A technological advancement over Nazi tattooing of prisoners

RFID chip

Revelation 13:16-18

16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

Radio Frequency ID chips will soon be in cash, credit cards, your drivers license, cheap crap at grocery stores, cars, car tires, possibly under your skin.

Wal-Mart is mandating its adoption by its suppliers, which will force all of corporate "america" to switch from bar codes, which merely track what kind of product something is, with RFID, which uses an 18 digit number to track which specific product it is. Bar codes track an model of car tire, RFID would track the specific tire -- which could then be cross-referenced in the great Homeland Insecurity Totalitarian Information Awareness uber-database. Simple RFID readers will probably be set up just about everywhere that will then read all RFID chips in the vicinity for plugging into the system. This is far, far more intrusive than the nightmarish vision of George Orwell's 1984.

The movie BRAZIL by Terry Gilliam (1985) was a warning about what type of society these sorts of technological slavery systems would create.

RFID chips don't have their own energy source, they are passive. They emit a signal when specific frequencies of radio energy are used to "paint" them. RFIDs contain tiny antennas that receive that RF energy and then re-radiate their encoded information.

The main problem to their widespread adoption is cost (it's too expensive to put them in every cereal box) and the lack of scanning systems to read them in stores. But with mass production and a few billion from Wal-Mart, the military, homeland security grants, and other rulers of the Brave New World Order, these technical obstacles will be overcome soon.

Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID by Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre
"A masterpiece..." -- from the foreword by Bruce Sterling

CASPIAN
Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering
www.nocards.org

www.stoprfid.com

RFID Implants

Hi-tech 'satellite' tagging planned in order to create more space in jails
Civil rights groups and probation officers furious at 'degrading' scheme

By Brian Brady, Whitehall Editor
Published: 13 January 2008

One company plans deeper implants that could vibrate, electroshock the implantee, broadcast a message, or serve as a microphone to transmit conversations. "Some folks might foolishly discount all of these downsides and futuristic nightmares since the tagging is proposed for criminals like rapists and murderers," Ms McIntyre said. "The rest of us could be next."

Big Brother Gets Under Your Skin

YOUR PAPERS, PLEASE ...
Ultimate ID badge, transceiver implanted in humans monitored by GPS satellites
World Net Daily (conservative news service), March 20, 2000

Bio Chip Arrives for Cashless Transactions
Announcement at global security confab unveils syringe-injectable ID microchip
Posted: November 21, 2003

VeriChip™
VeriChip is a miniaturized, implantable radio frequency identification device (RFID) that has the potential to be used in a variety of security, financial, and other applications. About the size of a grain of rice, each VeriChip product contains a unique verification number and will be available in several formats. The verification number is captured by briefly passing a proprietary scanner over the VeriChip. A small amount of radio frequency energy passes from the scanner energizing the dormant VeriChip, which then emits a radio frequency signal transmitting the verification number.

L.A. County Jail Tags Inmates with RFID
Published: May 17, 2005, 11:45 AM PDT
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

The next fashion accessory for some inmates at the Los Angeles County jail will be a radio frequency identification bracelet.
The country's largest jail system has launched a pilot project with Alanco Technologies to track inmates using the technology, also known as RFID.
The first phase will involve setting up an RFID system in the 1,800-inmate east facility of the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic, Calif., by fall 2005. If it succeeds, and funding can be obtained, the county will spread the system throughout its prison facilities.
In prison networks with such technology, RFID readers are planted throughout a jail in such large numbers that bracelet-wearing inmates can be continually tracked. When an inmate comes within range of a sensor, it detects his or her presence and records the event in a database. Thus, if an assault occurs at night, prison officials can look at the RFID logs and identify who was at the scene at the time of the incident. Tampering with the bracelet sends an alarm to the system. The system can also warn of gang gatherings.
Orwellian as tagging sounds, inmate violence has declined in prisons where similar RFID systems have been installed, according to Alanco. Guards also wear RFID tags in these facilities.
"The primary concern of the sheriff's department is the safety of both our staff and the inmates housed in our facilities," said Marc Klugman, chief of the Sheriff's Correctional Services Division.
In 2004, there were an estimated five inmate deaths, and injuries to 1,742 inmates and 88 jail staff in the seven facilities that make up the L.A. county jail system, according to the county.
Alanco estimates that the prison system alone could become a billion-dollar market, while jails could account for $500 million to $700 million in revenue.

Indians first targetted by Big Brother
B02306 Fri, 10 Dec 2004 18:35:08 -0800
You may reprint or send out this article provided you give credit as: “Originally printed by Akwesasne Phoenix Sundays, Nov. 14, 2004, Issue 4 info@akwesasnephoenix.com”
YOU AIN’T NOTHING BUT A HOUN’ DOG
How government bloodhounds plan on tracking Indians.
MNN. Dec. 4, 2004. It’s a sinister joke. It’s evil. Where does this come from?
The Mohawks of Kahnawake and Crees of Quebec will be guinea pigs for a worldwide ‘Smart Card” system!
These new super ID cards have been on the wish-list of the Powers That Be for years. They want everyone to have one. They want to keep track of everything that everyone does.
But their dream keeps getting shot down. Human rights activists say “Smart cards” are an invasion of privacy. Mainstream America won’t have it. So the control freaks have decided to do an end-run around all the idealistic do-gooders.
That’s why the project has surfaced in Indian Country.
Smart cards are being passed off as a make work project in Kahnawake. An American company located in Virginia, close to Washington D.C. has persuaded Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs to fund the project. The new card will replace the present Indian Status Card. It will be used to tighten security measures by making it possible to electronically track those who have the right kind of blood according to their ways of reckoning.
The work is being done in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The plan is to make smart cards for all of the Aboriginal nations.
Anteon, the private American company heading this project, is a world leader in card technology. The team also includes Laser Card Systems. A November 22, 2004 letter from lawyer, Mark L. Cushing of Sonnenschein, Nath and Rosenthal, of Washington DC, to Mike Bush of Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, provided some of the details of the scheme.
Anteon is preparing specifications for a new facility in Kahnawake. When they are sent, the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake will be asked to find a place for the set up. The project has never been publicly discussed, but some of the machinery is apparently already on location.
As Mike Bush of Mohawk Council of Kahnawake says, this card “will prevent fraud and satisfy the border crossing requirements, while bearing a unique logo for each community and including ‘additional’ information”.
Former Kahnawake chief, Joe Norton, has been hired as a consultant. His services are appreciated because he brought the Assembly of First Nations on board. Joe Norton, Amanda Grainger and Mark Cushing met in late October 2004 in Ottawa with the AFN. The AFN then met with the Minister of Indian Affairs and got his support.
So this is how things work in Canada. A private American company with ties to the U,S. government gets an idea. They sell it to the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake. Joe Norton sells it to the AFN, which sells it to Indian Affairs. It’s probably not even necessary to slip another revision of the Indian Act past Canada’s sleepy M.P.’s. And there you have it. Smart cards get their foot in the door and Indians get ruled by American Big Business.
But it doesn’t stop with us. Anteon is anxious to expand its business throughout Canada. And it thinks it can do this with the help of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake. Mark Cushing has strongly requested that Mike Bush and Mike Delisle of MCK meet at its headquarters in northern Virginia outside of Washington DC so they can “make this work”.
Let’s stop for a moment folks to think about what these folks are up to.
This is not your ordinary mom and pop tobacco shack business plan. What better way to keep track of us than stapling smart cards to our ears? They are the electronic bloodhounds of the 21st century.
And what have bloodhounds been used for? They catch people to put them in jail.
Remember the plan to route the new larger, deeper Seaway channel AROUND Kahnawake? That will turn Kahnawake into an island. Like Alcatraz.
So why are they doing this to us? Sure, people need jobs. But aren’t there lots of other more important things that need to be done? Mohawk immersion. Health services. Things like that? Is there any real justification for all this spying?
If this is a democracy, why do they need all these control mechanisms? Who is doing this to us, anyways? And why is the MCK cooperating? What kickback are they receiving for putting up their own people as test mice? Why are they putting up these mazes so they can watch us run through them?
We are the most vocal Indigenous people in Canada. If they can get this scheme past us, the rest of North America will be gravy. Before long they will have smart cards on everyone in the world.
Look at the procedure that is being used. Has this come before a public meeting? Has anyone told us why we need this identity card? Has anyone told us what it can do?
And has anyone considered the consequences of letting a private American company have this much control?
We all know how hard it is to get the North American public to understand our point of view. Our whole history has been one of abuse and misunderstanding. Is this smart card going to make anything any easier?
No.
Once it’s in place it will be even easier for them to inhibit freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of movement. No one will be allowed off of the new Alcatraz without a smart card.
Whether it knows what it is doing or not, the MCK is inviting external control over the people.
So far there is already an internal agreement with Indian Affairs. Did this get passed before the Canadian Parliament? Has it been passed by any resolution of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake ? Where’s the principle of democratic representation here?
Have they forgotten completely about the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee?
The colonization of North America began in Virginia. It was started by a private company chartered to a foreign monarch. Nothing has changed in 500 years. We’re still having to defend ourselves from a private foreign company situated down in Virginia.
What next? Implanting micro-chips in babies at birth? Why do they need to track us anyways? And who is doing the tracking? Where does it all stop?
Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
orakwa@paulcomm.ca
Please complete survey:
http://kahntinetahorn.tripod.com/

Parents and Civil Liberties Groups Urge School District to Terminate Use of Tracking Devices

i-Newswire, 2005-02-08 - NOTE: This is a press release from the ACLU of Northern California that EFF is recirculating for your information.
San Francisco - Parents in a northern California public school district and civil liberties groups are urging a school district to terminate the mandatory use of Radio Frequency Identification tags ( RFIDs ) by students. Several civil liberties groups, including the ACLU of Northern California ( ACLU-NC ), Electronic Frontier Foundation ( EFF ), and the Electronic Privacy Information Center ( EPIC ) sent a letter today expressing alarm at the Brittan School District's use of mandatory ID badges that include a RFID device that tracks the students' movements. The device transmits private information to a computer on campus whenever a student passes under one of the scanners. The ID badges also include the student's name, photo, grade, school name, class year and the four-digit school ID number. Students are required to prominently display the badges by wearing them around the neck at all times.
"Forcing my child to be tracked with a RFID device – without our consent or knowledge – is a complete invasion of our privacy," said Michael and Dawn Cantrall. "Our 7th grader came home wearing the ID badge prominently displayed around her neck– if a predator wanted to target my child, the mandatory school ID card has just made that task easier." The Cantralls filed a formal complaint against the Brittan Elementary School Board in Sutter, California on January 30th after meeting with several school officials.
In a letter dated February 7, sent to the Brittan Board of Trustees, the civil liberties groups "urge the school board to recognize the serious safety and civil liberties implications" and call the for the School Board to "terminate this ill-advised test immediately."
"We are sending the letter today because a School Board meeting is scheduled for tomorrow night and we want to make sure that the District reconsiders the issue," said Nicole Ozer, Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director of the ACLU-NC. "RFID technology is inappropriate for use in schools. The badges jeopardize the safety and security of children by broadcasting identity and location information to anyone with a chip reader and subjects students to demeaning tracking of their movements."
"The monitoring of children with RFID tags is comparable to the tracking of cattle, shipment pallets, or very dangerous criminals in high-security prisons. Compelling children to be constantly tracked with RFID-trackable identity badges breaches their right to privacy and dignity as human beings. Forcing children to wear badges around their necks displaying such sensitive information as their name, picture, grade and school exposes them to potential discrimination since the name of their school may disclose their religious beliefs or social class," said Cédric Laurant, Policy Counsel with EPIC.
Jeffrey and Michele Tatro, parents of a thirteen-year-old student at Brittan Elementary School, added: "It is our goal that no child in the United States be tagged or tracked. We want it to be stopped here, in Sutter California, and we don't want any child to be tracked anywhere. Our children are not pieces of inventory."
"It is dehumanizing to force these children to wear RFIDs, and their parents are rightfully outraged," said Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Lee Tien. "We are doing everything we can to support the parents in this fight to protect student privacy."

Technology Could Speed Border Crossings

Tue Jan 25, 2005
 White House - AP Cabinet & State
By LESLIE MILLER, Associated Press Writer
NOGALES, Ariz. - U.S. officials want to see if the same technology that speeds cars through highway tolls and identifies lost pets can unclog border crossings without compromising security.

Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson announced Tuesday that the government will begin testing radio frequency identification technology at this crossing and four others by midsummer.
Weeding out potential terrorists, drug dealers and other criminals from shoppers, truckers and tourists who regularly pass through border crossings takes time. The RFID technology is designed to reduce the wait while giving authorities more information on who's coming into the country and who's leaving.
"We do not keep track of who enters this country," Hutchinson said while standing in an inspection booth at a crossing that is used each year by 5.4 million pedestrians and 3.9 million vehicles. "We need to have a comprehensive system, and that that's what our pilot (test) will do."
Currently, foreign visitors at the 50 busiest land border crossings in 10 states are fingerprinted as part of the government's new screening system. The system, called US-VISIT, scans photographs of the visitor's face and index fingers into a computer, which are matched with federal agencies' criminal databases.
With RFID technology, people or objects are identified automatically and swiftly. That allows vehicles outfitted with the technology to zip through toll plazas without stopping but won't at the border. People and vehicles still will have to stop, but if their identifying data produce no red flags, they will get just a cursory check rather than lengthy questioning.
The chip with the identifying information would be placed in a document, such as the State Department-issued border crossing cards for those who regularly make short trips across the Mexican border.
The chip is attached to an antenna that transmits a signal to a handheld or stationary reader, which converts the radio waves from the RFID tag into a code that links to identifying biometrical information in a computer database read by border agents.
The technology — with some variations — has been in use for years in systems for toll collection, equipment tracking, merchandise tags and pet identification. Unlike bar codes, the RFID chip doesn't need to be oriented before a scanner for reading but need only be within transmission range, or 18 and 30 feet in this case.
Jay Stanley, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites), said he's concerned the technology will infringe on privacy rights.
"It permits automatic invisible ID checks by the government," he said.
But Nogales Mayor Albert Kramer said such a system has long been needed to make the clogged border system more efficient. "Any improvement is welcome," he said.
"The system has not worked for 20 years," said Maria Luisa O'Connell, president of the Border Trade Alliance, which promotes trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico and has long advocated using RFID technology to relieve the crossing logjam.
Simulation of the system will begin this spring. Officials said that by July 31, testing is expected to be under way in Nogales, Alexandria Bay, N.Y., and Pacific Highway and Peace Arch in Washington state. Tests are expected to last through spring of next year.
Nogales and Alexandria Bay were chosen in part because the government wants to find out if the technology can work in extremely hot and cold weather.
Hutchinson said the plan is to have RFID technology in place eventually at all U.S. borders. The chips could cost as little as 25 cents each, he said.

U.S. Opposed Passport Privacy Protections
LESLIE MILLER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration opposed security measures for new microchip-equipped passports that privacy advocates contended were needed to prevent identity theft, government snooping or a terror attack, according to State Department documents released Friday.
The passports, scheduled to be issued by the end of 2005, could be read electronically from as far away as 30 feet, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the documents under a Freedom of Information Act request.
Though the passports wouldn't include transmitters of their own, they would have antennas to allow a reader to capture the data.
The ability to read remotely, or "skim," personal data raises the possibility that passport holders would be vulnerable to identity theft, the ACLU said. It also would allow government agents to find out covertly who was attending a political meeting or make it easier for terrorists to target Americans traveling abroad, the ACLU said.
Frank Moss, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services, said the United States wants to ensure the safety and security of Americans traveling abroad.
"We are still hard at work at ensuring the security and integrity of the data on the chip," Moss said.
He said, however, encrypting the data might make it more difficult for other countries to read the passports.
"It flies in the face of global interoperability," Moss said.
In a memo drafted in August 2003, Moss dismissed objections that information could be copied remotely.
"There is little risk here since we plan to store only currently collected data with a facial image," he wrote. "The U.S. will recommend against the use of PINs (personal identification numbers) or other methods that might be required to unlock a chip for reading."
Moss said in a telephone interview on Friday that the passport data does not need to be encrypted because it does not include fingerprints. Stealing fingerprint data might allow unauthorized access to automatic teller machines or secure computer networks.
Barry Steinhardt, an ACLU lawyer, said skimming photographs and other data from passports does present a problem: thieves could strip away the owner's face and replace it with their own.
"At a minimum, it should be encrypted to prevent unauthorized access by terrorists," Steinhardt said.
Passport data can be protected by enclosing the document in a metal pouch or adding metal fibers to the cover, two options the State Department is exploring, Moss said.
The United States and other countries have been working for at least two years to set new passport standards with the International Civil Aviation Organization, a group affiliated with the United Nations that sets aviation standards.
The documents obtained by the ACLU show that information technology experts and countries including Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain share the suspicion that the international standard set for the electronic passports inadequately protects privacy and security. The standards don't require that data be encrypted.
All new U.S. passports issued by the end of 2005 are expected to have a chip containing the owner's name, birth date, issuing office and a "biometric" identifier - a photo of the owner's face.
The ACLU warns that the chips ultimately might contain far more data and be embedded in drivers' licenses.
Last month, the Government Printing Office awarded contracts to four companies to develop chip packages that could be incorporated in passports. One or more companies will win a contract for the passports by year's end, and the U.S. government will begin issuing them to officials and diplomats starting early next year.

Electronic passports raise privacy fears
By Matthew Wald in Washington
November 27, 2004

The US State Department will soon begin issuing passports that carry information about the traveller in a computer chip embedded in the cardboard cover as well as on its printed pages.
Privacy advocates say the new format - developed in response to security concerns after the September 11 attacks - will be vulnerable to electronic snooping by anyone close by, a practice called skimming. Internal State Department documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Canada, Germany and Britain have raised the same concern.
"This is like putting an invisible bull's-eye on Americans that can be seen only by the terrorists," said Barry Steinhardt, the director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program. The organization wants the State Department to take security precautions like encrypting the data, so that even if it is downloaded by unauthorised people, it cannot be understood.
In a telephone interview, Frank Moss, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services, said the skimming problem "can be dealt with".
The technology is familiar to the public in applications like highway toll-collection systems and smart cards for entering buildings or railway turnstiles. In passports the technology would be more sophisticated, with a computer able to query the chip selectively for particular information. The chip, expected to cost about $US8 ($10), would hold 64 kilobytes of data, the same as early personal computers.
Last month the government printing office awarded $373,000 in contracts to four manufacturers to design the passports, which would contain chips that stored all the printed data on the passport, as well as digitised data on the traveller's face.
At an airport immigration checkpoint an antenna could read a passport waved a few centimetres away. A digital camera could look at the traveller's face and compare it with the data from the passport chip.
The problem, though, is that the passport might be read by others, too. Mr Steinhardt of the ACLU described a test in which a chip was read from nine metres away, but Mr Moss said that was in a laboratory and would be hard to duplicate in the field.
To combat passport fraud and theft the Government will soon require all visitors who do not need visas to enter the United States - those who are deemed low security risks because of the countries they come from - to carry passports that are machine-readable and contain biometric information such as fingerprints or facial measurements.
Australia is already issuing passports with chips, and others would follow soon, Mr Moss said.
The New York Times

Injectable Chips for People - the "Human Bar Code"

YOUR PAPERS, PLEASE ...
Paying for drinks with wave of the hand
Club-goers in Spain get implanted chips for ID, payment purposes
Posted: April 14, 2004
5:00 p.m. Eastern
By Sherrie Gossett
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

Being recognized has never been easier for VIP patrons of the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, Spain.
Like a scene out of a science-fiction movie, all it takes is a syringe-injected microchip implant for the beautiful men and women of the nightclub scene to breeze past a "reader" that recognizes their identity, credit balance and even automatically opens doors to exclusive areas of the club for them.
They can buy drinks and food with a wave of their hand and don't need to worry about losing a credit card or wallet.
"By simply passing by our reader, the Baja Beach Club will know who you are and what your credit balance is," Conrad K. Chase explains. Chase is director of the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona.
"From the moment of their implantation they will also have free entry and access to the VIP area," he said.
In the popular club, which boasts a dance floor that can accommodate 3,000, streamlined services and convenience matter to Chase's VIP customers.
Baja Beach Clubs International is the first firm to employ the "VeriPay System," developed by Applied Digital's VeriChip Corporation and announced at an international conference in Paris last year. The company touts this application of the chip implant as an advance over credit cards and smart cards, which, absent biometrics and appropriate safeguard technologies, are subject to theft resulting in identity fraud.
Palm Beach-based Applied Digital Solutions (NASDAQ:ADSXD) unveiled the original VeriChip immediately after the 9-11 tragedy. Similar to pet identification chips, the VeriChip is a syringe-injectable radio frequency identification microchip that can be read from a few feet away by either a hand-held scanner or by the implantee walking through a "portal" scanner. Information can be wirelessly written to the chip, which contains a unique 10-digit identification number.
Media seized on the novelty factor of the chip implant, driving it to worldwide headlines in 2001.
Last year, Art Kranzley, senior vice president at MasterCard, speculated on possible future electronic payment media: "We're certainly looking at designs like key fobs. It could be in a pen or a pair of earrings. Ultimately, it could be embedded in anything – someday, maybe even under the skin."
Chase calls the chip implant the wave of the future.
The nightclub director has been implanted along with stars from the Spanish version of the TV show "Big Brother."
"I know many people who want to be implanted," he said. "Actually, almost everybody has piercings, tattoos or silicone."
Will the implant only be of use at the Baja?
"The objective of this technology is to bring an ID system to a global level that will destroy the need to carry ID documents and credit cards," Chase said.
During a recent American radio interview, Chase said the CEO of VeriChip, Dr. Keith Bolton, had told him that the company's goal was to market the VeriChip as a global implantable identification system.
With only 900 people implanted worldwide, though, the global mandate isn't exactly around the corner, and current applications are extremely limited.
Chase added, "The VeriChip that we implant at Baja will not only be for the Baja, but is also useful for whatever other enterprise that makes use of this technology."
He also alluded to plans for FN Herstal, which manufactures Browning and Smith and Wesson firearms, to develop an implant-firearm system that would make a firearm functional only to the individual implanted with its corresponding microchip. A scanner in the gun would be designed to recognize the owner.
Chase's mention of the FN Herstal-Verichip partnership came a full week before it's formal announcement by Applied Digital yesterday.
Chase believes all gun owners should be required to have a microchip implanted in their hand to be able to own a gun. While yesterday's Associated Press story on the prototype is primarily from the angle of police usage, WND reported two years ago that from the he outset of the company's acquisition of its "Digital Angel" implant patent – said to be GPS trackable – Applied touted the implant as a potential universal method of gun control.
Chase also claimed that the VeriChip company had told him that the Italian government was preparing to implant government workers.
"We are the only company today offering human implantable ID technology," said Scott R. Silverman, chairman and chief executive officer of Applied Digital Solutions. "We believe the market opportunity for this technology is substantial, and high-profile successes such as in Spain will serve as catalysts for broader adoption."
Since 1999, the Applied Digital Solutions has boasted that it also has a GPS-trackable chip in the works, but four years later the device has yet to come to market. Some mechanical engineers contend such a device requires substantial antenna length and that creating a self-contained unit in the space of a tiny chip is virtually impossible. In addition, questions of accuracy of new GPS consumer items have been raised by the press. A previous Wall Street Journal "road test" of different manufacturers' GPS watches and devices for children had some kids tracked to the Sahara Desert, rather than New York City where they were.
Despite the kinks that may need to be worked out, security of loved ones and personal property remains one of the chief marketing focuses of personal GPS devices and RFID chip firms.
Meanwhile, in Barcelona the VeriChip is gaining a following of enthusiastic "early adopters."
"Everyone embraced the electronic payment application," Chase said. "My customers like the fact that they do not have to carry a credit card or ID card with them. With the VeriPay system, they no longer have to worry about their credit cards getting lost or stolen."
Related stories:
'Spy chips' for nation's livestock?
Bio-chip implant arrives for cashless transactions
GPS implant makes debut
Miami journalist gets 'chipped'
SEC investigating Applied Digital
Applied Digital gets reprieve from creditor
Implantable-chip firm misses final deadline
Implantable-chip company in financial straits
Post-9/11 security fears usher in subdermal chips
'Digital Angel' not pursuing implants
Digital Angel unveiled

American Passports to Get Chipped

By Ryan Singel 
02:00 AM Oct. 21, 2004 PT

New U.S. passports will soon be read remotely at borders around the world, thanks to embedded chips that will broadcast on command an individual's name, address and digital photo to a computerized reader.
The State Department hopes the addition of the chips, which employ radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology, will make passports more secure and harder to forge, according to spokeswoman Kelly Shannon.
"The reason we are doing this is that it simply makes passports more secure," Shannon said. "It's yet another layer beyond the security features we currently use to ensure the bearer is the person who was issued the passport originally."
But civil libertarians and some technologists say the chips are actually a boon to identity thieves, stalkers and commercial data collectors, since anyone with the proper reader can download a person's biographical information and photo from several feet away.
"Even if they wanted to store this info in a chip, why have a chip that can be read remotely?" asked Barry Steinhardt, who directs the American Civil Liberty Union's Technology and Liberty program. "Why not require the passport be brought in contact with a reader so that the passport holder would know it had been captured? Americans in the know will be wrapping their passports in aluminum foil."
Last week, four companies received contracts from the government to deliver prototype chips and readers immediately for evaluation.
Diplomats and State Department employees will be issued the new passports as early as January, while other citizens applying for new passports will get the new version starting in the spring. Countries around the world are also in the process of including the tags in their passports, in part due to U.S. government requirements that some nations must add biometric identification in order for their citizens to visit without a visa.
Current passports (which are already readable by machines that decipher text on the photo page) will remain valid until they expire, according to a State Department spokeswoman.
The RFID passport works like a high-tech version of the children's game "Marco Polo." A reader speaks out the equivalent of "Marco" on a designated frequency. The chip then channels that radio energy and echoes back with an answer.
But instead of simply saying "Polo," the 64 Kb chip will say the passport holder's name, address, date and place of birth, and send along a digital photograph.
While none of the information on the chip is encrypted, the chip does also broadcast a digital signature that verifies the chip itself was created by the government. Security experts said the U.S. government decided not to encrypt the data because of the risks involved in sharing the method of decryption with other countries.
RFID technology has been around for more than 60 years, but has only recently become cheap enough to be adopted widely. E-Z Pass prepay toll systems across the country run on RFIDs, pets and livestock around the world have RFID implants, and businesses such as Wal-Mart plan to use the tags to track their inventory.
But Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Lee Tien argues that RFID chips in passports are a "privacy horror" and would be even if the data was encrypted.
"If 180 countries have access to the technology for reading this thing, whether or not it is encrypted, from a security standpoint, that is a very leaky system," Tien said. "Strictly from a technology standpoint, any reader system, even with security, that was so widely deployed and accessible to so many people worldwide will be subject to some very interesting compromises."
Travel privacy expert Edward Hasbrouck argues that identity thieves are not the only ones with an interest in recording the data remotely. Commercial travel companies, including hotels, will capture the data to create commercial dossiers when people check into hotels or exchange currency in order to up-sell their customers, he argues.
While there are no laws in the United States prohibiting anyone from snooping on someone's passport data, Roy Want, an RFID expert who works as a principal engineer for Intel Research, thinks that the possibility of identity theft is overblown.
"It is actually quite hard to read RFID at a distance," said Want.
A person's keys, bag and body interfere with the radio waves, and the type of RFID chip being used requires readers equipped with very large -- and obvious -- coils to capture the data, according to Want.
Still, he concedes that a determined snooper could create a snooping system.
"In principle someone could rig up a reader, perhaps in a doorway you are forcing people to go through. You could read some of these tags some of the time," Want said.
But Want thinks that overall the chips will help cut down on passport fraud.
"The problem with security is there is always a possibility of attack," Want said. "RFIDs are not going to solve the problem of passport forgery, but people who know about printing are not going to learn about RFIDs."

Attention, Shoppers: You Can Now Speed Straight Through Checkout Lines! 
Radio-frequency chips are retail nirvana. They're the end of privacy. They're the mark of the beast. Inside the tag-and-track supermarket of the future.
By Josh McHugh 

RFID-enabled License Plates to Identify UK Vehicles
Thursday, June 10 2004
The UK-based vehicle licence plate manufacturer, Hills Numberplates Ltd, has chosen long-range RFID tags and readers from Identec Solutions to be embedded in licence plates that will automatically and reliably identify vehicles in the UK.The new e-Plates project uses active (battery powered) RFID tags embedded in the plates to identify vehicles in real time. The result is the ability to reliably identify any vehicle, anywhere, whether stationary or mobile, and - most importantly - in all weather conditions. (Previous visually-based licence plate identification techniques have been hampered by factors such as heavy rain, mist, fog, and even mud or dirt on the plates.)
The e-Plates project has been under development for the past three years at a cost of more than £1 million, and is currently under consideration by a number of administrations. It is hoped that e-Plate will be one of the systems trialled by the UK Government in its forthcoming study of micro-chipped licence plates.
Chipped plates
The plates are the same shape and size as conventional plates, and are permanently fitted to the vehicle in the same way. But each e-Plate contains an embedded tag with a unique, encrypted identification number that is transmitted by the tag for detection by RFID readers. Multiple tags can be read simultaneously by a single reader at speeds of up to 320km per hour (200mph), up to 100 metres (300 feet) away.
The reader network, which includes fixed location readers (for use on the roadside) and portable readers (for use in surveillance vehicles and handheld devices), sends the unique identifier in real time to a central system where it is matched with the corresponding vehicle data such as registration number, owner details, make, model, colour, and tax/insurance renewal dates.
Identities secured
A key benefit of the e-Plate is that the tag provides an encrypted and secure ID code which is registered in the UK Ministry of Transport's vehicle database. This code prevents tampering, cloning, or other forms of fraud that can currently happen with camera-based systems. Additionally, the e-Plate is designed to shatter if anyone tries to remove or otherwise tamper with it, and the tag can be programmed to transmit a warning if any attempt is made to dislodge the plate.
Surveillance applications
The system is expected to be used to identify vehicles for applications such as security, access control, electronic payment, tracking and processing, traffic management, and customer service. Commercial applications could include car dealerships, rental companies, insurance companies, fleet operators, and parking garages. In the public sector, the main applications would include enforcement (compliance with road tax, insurance, and mechanical checks), access control to restricted areas, combating vehicle theft and associated crime, and traffic flow counting and modelling.
According to Richard Taffinder, operations director for Hills Numberplates, the e-Plates were developed to provide companies and public authorities with a more reliable way to positively identify and capture information on a vehicle.
For additional information:
• Visit Hills Numberplates at http://www.e-plate.com
• Visit Identec Solutions at http://www.identecsolutions.com
Source: Identec Solutions Inc.
Reprinted with permission from Using RFID (http://www.usingrfid.com/news)
UsingRFID provides free daily news reports and informative articles about Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, and its applications, users, developers, trials, and implications - for executives, technologists, researchers, developers, vendors, and prospective and current RFID users.
Comments
Nice - Big Brother here we come. I'd break any plate with an rfid tag in it.
Posted by: Pete at June 10, 2004 11:29 AM
If this ever crosses the pond to the US, the civil liberties activists will be going nuts.
Posted by: RFID Log at June 10, 2004 11:29 AM
How can somebody write an article like this in good conscience without _mentioning_ the privacy implicatoins this causes?

Wireless World: RFID Becoming Must-Use

In the United States and Europe, as well as across the globe, companies are collaborating to develop standards to identify each individual item in a container and automatically track it and place that information in a secure database.
by Gene J. Koprowski
Chicago IL (UPI) Jan 18, 2005
More and more food and other product manufacturers and distributors are successfully embedding wireless radio frequency identification devices in unobtrusive labels and affixing them to boxes and containers ....

Wal-Mart is leading the U.S. economy in the trend. The giant retailer demanded that 137 of its vendors install RFID solutions by the end of last year. The Pentagon also is a major player, demanding that defense contractors maintain a secure watch on their entire inventories. ....

concerns remain about invasion of privacy caused by the unobtrusive RFID labels. If someone sees an RFID tag and knows it is there, that is one thing, experts said, but the labels basically have integrated the technologies and kept them out of sight - and out of mind - for many.

Euro Notes May be Radio Tagged
Winston Chai, CNET Asia
May 22, 2003

Hitachi is rumoured to be in talks with the European Central Bank about embedding radio tags into euro banknotes
Radio tags the size of a grain of sand could be embedded in the euro note if a rumoured deal between the European Central Bank (ECB) and Japanese electronics maker Hitachi is signed.
The firm has leaked to Japanese news agency Kyodo that the ECB has started talks with it about the use of its radio chip on the note.
The ECB is deeply concerned about counterfeiting and money laundering and is said to be looking at radio tag technology.
Last year, Greek authorities were confronted with of 2,411 counterfeiting cases and seized 4,776 counterfeit bank notes while authorities in Poland nabbed a gang suspected of making and putting over a million fake euros into circulation.
To add to the problem, businesses also find it hard to judge a note's authenticity as current equipment cannot tell between bogus currency and old notes with worn-out security marks. Among the security features in current euros are threads visible under ultraviolet light.
"The main objective is to determine the authenticity of money and to stop counterfeits," said Prianka Chopra, an analyst with market research firm Frost and Sullivan in report published in March.
"RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags also have the ability of recording information such as details of the transactions the paper note has been involved in. It would, therefore, also prevent money-laundering, make it possible to track illegal transactions and even prevent kidnappers demanding unmarked bills," Chopra said.
Besides acting as a digital watermark, the use of radio chips could speed up routine bank processes such as counting. With such tags, a stack of notes can be passed through a reader with the sum added in a split-second, similar to how inventory is tracked in an RFID-based system.
The euro came into circulation on 1 January last year, with 12 countries adopting it as standard currency. These are Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.
If the ECB-Hitachi deal proves successful, the project could involve the use of tiny radio tags, a feat which Hitachi claims to have already achieved.
In February, the Japanese firm said it has successfully operated the world's smallest non-contact chip measuring only a third of a millimetre across.
Hitachi said its so-called "mu-chip" is capable of wireless transmitting a 128-bit number when radio signals are beamed at it.
In a euro note, the number could contain a serial code, as well as details such as place of origin and denomination.
Data can only be written on the chip's ROM during production, and not after it is out "in the wild", the company said.
Hitachi's minuscule chip has been selected for use in admission tickets for Japan's international expo, which will be held in the country's Aichi Prefecture in 2005.

Is that a microchip in my meat?
Pork pulled off shelves to check for metal devices
Saturday, September 18, 2004 Posted: 1:35 PM EDT (1735 GMT)
SIOUX CENTER, Iowa (AP) -- More than a thousand pounds of pork processed at a Sioux Center meatpacking plant was recalled Saturday because a microchip could be embedded in the meat.
The Sioux-Preme Packing Co. recalled 110 pork shoulder butts -- about 1,100 pounds of meat -- that could contain the metal devices used to measure scientific data in hogs.
The animals, processed September 10, were part of a research herd that had been sent to slaughter without the proper notification that they had the chips implanted, said Sioux-Preme Vice President Jim Malek.
"These hogs had gotten into the delivery at our harvest plant in Sioux Center without any notification or declaration that they carried this device," he said.
The meat had been sent to processors in Colorado, Iowa and Mexico. None of the meat appeared to have reached consumers, Malek said.
Recipients were notified to return meat, which will either be reinspected and cleared for use or destroyed, Malek said.
Malek said he didn't know who had implanted the chips in the hogs but the hogs were healthy and had been cleared by the USDA inspectors for processing.
The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service was notified of the problem Friday and said no reports of illness associated with the meat had been received.

Wal-Mart is pushing RFID

Linda Dillman On RFID
Wal-Mart's CIO talks about the potential for RFID to revolutionize the retailer's "take-care-of-the-customer" processes. By Beth Bacheldor, Jennifer Zaino, Brian Gillooly,  Laurie Sullivan,  InformationWeek
Sept. 13, 2004

YOUR CAR MAY WORK FOR BIG BROTHER

NY TIMES - Beth Givens, founder of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, said the car had long been a symbol of Kerouac-flavored freedom, and a haven. "You can talk to yourself in your car, you can scream at yourself in your car, you can go there to be alone, you can ponder the heavens, you can think deep thoughts all alone, you can sing," she said. With the growing number of monitoring systems, she said, "Now, the car is Big Brother.". . .
Tires, too, can tell on drivers. This year, Michelin began implanting match-head-sized chips in tires that can be read remotely. The company started using the chips to provide manufacturing information that could help spot failure trends and to comply with a federal law requiring close tracking of tires for recalls. But privacy activists fear that the chips, which can be loaded with a car's vehicle identification number, would allow yet another form of automated vehicle tracking. "You basically have Web browser 'cookies' in your tires," said Richard M. Smith, an independent privacy researcher.

from The Progressive Review - October 22, 2003

LIBRARY ADOPTS SPY CHIPS
ROY HARRIS, ASSOCIATED PRESS - A civil liberties watchdog group is
expressing concern over the San Francisco Public Library's plans to
track books by inserting computer chips into each tome. Library
officials approved a plan Thursday to install tiny radio frequency
identification chips, known as RFIDs, into the roughly 2 million books,
CDs and audiovisual materials patrons can borrow. The system still needs
funding and wouldn't be ready until at least 2005.
The microchips send out electromagnetic wave to a device that converts
them to digital data containing a host of information. In libraries, the
system is primarily designed to locate books in branches and speed up
the checkout process. Library officials say the "passive" chips would be
deactivated as materials are taken from the library, thus preventing any
stealth tracking of books and - by extension - people off premises.
But Lee Tien, a staff lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is
concerned that the chips may have information that would remain
accessible and trackable, whether by ingenious hackers or law
enforcement subpoena. That, he says, would be a threat to privacy
rights. "If there's a technology for temporary deactivation, then
presumably there's a system for reactivating it," Tien said. "Does the
person have the ability to know if the RFID is on or off?"

RFID: Tracking Everything, Everywhere
by Katherine Albrecht, CASPIAN FounderExcerpted from:
Albrecht, Katherine."Supermarket Cards: The Tip of the Retail Surveillance
Iceberg." Denver University Law Review, Summer 2002, Volume 79, Issue 4,
pp. 534-539 and 558-565.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Expect Big Changes"In 5-10 years, whole new ways of doing things will emerge and gradually
become commonplace. Expect big changes." - MIT's Auto-ID Center, 2002Supermarket cards and retail surveillance devices are merely the opening
volley of the marketers' war against consumers. If consumers fail to oppose
these practices now, our long-term prospects may look like something from a
dystopian science fiction novel.
A new consumer goods tracking system called Radio Frequency Identification
(RFID) is poised to enter all of our lives, with profound implications for
consumer privacy. RFID couples radio frequency (RF) identification
technology with highly miniaturized computers that enable products to be
identified and tracked at any point along the supply chain.
The system could be applied to almost any physical item, from ballpoint pens
to toothpaste, which would carry their own unique information in the form of
an embedded chip. The chip sends out an identification signal allowing it to
communicate with reader devices and other products embedded with similar
chips.
Analysts envision a time when the system will be used to identify and track
every item produced on the planet.A number for every item on the planet
RFID employs a numbering scheme called EPC (for "electronic product code")
which can provide a unique ID for any physical object in the world. 6 The
EPC is intended to replace the UPC bar code used on products today.
Unlike the bar code, however, the EPC goes beyond identifying product
categories--it actually assigns a unique number to every single item that
rolls off a manufacturing line. For example, each pack of cigarettes,
individual can of soda, light bulb or package of razor blades produced would
be uniquely identifiable through its own EPC number.
Once assigned, this number is transmitted by a radio frequency ID tag (RFID)
in or on the product. These tiny tags, predicted by some to cost less than
1 cent each by 2004, are "somewhere between the size of a grain of sand and
a speck of dust." They are to be built directly into food, clothes, drugs,
or auto-parts during the manufacturing process.
Receiver or reader devices are used to pick up the signal transmitted by the
RFID tag. Proponents envision a pervasive global network of millions of
receivers along the entire supply chain -- in airports, seaports, highways,
distribution centers, warehouses, retail stores, and in the home. This
would allow for seamless, continuous identification and tracking of physical
items as they move from one place to another, enabling companies to
determine the whereabouts of all their products at all times.
Steven Van Fleet, an executive at International Paper, looks forward to the
prospect. "We'll put a radio frequency ID tag on everything that moves in
the North American supply chain," he enthused recently.
The ultimate goal is for RFID to create a "physically linked world" in
which every item on the planet is numbered, identified, catalogued, and
tracked. And the technology exists to make this a reality. Described as "a
political rather than a technological problem," creating a global system
"would . . . involve negotiation between, and consensus among, different
countries." Supporters are aiming for worldwide acceptance of the
technologies needed to build the infrastructure within the next few years.The implications of RFID
"Theft will be drastically reduced because items will report when they are
stolen, their smart tags also serving as a homing device toward their exact
location." - MIT's Auto-ID Center
Since the Auto-ID Center's founding at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) in 1999, it has moved forward at remarkable speed. The
center has attracted funding from some of the largest consumer goods
manufacturers in the world, and even counts the Department of Defense among
its sponsors. In a mid-2001 pilot test with Gillette, Philip Morris,
Procter & Gamble, and Wal-Mart, the center wired the entire city of Tulsa,
Oklahoma with radio-frequency equipment to verify its ability to track RFID
equipped packages.
Though many RFID proponents appear focused on inventory and supply chain
efficiency, others are developing financial and consumer applications that,
if adopted, will have chilling effects on consumers' ability to escape the
oppressive surveillance of manufacturers, retailers, and marketers. Of
course, government and law enforcement will be quick to use the technology
to keep tabs on citizens, as well.
The European Central Bank is quietly working to embed RFID tags in the
fibers of Euro banknotes by 2005. The tag would allow money to carry its own
history by recording information about where it has been, thus giving
governments and law enforcement agencies a means to literally "follow the
money" in every transaction. If and when RFID devices are embedded in
banknotes, the anonymity that cash affords in consumer transactions will be
eliminated.
Hitachi Europe wants to supply the tags. The company has developed a smart
tag chip that--at just 0.3mm square and as thin as a human hair -- can
easily fit inside of a banknote. Mass-production of the new chip will start
within a year.Consumer marketing applications will decimate privacy
"Radio frequency is another technology that supermarkets are already using
in a number of places throughout the store. We now envision a day where
consumers will walk into a store, select products whose packages are
embedded with small radio frequency UPC codes, and exit the store without
ever going through a checkout line or signing their name on a dotted line."
- Jacki Snyder, Manager of Electronic Payments for Supervalu (Supermarkets),
Inc., and Chair, Food Marketing Institute Electronic Payments Committee
RFID would expand marketers' ability to monitor individuals' behavior to
undreamt of extremes. With corporate sponsors like Wal-Mart, Target, the
Food Marketing Institute, Home Depot, and British supermarket chain Tesco,
as well as some of the world's largest consumer goods manufacturers
including Proctor and Gamble, Phillip Morris, and Coca Cola it may not be
long before RFID-based surveillance tags begin appearing in every
store-bought item in a consumer's home.
According to a video tour of the "Home of the Future" and "Store of the
Future" sponsored by Proctor and Gamble, applications could include shopping
carts that automatically bill consumers' accounts (cards would no longer be
needed to link purchases to individuals), refrigerators that report their
contents to the supermarket for re-ordering, and interactive televisions
that select commercials based on the contents of a home's refrigerator.
Now that shopper cards have whetted their appetite for data, marketers are
no longer content to know who buys what, when, where, and how. As incredible
as it may seem, they are now planning ways to monitor consumers' use of
products within their very homes. RFID tags coupled with indoor receivers
installed in shelves, floors, and doorways, could provide a degree of
omniscience about consumer behavior that staggers the imagination.
Consider the following statements by John Stermer, Senior Vice President of
eBusiness Market Development at ACNielsen:
"[After bar codes] [t]he next 'big thing' [was] [f]requent shopper cards.
While these did a better job of linking consumers and their purchases,
loyalty cards were severely limited...consider the usage, consumer
demographic, psychographic and economic blind spots of tracking data....
[S]omething more integrated and holistic was needed to provide a ubiquitous
understanding of on- and off-line consumer purchase behavior, attitudes and
product usage. The answer: RFID (radio frequency identification)
technology.... In an industry first, RFID enables the linking of all this
product information with a specific consumer identified by key demographic
and psychographic markers....Where once we collected purchase information,
now we can correlate multiple points of consumer product purchase with
consumption specifics such as the how, when and who of product use."
Marketers aren't the only ones who want to watch what you do in your home.
Enter again the health surveillance connection. Some have suggested that
pill bottles in medicine cabinets be tagged with RFID devices to allow
doctors to remotely monitor patient compliance with prescriptions.
While developers claim that RFID technology will create "order and balance"
in a chaotic world, even the center's executive director, Kevin Ashton,
acknowledges there's a "Brave New World" feel to the technology. He admits,
for example, that people might balk at the thought of police using RFID to
scan the contents of a car's trunk without needing to open it. The Center's
co-director, Sanjay E. Sarma, has already begun planning strategies to
counter the public backlash he expects the system will encounter.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
This article was updated August 11, 2003 with a change in terminology.
Originally, I had used the term "Auto-ID" to refer to the technology which
is now commonly called "RFID." I have updated the excerpt above by changing
"Auto-ID" to "RFID" in most instances where it appears.
All footnotes and references associated with this article were available
online May 2002. Original documentation is archived at the Denver University
Law Review editorial office.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
References:
http://www.nocards.org/AutoID/overview.shtml

Cows Get Chipped

January 6, 2004
Mad cow scare spurs high-tech cattle tracking: Cost one obstacle to chip implants
By Brian Bergstein
The Associated Press
If there's a bright side to the U.S. mad cow scare, it's that it could speed the nation's move to a centralized system that electronically tracks animals as they move from fields to feed lots to food stores.
Efforts to create a centralized database, which exists in some countries, have been slowed so far by disputes over who would maintain the database and who would bear its cost.
Such a database could let agricultural officials determine within hours where a sick animal came from and where it went, a crucial step in a disease outbreak or a terrorist assault on the food supply.
Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said last week that the government would speed development of the system but offered no details.
For now, inspectors often must rely on paper records or a hodgepodge of data maintained by meat producers and breeders. After the recent mad cow discovery in Washington state, officials needed several days to determine where its meat had been sold, and encountered discrepancies in U.S. and Canadian records.
``It's very difficult and probably not possible for them to go to a particular animal and say that animal came from that particular farm,'' said Leon Thacker, a veterinary pathologist at Purdue University.
Technology stands ready to automate the process.
Radio-frequency identification, or RFID, tags on cattle ears can maintain reams of data about an animal's existence, including its breeding, age, weight and medical history. The tags can be automatically read, sending their data directly to a computer database, by sensors placed at feed lots, slaughterhouses and other points along the chain of livestock ownership.
One company, Optibrand Ltd., further tightens the process with retinal scans of cattle to confirm their identity. Optibrand's scans are performed with readers that have global-positioning chips to record the animal's location.
Optibrand, based in Fort Collins, Colo., announced a five-year deal to supply its technology to Swift & Co., a leading meat producer. Swift spokesman Jim Herlihy said the company will use the retinal scans in its feedlots and encourage its suppliers to embrace them as well, to make the entire life of livestock more easily traced.
Another approach is offered by Digital Angel Corp., which makes implantable chips that are used to identify lost dogs and cats and also used in some cattle herds. Digital Angel, based in South St. Paul, Minn., touts the fact that the chips are unlikely to be lost or damaged.
RFID tags also are considered sturdier and less susceptible to fraud than the plastic, numeric ear tags commonly used now to identify livestock. And because the radio tags or other electronic means can produce detailed information about particular animals, they can help producers of organic or other high-quality beef prove that their meat is worth a higher price.
``The more information you know about the cattle, the more you can get them into the fine retail outlets,'' said Ken Conway, who directs GeneNet, an alliance of beef producers who use RFID and other high-tech measures to justify higher prices for their high-grade meat.
But while RFID is widely used in countries such as Australia, the technology has been slow to catch on in the United States.
In fact, David Warren, head of Sebastian, Fla.-based eMerge Interactive Inc., which offers RFID-based services to the livestock industry, estimates that the technology is being used on fewer than 2 percent of the nation's livestock.
One huge reason is that the industry, which operates on a low profit margin, is reluctant to embrace costly new technology.
Two Kansas State University professors recently estimated that RFID tags and related equipment could cost owners of small herds close to $25 per head of cattle; in larger herds it would cost less than $4.
But the cost will likely drop further with wider RFID use. In Canada, where the beef industry maintains a centralized cattle database, RFID tags are due to replace by Jan. 1, 2005, the current, time-consuming record-keeping method: bar codes that must be read by handheld scanners.
Julie Stitt, administrator of the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency, estimates that the per-head cost could fall below $2, ``not a whole lot more than bar codes.''
Even before the U.S. mad cow scare, government and industry representatives were developing the Animal Identification Plan, a nationwide tracking system that was expected to be implemented over the next three years.
It has not been determined whether RFID or any other technology will be mandatory.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/11/274834.shtml

RFID tags in tires required by 2004
author: required author of articleposted on comments slashdot the yester day
 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=85503&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=137&tid=158&tid=193&tid=99&mode=thread&cid=7449433
surprisingly wasn't censored by today (like many slashdot posts)
please spread the word ! / and post on other boards if possible ... apparently they've been in some tires since 2002.

Your car tires have RFIDs in them ALREADY!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 11, @07:09PM (#7449433)
Its a us federal sponsorred initiative to track vehicles near certain highways feeding certain urban areas.
basically the fbi enters a rfid number into the database and then history of travel for the car pops up.
the feds can also pre-enter rfids they want to watch after getting a reading off your parked car or from the canadian-us customs border (where they already actively log the car rfids in the tires and associate them with plates)
Your tires have a passive coil with 64 to 128 bit serial number emitter in them! (AIAG B-11 ADC v3.0) .
Photos of chips before molded into tires:
 http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:SVUlB-z0BCQJ: www.sokymat.com/applications/tireid.html
Californias Fastpass is being upgraded to scan ALL responding car tires in future years upcoming. I-75 may get them next in rural funnel points in Ohio.
 http://www.tadiran-telematics.com/products6.html
YOU MUST BUY NEUTRALIZED OR FOREIGN TIRES!!!!! Soon such tires will become illegal to import or manufacture.
Using these chips to track people while they drive is actually the idea of the us gov, and current chips CANNOT BE DISABLED or removed. They hope ALL tires will have these chips in 4 years and hope people have a very hard time finding non-chipped tires. Removing the chips is near impossible without destroying the tire as the chips were designed with that DARPA design goal.
They are hardened against removal or heat damage or easy eye detection and can be almost ANYWHERE in the new "big brother" tires. In fact in current models they are integrated early and deep into the substrate of the tire as per US FBI request.
Our freedom of travel are going away in 2003, because now there is an international STANDARD for all tire transponder RFID chips and in 2004 nearly ALL USA cars will have them. Refer to AIAG B-11 ADC, (B-11 is coincidentally Post Sept 11 fastrack initiative by US Gov to speed up tire chip standardization to one read-back standard for highway usage).
The AIAG is "The Automotive Industry Action Group"
The non proprietary (non-sokymat controlled) standard is the AIAG B-11 standard is the "Tire Label and Radio Frequency Identification" standard
"ADC" stands for "Automatic Data Collection"
The "AIDCW" is the US gov manipulated "Automatic Identification Data Collection Work Group"
The standard was started and finished rapidly in less than a year as a direct consequence of the Sep 11 attacks by Saudi nationals.
I believe detection of the AIAG B-11 radio chips (RFIS serial number transponders) in the upgraded car tracking  http://www.tadiran-telematics.com/products6.html is currently secret knowledge. Another reason to leave "finger print on Driver license" California, but Ohio gets it next, as will every other state eventually.
The AIAG is claiming the chips reduce car theft, assist in tracking defects, and assists error-proofing the tire assembly process. But the real secret is that these 5 cent devices are a us government backed initiative to track citizens travel without their consent or ability to disable the transponders in any way.
All tire manufacturers are forced to comply AIAG B-11 3.0 Radio Tire tracking standard by the 2004 model year.
 http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:gwhgWJnCf3oJ: www.aiag.org/publications/b11.asp
Viewing b11 synopsis is free, downloads from that are $10 and tracked by the FBI. Use the google cache to avoid leaving breadcrumbs.
A huge (28 megabyte compressed zip) video of a tire being scanned remotely is at  http://mows.aiag.org/ScriptContent/videos/ (the file is "video Aiagb-11.zip"). I would use a proxie when touching it. The FBI is monitoring the "curious" hackers.
And just as showerheads are now illegal to import into the USA from Canada or mexico, as are drums of industrial Freon, and standard size toilets are illegal to import for home use, soon car tires without radio transponders will be illegal to bring across state borders.
All the tires stored in the federal logging computers at the current and future interstate highway chokepoints can be (with some effort) tied to particular peoples vehicles, but typically they are used forensically, (ie. After a vehicle is found, its history of travel is used as evidence against it, installing at factories, and people using credit cards to buy new tires makes a few more strategies easy for the feds).

=====
 http://209.35.212.232/news/2001/09_01/0905/rfid/ RFID Tags Gain Traction in Tire Tracking
August 28, 2001—When tomorrow's rubber meets the road, it will likely be carrying a small, electronic tracking device that will aid the verification of tire warranty, authenticity, and performance. A new standard, developed by the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) is ready for roll-out. Called B-11, the soon-to-be-released standard is said to be the world's first application standard addressing item-level identification using RFID technology.
This past June, the AIAG conducted a technical demonstration to evaluate RFID technologies, and in July, the organization's Tire and Wheel Identification Work Group adopted the MH10.8.4 air interface standard. ("Air interface" refers to the way RFID interrogators interact with the computer chips on tags.)
Placed on the inside of the vehicle's tires by the tire manufacturers, the UHF-based, 128-byte, read/write RFID tag provides the ability to associate that tire with a specific vehicle. Along with the unique tag ID, a 12-character coding structure, called the DOT (Department of Transportation) Number, will be written to each RFID tag by the tire manufacturer. The DOT code identifies the manufacturing plant, tire size, unique components of the tire, and the week and year that the tire was manufactured. Congress's recently passed Transportation Recall Enactment, Accountability and Documentation Act (TREAD) supports this initiative. Tires with RFID chips could be released as early as January 2002. According to the Rubber Manufacturers Association, last year's shipments of tires for new passenger vehicles and light trucks totaled 67.3 million, while replacement tires totaled 233.2 million.
Prime among the RFID tag manufacturers for this new application is Intermec Technologies Corp. (Everett, WA), whose Intellitag system supports the new standard. "Intermec has been working with the major US auto makers and tire suppliers for some time to develop an RFID product to provide a permanent and unique identity for each tire that goes on a vehicle," said Eric Freeburg, a Detroit-based executive with Intermec and a member of the AIAG committee (see related item under "PEOPLE"). The application means improved data collection and sharing throughout the supply chain, noted Jim Evans, vice president of Intellitag product management for Intermec. "Now we're taking the technology to the next level by working with the major auto makers to develop an inexpensive chip that will provide real-time inflation and temperature information to the driver."

Iris Scanning
Halifax International Airport launches CANPASS – Air
Halifax, December 1, 2003... The CANPASS - Air program at Halifax International Airport (HIA) was officially launched today.
Halifax is only the second international airport in Canada to implement the iris-recognition technology used in CANPASS – Air. The CANPASS – Air program allows the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) to manage risk effectively. This program permits pre-approved travellers to clear customs and immigration quickly and securely. It is a clear example of how the CCRA and Citizenship and Immigration are working collaboratively to strengthen our border and to protect the safety and security of Canadian citizens.
"CANPASS – Air showcases our commitment to modernizing, securing, and streamlining the process for travellers," said Geoff Regan on behalf of the Minister of National Revenue, Elinor Caplan. "It is another example of how the CCRA implements programs that balance security with the free flow of travellers."
In conjunction with other new technologies, CANPASS – Air checks clients against a security system as if they were meeting an officer in person and refers suspect clients for further inspection. Members of the program can now pass through Vancouver and Halifax airports quickly and without compromising security. CANPASS – Air members clear customs and immigration by looking into a camera lens that recognizes the iris of their eyes as proof of identity. Reducing the time it takes for interaction with trusted clients allows Customs personnel to focus on people they don't know.
Any CANPASS – Air member can now travel through both HIA and Vancouver International Airport, declare their goods, and pay duties and taxes at the CANPASS – Air kiosks located in those airports.
CANPASS – Air kiosks are scheduled to open at other international airports in Canada in the spring of 2004. The program has an annual membership fee of $50 CDN.
The CCRA expects that the CANPASS – Air Program will be expanded into a joint program with the United States and that it will be piloted at the Macdonald-Cartier Airport in Ottawa.
CANPASS – Air enables the CCRA to work with trusted and known clients to make their Customs experience quick and secure and allowing the focus to be placed on higher-risk cases.