RFID (R U F-Ing Kidding Me?)
I'll be the first to admit, I was slightly naive to the negative consequences the current push for RFID enabled everything might have. However, after Xanthia’s enlightening presentation, as well as diving into some of the readings for this week, I feel much more informed (and much more frightened).
I remember my first “wake-up call” so to speak with surveillance and monitoring. It was 2008 and I was doing a media internship with the Canadian Armed Forces. I was acting as a journalist in a mock war that the CAF was staging at a base in Wainwright, Alberta. The scale of this mock war would be mind blowing to most. 3,000 soldiers were training before being deployed to Afghanistan, real tanks, Chinook helicopters, guns that shot blanks all taking part in what was essentially a glorified game of laser tag in a place the size of the GTA. Everyone was also required to wear a special vest. These vests were equipped with, sensors so that if someone was “shot” the vest would emit a signal letting the solider know where. They were also enabled with tracking devices so that those in the command centre could track the movements and whereabouts of every single person in “combat.” After lunch one day some of my journalist friends and I decided to duck out for an hour and head into the nearest town to grab a coffee (something we weren’t supposed to do but how would they know?). However, we forgot that we had left our vests in the trunk of the car. When we got back we were greeted by some very angry army personnel who pulled us into the command Centre and, on a 100” screen showed us a satellite image of our van, in the Tim Horton’s parking lot, with the names of everyone who was there. I couldn’t believe it. This was in 2008. I can only imagine how, six years later, the technology, and those with the abilities to access it, have increased.
When TD Bank mailed me out a new debit card about a year ago with a fancy letter explaining all of the benefits of the newly enabled RFID functions of it, I was kind of excited:
“You mean I can just hold my debit card up to the interac machine at the LCBO and not have to make small chit-chat with the person working about why I am buying beer at 11:30am on a Tuesday? Score!” I said to myself.
I remember hearing about how these new types of cards were more prone to theft and fraud, however, apparently the maximum amount one could purchase using the “quick pay” method was $50.00, so I wasn’t too scared about that, and, truth be told, I’m still not. What I’m more/most frightened of is the tracking aspects that this technology possess. As stated in the Wired reading for this week:
“The world of RFID is like the Internet in its early stages," says Ari Juels, research manager at the high tech security firm RSA Labs. "Nobody thought about building security features into the Internet in advance, and now we're paying for it in viruses and other attacks. We're likely to see the same thing with RFIDs." (3)
And that’s what scares me the most. Sure, the Internet is more secure now than it was in the beginning, but companies, governments, and hackers have also learned how to manipulate it to track what a user is doing on it. It appears as if that’s the route RFID will be/are going. In fact, that appears to be their main function right now. Tracking. Finding out who goes into what building and when. It only took a decade to harness the power of the Internet for such endeavors and I imagine it will take less time for the more negative aspects of RFID tracking to be enabled/exploited. Is it so far fetched to imagine a future where powerful RFID scanners are located throughout major cities (without our knowledge) scanning the cards we carry in our pockets or wallets giving whoever is monitoring the tracking devices a real time map of our whereabouts? I know it sounds rather Orwellian and conspiracy theorist, but the scary thing is it would not surprise me if that is already being done.
We are constantly told that these sorts of technological improvements are for a number of valid reasons. Security is one, convenience is often another, but time and time again these new technologies are either a) not nearly as secure as originally thought and b) once that is compromised the notion of convenience goes out the window with it. Call me a curmudgeon but I long for the old days when a passbook and withdrawl slip were needed to take money out of the bank. Or a key was needed to get into a locked building. In the name of “convenience” and “security” we are giving up our freedom and privacy. It makes me mad and scared. One thing is for certain…I’m going to be investing in more tinfoil.
