connect the dots.

That's why I post on stuff like Monsanto's scorched-earth IP crusade -- those RIAA arguments can be (are) applied to the food supply of the planet. That's serious business; yet the focus is what a bunch of college dorm rats are doing. Is that a strategy for people who are serious about their future?

You don't have to be right about all the details, but you do have to be willing to take a whack at it. You don't even have to be very good at it -- A willingness to look at something that resembles a whole system today, and to make a wild-ass guess about what it might look like a year from now, makes you a frigging savant. Somebody that's as sharp an observer as William Gibson starts looking like Moses.

Hi-Quality Bloggage of Digital ID World

Denise Howell of Bag & Baggage blog fame gives a blow by blow of panels at "Digital ID World." (Note to conference organizers -- this sounds like a "big box store" one might find located between Circuit City and Total Beverage in the suburban DC area.)

REALLY interesting stuff -- well written and covered. Even for people who aren't lawyers.

I like the discussion on "grassroots identity," especially the observation about the now-ubiquitous supermarket affinity scans --

Marc Canter can be bought. Objected in principle to supermarket reward cards, but a couple of $1 Thanksgiving turkeys put a quick end to that. He now guesses he's saved a couple of thousand dollars, and if they think they're getting value from his shopping habits, God bless them.

So far, so good -- but put your past buying habits together with your current buying habits together with accurate identity (the biometric paypad at GNC??) and you're well on your way to Minority Report-style shopping dissonance. "Welcome back . . . oh, [this is the first time you've bought size 1 Huggies... click, whir . . . ] congratulations on the new baby!"

Or Better yet -- "last time you were here at the Gap, you were a size 6, and those jeans you're trying on [are broadcasting via RFID that they] are size 8. Here are some Jenny Craig coupons to go with your new purchase..."

But I digress -- I think it was that Salon article . . .
Check out Bag & Baggage