Infinite Unknown

The Bush administration on Thursday urged a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a group of Amish farmers in Michigan claiming RFID chips required on cattle “are a mark of the beast.”

The Amish farmers claim (.pdf) Michigan regulations requiring them to use radio frequency identification devices on their cattle “constitutes some form of a ‘mark of the beast‘ and/or represents an infringement of their ‘dominion over cattle and all living things’ in violation of their fundamental religious beliefs,” according to the farmers’ lawsuit filed in September in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

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Tags: Amish, Bush administration, Farmers, Government, Law, Microchip, Politics, RFID, Technology, U.S., USDA

A group of community farmers, some of them Amish, are challenging rules requiring the tagging of livestock with RFID chips, saying the devices are a “mark of the beast.”

Michigan and federal authorities say the radio frequency identification devices (RFID) will help monitor the travels of bovine and other livestock diseases.

Related articles:
- Mandatory Microchipping In Adopted Pets
- CASPIAN RELEASES MICROCHIP CANCER REPORT

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Tags: Department of Agriculture, Farmers, Government, Law, lawsuit, Microchip, New World Order, Politics, radio frequency identification, RFID, Technology, Terrorism, U.S.

Cheese theft is on the rise, but razor blades, confectionary and oysters are still the top shoplifting targets. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Supermarkets are introducing electronic tags on items popular with shoplifters and other thieves.

The Source Tagging Alliance, set up by leading retailers, is encouraging suppliers to use radio frequency identification (RFID) and source tagging on grocery product packaging at the point of manufacture.

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Tags: Economy, Metro, radio frequency identification, radio frequency tags, RFID, Surveillance, Wal-Mart

Faked document with picture of Bin Laden fooled UN agency, newspaper reports

A British passport

New microchipped passports designed to protect against identity theft by terrorists and criminals can easily be faked, it was claimed today.

Tests showed that personal information could be cloned and manipulated within an hour before being inserted into new chips, the Times reported.

The paper said it had exposed “security flaws” in the passport system by asking a researcher to clone the chips on two British passports and implant digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The altered chips were then passed as genuine by reader software used by the UN agency that sets the standards for such e-passports.

The tests showed that bogus biometrics could be inserted in fake or blank passports, the Times alleged, saying the flaws also undermined assertions that 3,000 blank passports stolen last week could not be forged.

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Tags: biometrics, Home Office, Microchip, Osama Bin Laden, Passport, RFID, Technology, Terrorists

(NaturalNews) A Rhode Island school district has announced a pilot program to monitor student movements by means of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips implanted in their schoolbags.

The Middletown School District, in partnership with MAP Information Technology Corp., has launched a pilot program to implant RFID chips into the schoolbags of 80 children at the Aquidneck School. Each chip would be programmed with a student identification number, and would be read by an external device installed in one of two school buses. The buses would also be fitted with global positioning system (GPS) devices.

Parents or school officials could log onto a school web site to see whether and when specific children had entered or exited which bus, and to look up the bus’s current location as provided by the GPS device.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has criticized the plan as an invasion of children’s privacy and a potential risk to their safety.

“There’s absolutely no need to be tagging children,” said Stephen Brown, executive director of the ACLU’s Rhode Island chapter. According to Brown, the school district should already know where its students are.

“[This program is] a solution in search of a problem,” Brown said. Continue reading »

Tags: ACLU, Children, GPS, monitoring, Privacy, RFID, Surveillance

Wi-Fi and other technological advances boosting video surveillance adoption

In a new study that has potentially Orwellian implications, ABI Research projects that revenue for video surveillance software will quadruple over the next five years.

According to ABI Vice President and Research Director Stan Schatt, revenue generated from surveillance software will increase to more than US$900 million in 2013, up from current revenues of US$245 million. Schatt says there are several big drivers for this increase, including increased spending on security systems by the government, on theft prevention systems by retail outlets and on surveillance by market researchers. Additionally, he says that the advent of Wi-Fi has made it possible to place wireless cameras just about anywhere while still sending footage back to a central location.

Looking at the broader picture, Schatt says that technological advances are also increasing the scope and the potential uses of video surveillance. He says that one of the more disturbing uses is the ability of store marketing departments to actually monitor the eyeball movements of customers to figure out what products or displays draw their attention.

“When stores have the ability to observe you as you walk through a store, what I can imagine is that more and more stores will try to basically have a pretty in-depth knowledge of their customers,” he says. “So let’s say for instance the store issues you a discount card that also has a radio frequency ID that identifies who you are. And then let’s say they observe you looking at, but not actually purchasing, movies in the adult video section. Well, the next thing you know you’re getting all these promotional materials for racy movies you’re not even interested in.” Continue reading »

Tags: Civil liberties, George Orwell, Government, ID card, Orwell, Privacy, RFID, Surveillance

The Chinese Olympic Committee for the 2008 Games has revealed that all tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies will include RFID-enabled microchips with spectators’ passport information and home and e-mail addresses, among other sensitive personal info.

This high-level precaution is in response to the increasingly sensitive security issues surrounding the games, due largely in part to the host’s controversial positions on human rights and freedom of speech.

All tickets for the ceremonies are valued at $720 and the RFID tagging is supposed to decrease the possibility of scalping and pirated tickets, which is obviously a big problem in copy-happy China. But carrying around all of that information with you is still a dangerous proposition.

We’ve heard that tickets were supposed to have the bearer’s photograph printed on them, which would have cut down on theft and the likely problem a family will face when distributing tickets right before a gate entrance. As you can see in the official ticket above, it appears that the idea has not been implemented.

Most security experts vacillate between thinking that a too-secure RFID system will put the Games at a standstill, or that a basic RFID set-up will expose people to hackers. According to Sports Illustrated, all tickets for the games will include RFID tags, but only the main two will have the passport and photo information. The Games’ security team will employ an IT team of at least 4,000 experts with 1,000 servers at their disposal — and they’ll begin testing the system full-bore for the next two months.

Yet, most of the stress about the tickets, apart from the RFID issue, can be traced to the fact that that it’s taken the committee a little bit longer to deliver the tickets than they originally thought –- it’s almost two months to the event and almost no one has received them. This has led some people to believe that the security restrictions are making it difficult for the hosts to actually deliver them on time.

However, the official ticketing website of The Games kept its dates conveniently open-ended –- it says the tickets will be delivered up to the end of June. This is not great if you’re traveling to the city for the opening event on August 8th.

The tense atmosphere might also point to the fact that the RFID tags were developed by Tsinghua University in conjuction with Beijing Tsinghua Tongfang Microelectronics Company — and no one wants a company in a country with privacy concerns to have access to your personal information.

So what do you think? Are the committee members practically begging for people to get jumped with those RFID-packed tickets? Or are they making the most out of a very tough situation? Continue reading »

Tags: China, Olympic Games, Olympics, Privacy, RFID, Surveillance

A Los Angeles start-up says it has developed a way to dramatically expand the range of a popular wireless tracking technology, opening up many new applications for low-cost identification tags.

Closely held Mojix Inc. says its enhancements to a technology known as RFID — for radio frequency identification — sharply reduce the cost of setting up wireless networks that can cover entire warehouses, stores, distribution centers and yards where heavy equipment is stored.

Such networks can be used to quickly locate goods and track their movements without having to be close to a scanning device. Networks with similar capabilities today typically require sophisticated RFID tags that cost anywhere from around $4 to more than $1,000 each, said John Fontanella, an analyst at AMR Research. Mojix says its hardware uses simpler tags that cost as little as 10 cents each. Continue reading »

Tags: AMR Research, distribution centers, identification tags, Mojix, NASA, networks, radio frequency identification, RFID, stores, transmission range, transmitters, warehouses, wireless tracking technology

Officials on Monday confirmed that 78,000 new council-issued bins in the eastern suburbs of Sydney have been fitted with small radio frequency tags, which allow for data collection.

Each bin will transmit a unique identification code to the rubbish truck which weighs and empties it each week, allowing officials to identify how much waste is produced at each address. Continue reading »

Tags: Aussie, bins, radio frequency tags, RFID, rubbish, Sydney, Technology, trash

An employee looking to steal confidential information from his employer sneaks into what should be a secure back room after hours. He pulls charts and files from a top-level financial meeting and slides them into his briefcase before heading back out.What the insider doesn’t know is that his shoes picked up hundreds of tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) chips that had been scattered across the floor. As he passes by an RFID reader near the front door of his office building, security will be alerted that he had accessed a secure area. The evidence is all over the soles of his shoes.

Sound a little like a scene from a James Bond movie? It’s not.

Nox Defense, an arm of SimplyRFID Inc., said it has created an invisible perimeter-defense system designed to track things and people in real time — all without their knowledge. The system that is made up of several technological pieces — RFID chips the size of grains of sand and an RFID and video camera surveillance system. Continue reading »

Tags: CIA, FBI, Nox Defense, RFID, SimplyRFID Inc., Surveillance