RFID - the 'new' you... "51 Futuristic Uses for RFID"

This is a good article sourced from RFIDlowdown's website, which discusses what we have and might have in future using Radio Frequency Identification technology.

www.rfidlowdown.com...

Why should you even be remotely interested? ...RFID chips have already been implanted in some people....

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Do you think RFID is still a good idea






[edit on 7-5-2007 by deaman88]

hell no its' not a good idea. it gives big brother even more control, perhaps more control than one could ever imagine...

RFID chips have the potential to change the way we do things, for the better, as this article pointed out.

They also have the potential to be massively abused, and probably will be.

I don't think we'll see the outright tracking of every citizen as people on this board seem to fear. (Mainly due to how easy it is to fry an RFID chip, and the existence of people who simply inserting an RFID chip into would destroy the chip.)

I think they'll mostly be used government wise to catch people who break petty laws that they get away with now.

For every use of RFID that is helpful to society, there are ten that are harmful. I think RFID has its place, but the potential for abuse is huge, and in general I am opposed to this technology in most circumstances.

Take an invention like the hunting rifle, for instance. I'd trust it in the hands of my neighbour, a skilled hunter, but I would not trust it in the hands of Dick Cheney. In most hands, I will not trust RFIDs in the slightest. With extremely careful monitoring and controls, they could be safe, but given past abuses of technology, like the recent scandal over domestic eavesdropping in the US, I wouldn't trust 'them' with RFIDs if God himself said it was okay.

RFID and the VeriChip absolutely scare the living hell out of me. What will it take to stop this!!!!!!!!!!

RFID, like every technology has both negatives and positives.

Personally I don't think they'll ever move beyond use in shipping and inventory.

At first I'm sure we'll see them used as medical information storage devices, but I don't
think they'll ever really catch on.

What I think will happen though, is we will develop more complex and better implants,
that have multiple functions, and the uses that RFID may have had that people may have gotten
them for, will be one of the many more uses that the better implants will have.

i'm pro-rfid...

I like the idea of the police et. al knowing where I am.....what if I go missing, what if a family member goes missing? It sure as hell might deter some criminal activities, etc.

Not to mention all of the other practical applications...

There's only one crime I'm guilty of, as I'm sure a lot of us here are... speeding from time to time. As long as the RFID can't be used to check that, I'm all for it

In all honesty - if you're not a criminal or up to no good... why would you care that the government is watching you?

Originally posted by x08
In all honesty - if you're not a criminal or up to no good... why would you care that the government is watching you?

Because the government, nor anyone else has the right to invade your privacy without consent.

Personally I do notwant the government watching me, regardless of if I am doing anything wrong or not.

But they supposedly ALREADY watch us... so it's not going to be any different~

Originally posted by x08
In all honesty - if you're not a criminal or up to no good... why would you care that the government is watching you?

For a very long time, I felt this way, so I understand exactly where you are coming from. The 'if I'm not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to fear' idea is one I used to believe in. The problem is, do you trust the government with that kind of information? Sure, if the government knows my social insurance number and health care number, that's relatively safe, but what happens if they share it with a third party, or a criminal accesses the RFID chip implanted in your body, and gets all that private info? What happens if your government is... corrupt in some manner or other, and uses the personal information it now has on you to harm you?

Suppose, for example, that homosexuals had their sexual orientation included in an RFID, and a hate group got access to it? (I don't know why that would be on an RFID, but, then, Jews wore Stars of David in Nazi Germany, and they made homosexuals wear some other distinctive symbol, I think it was a pink flower, but I forget now)

Information as simple as your location can be abused. Suppose the government wants to raid your house because they think you are a terrorist. They can wait until they know for certain that no one is home, and go in when you won't even know that they were there, or at least make it look like a standard B&E. Couldn't happen? What if a Muslim extremist detonated a bomb in a subway, and fled before being apprehended? Can you imagine cops and militia and all the rest breaking down the door of every Muslim in the neighbourhood looking for him?

Imagine a pedophile walking down the street, tagged with RFID. Suppose he, through an honest coincidence, happens to be following a child who is on the same route for awhile, who is also tagged with RFID. Then imagine law enforcement cracking down on this guy over a misunderstanding? Okay, maybe you don't have much sympathy for a pedophile, so how about someone who had been wrongfully accused of pedophilia in the past, and found innocent, but was made to wear an RFID tag stating them as a possible pedophilia risk in exactly the same situation?

I could make example after example, but the point, I think, is clear. How likely are any of these scenarios? I have no idea. Maybe not very likely at all. But they are possible, and certainly within the realm of technology.

And compare tagging people with RFID to other government laws and regulations that are intended to protect people. Does gun control keep guns out of the hands of criminals? Do immigration laws and ID cards and computer databases keep out the illegal immigrants, much less the terrorists? How many abuses of the PATRIOT act have there been? For that matter, how many terrorists have been apprehended using the PATRIOT act? Do you think a criminal or terrorist won't find a way to disable or misdirect an implanted RFID being used to track them? Or hack into one to create a fake identity?

Like I said, I completely understand your point of view. When I learned more about this sort of thing, particularly on ATS, but also in mainstream media and from the experiences of me and of people I know, I have changed that point of view.

The difference of if they watch us at the moment, is that you can always change your phone number, or throw your celfone in the trash can, but with the new RFID chip is implanted, you won't be able to take it out yourself.

Now this isn't a case of 'if' it happens, but when.

Think about the nano technology being produced today

www.topix.net...

these will be the rfid carriers of the future

www.engadget.com...

Now they are thinking of placing RFID chips inside DVD & music CDs to prevent them from being stolen, but is that really the push? probably they will slow down movie piracy requiring you to modify your DVD player in order to play illegal copies......

This link has some videos from You Tube which highlight what is and may happen in the future.

I am glad that at least some of us are following developments in this area!

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by a1ex
www.engadget.com...

Now they are thinking of placing RFID chips inside DVD & music CDs to prevent them from being stolen, but is that really the push? probably they will slow down movie piracy requiring you to modify your DVD player in order to play illegal copies......

What amazes me is the huge amount of data that can be tracked, I mean DVD's? how many millions are sold? some manufacturers could install a sabotage 'life chip', which means that your new 56" TV will 'die' in exactly five years, so you are forced to buy a new one in 5 years!

I wonder how big the storage facilities must be, and also how much data they must be able to process



[edit on 10/5/2007 by deaman88]

Originally posted by x08
There's only one crime I'm guilty of, as I'm sure a lot of us here are... speeding from time to time. As long as the RFID can't be used to check that, I'm all for it

They can already do that if you use any toll roads.
You're logged when you enter the road, and then when you exit.

Most people that use toll roads on a daily basis have some sort of RFID transponder in their vehicle to automatically pay the toll. they easily calculate you're average speed between the two points.

Many commercial vehicles have much more sophisticated systems that can track the vehicle anywhere, and most cars now have black boxes that investigators can look at after a collision. Those can tell them all kinds of information, like how fast you were going, or if you applied the brakes before the crash.


The first RFID implants will become mandatory for those that can't say no.

Sex offenders will have them so that alarms will sound if they approach a school or park.
Nursing home patients will have them so they can't leave the premises without staff noticing.
Then it will be babies so that they can't be stolen from the hospital, which will carry over to tracking children in schools or at home.

It's a slippery slope, and once introduced will only become more pervasive in all our lives.

Before you freak out too much, remember that the path loss for RFID e-field implants is incredibly high, so in the vast majority of cases, any RFID implant is an H-field type.

These have very strict limits on H-field RFID communication distance due to the physics of near-field RF. Like two or three feet tops. So there won't be a lot of tracking of you in the "Enemy of the State" sense, though you could be tracked in the same way that you are now by ATF card usage and the like.

Most low-power implants don't store anything but a serial number. It's not like your entire life history's in there.

That is true enough. Most of these devices have very little memory, and are only readable in a short-range vicinity. Still, even, say, 2kB of data could hold phone numbers, birthdates, passwords, and dozens of other pieces of vital personal information. Unless the RFID has its own power source (and is thus much larger) they can only be read a few feet away.

RFID: dream come true for inventory-based business, nightmare for privacy.

its a shame that its such a double edged sword.

It's all fine and dandy that they only work for a few feet, but we all need to enter and exit places during the day.

RFID readers could be placed everywhere we go, like in the door frames of buildings, on vehicles, on lamp posts along a street, etc.......

Think of cars that won't start unless the person with the right chip is inside.
Public buildings that register your RFID tag when you enter and exit.
Public transit that knows when you get on and off.
Bank machines that require no cards because it reads your chip when you walk up.
A Wal-Mart that automatically debits your acct. as you just walk out with the RFID enabled merchandise you just picked off the shelf. No check-out, just walk past a scanner and grab a receipt from a printer as you pass.
Schools that scan every pupil that comes and goes, and extend that to school buses.
Police officers that never need to ask for ID because all they need to do is scan you.
Ambulance or fire first responders, or emerg. workers that instantly have your medical history at the push of a button on their scanner.

There are so many ways something that only works for a few feet could be put into use, and tied to a central system, the only data the chip needs is a serial number.