RFID, Data Mining and Surveillance Ubiquity
Despite the claims of RFID tag makers that RFID tags are benign and unlikely to be used to create a surveillance society, three new developments suggest that RFID tags and data mining continue on their way to becoming both ubiquitous and used for general surveillance of customers, visitors, and citizens going about their daily lives. In a bid to help prevent kidnapping of children (and teen-agers from sneaking out of the house?), the Target chain of retail stores announced that it is purchasing pajamas from Lauren Scott of California that have RFID tags sewn into the hems. Readers positioned at various points through the house will set off an alarm if the pajamas pass the boundaries.
Of more concern, under the US-VISIT program, three US border crossings will begin using RFID tags to track visitors to America. Visitors to the US would be required to place personal information on the RFID tags and carry the devices/ID cards each time they enter the United States. At this time, the RFID devices can only be tracked in the border areas, but it does not seem unreasonable to expect that the US government might expand this program if it is successful.
Finally, Bruce Schneier links to the following regarding a data mining project:
Eagle's Realty Mining project logged 350,000 hours of data over nine months about the location, proximity, activity and communication of volunteers, and was quickly able to guess whether two people were friends or just co-workers.... He and his team were able to create detailed views of life at the Media Lab, by observing how late people stayed at the lab, when they called one another and how much sleep students got. Given enough data, Eagle's algorithms were able to predict what people -- especially professors and Media Lab employees -- would do next and be right up to 85 percent of the time.
Between GPS locators in our mobile phones, security cameras in every nook and cranny, and RFID tags finding their way into more of our products, have we reached a point where one should presume that we are subject to monitoring? If so, does that impact certain presumptions under the law? What will be most interesting is to see what happens when the general public becomes aware of all of this monitoring or, rather, becomes aware that it is not just "potential terrorists" that are being monitored. Will people shrug off the monitoring as a price we pay for safety or will there be a backlash as there was when the Brittan School District in Northern California tried to use RFID tags for tracking students earlier this year?
Posted by Kraig Baker