Mythbusters Banned From Discussing RFID By Visa And Mastercard
Host Adam Savage of Mythbusters tells how Visa, Mastercard, and Discover had the Discovery Channel put the kibosh on an episode that would have revealed just how “trackable and hackable” the RFID chips found in many credit cards are. It’s a telling example of how corporate advertisers serve as the gatekeepers of mainstream media/entertainment:
An Inside Look At Bonnaroo 2011
RFID chips, a privately-funded police state, cult recruiters, and enough soma to make Indra tap out. Is it just another music festival, or a dress rehearsal for dystopia? From a rigger’s diary at RockStarMartyr.net:
© Darin Seaman
It took nearly 24 hours of unbroken sleep to recover from my Bonnaroocleosis. Like other workers, performers, and festicle-goers in attendance, I’ve been hacking up silty brown lung-dumplings and blowing whole coal fields of black boogers into rolls of tissue.
The annual Bonnaroo dust storm could be a preview of the world after a nuclear cataclysm, where those so privileged will wring their desperate satisfaction from tingling chemicals, sun-seared flesh on display, and the pulsating rhythm of pleasure machines, leaving pathetic Plebeians to pick through the scraps.
Once again, I had a blast under the mushroom cloud.
Monday, June 6: Say “Moo” motherfucker
I’m late as usual to pick up Glen the Red, a fellow rigger who packed his camping gear and work tools hours…
Would You Eat Edible RFID Tags That Describe Your Food?
Bulgarian soup. Photo: Biso (CC)
Jesse Emspak writes in New Scientist:
For tracking, radio frequency identification (RFID) chips are the greatest thing since sliced bread. But what if the RFID chip was actually in the sliced bread?
A student at the Royal College of Art in London, Hannes Harms, has come up with a design for an edible RFID chip, part of a system he calls NutriSmart. The chip could send information about the food you eat to a personal computer or, conceivably, a mobile phone via a Bluetooth connection.
The idea is that it could send nutritional data and ingredients for people who have allergies, or calorie-counting for those on diets, or maybe even telling your fridge when the food has gone off. It could even be used to market organic food, with a chip holding data about the origin of that tuna steak you just bought.
The idea still raises a lot of…
Washable RFID Tags Help Catch Hotel Towel Thieves
Damn you, Big Travel! Discovery News reports:
Plush terrycloth bathrobes, 800-thread-count sheets and fluffy, freshly laundered towels can tempt even the most law-abiding hotel guest to take up a life of suitcase-stuffing crime.
Irresistible as they may be, petty theft of these luxurious (and free!) linens are gouging the hotel industry to the rude wake-up call of approximately $100 million a year.
Sticky-fingers everywhere, consider this a warning! Some hotels are reinforcing their defences against pilfering patrons like yourself and they’re using radio frequency identification (RFID) to catch you in the act.
Three hotels in Honolulu, Miami and New York City have begun using towels, sheets and bathrobes equipped with washable RFID tags to keep guests from snagging the coveted items. Just to keep you guessing, the hotels have chosen to remain anonymous.
Australian Man Installs Microchip In Hand, For Keyless Living
An Australian man finds that many of life’s daily hassles are reduced by installing a RFID chip in your right hand. Perhaps this is how the rest of us will be convinced to do it. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:
Fed up with carrying his keys around, Joe Wooller, 28, decided it was time for an implant. This year, the father of two from Perth had a microchip, which uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, implanted in his right hand.
His passive RFID chip does not require batteries, can last for many years and communicates with receivers attached to doors, for instance, via a magnetic field. “The goal was really just to get rid of keys and to try to minimize the amount of clutter one would have in their pockets,” he said.
Since the surgery in June, performed while he was still awake and posted on his website, Mr Wooller has endeavored to uncover…
Electronic Pickpockets And The Wallet To Stop Them
DataSafe wallet and passport protector. (Kena Kai)
Turns out the paranoid people with tin foil on their heads weren’t completely wrong. Except the foil doesn’t need to protect your head, but your wallet. The latest thing in pickpocket-technology is being able to scan your credit or ID cards from several feet away. The Washington Post reports:
Stuck on the tarmac, flipping through a travel magazine, you’re struck by the blurb for metal-lined wallets. Purpose: to prevent digital pickpocketing by blocking radio frequencies.
These handsome babies start at $79.99 and top out at the $225 Italian Leather Teju Lizard Embossed Travel Wallet.
Your reaction: Wow! Luxury accessories for paranoids! But you would be wrong. Maybe.
Because, says electronic security expert Bruce Schneier, crystallizing the view of many: “As weird as it sounds, wrapping your passport in tinfoil helps. The tinfoil people, in this case, happen to be correct.
[Continues at The Washington Post]
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Democrats Propose Manditory National ID/Fingerprint Card
Photo: PabloBM (CC)
In the wake of Arizona’s new racial-profiling reign-of-police-terror law, Senate Democrats countered by unveiling their own Orwellian immigration reform “solution”: biometric ID cards for all American workers. Yep, that’s going to go over really well. The Hill reports:
A plan by Senate Democratic leaders to reform the nation’s immigration laws ran into strong opposition from civil liberties defenders before lawmakers even unveiled it Thursday.
Democratic leaders have proposed requiring every worker in the nation to carry a national identification card with biometric information, such as a fingerprint, within the next six years, according to a draft of the measure.
The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a civil liberties defender often aligned with the Democratic Party, wasted no time in blasting the plan.
“Creating a biometric national ID will not only be astronomically…
Virginia Delegates Pass Bill That Bans Chip Implants as ‘Mark of the Beast’
Daniel Tencer reports in the always interesting RAW Story:
Concerns over privacy have aligned with apocalyptic Biblical prophecy in a proposed Virginia law that limits the use of microchip implants on humans because of a lawmaker’s concern that the chips will prove to be the Antichrist’s “mark of the beast.”
On Wednesday, Virginia’s House of Delegates passed a bill that forbids companies from forcing their employees to be implanted with tracking devices, a move likely to be applauded by civil libertarians. But Virginia state Delegate Mark Cole’s reasons for proposing the law have as much to do with the Book of Revelation as they do with concerns over privacy in the digital age.
Cole says he is concerned that the implants will turn out to be the “mark of the beast” worn by Satan’s minions. “My understanding — I’m not a theologian — but there’s a prophecy in the Bible that says you’ll have…
By 2014, All Of Your Clothes Will Be Tagged With RFID Microchips
Great find from Annalee Newitz of io9.com:
You’ve probably already bought clothing with computer chips in it. You know those big white tags that you’re supposed to cut out of the garment once you’ve bought it? Hold one up to the light — if you see a very obvious pattern in it like the one [here], then it’s got an RFID tag in it. Now tech market research group ABI Research has released a new paper showing that three times as many clothing items will be tagged with RFIDs by the year 2014.
RFID tags, sometimes called “smart tags,” hold a small amount of data and contain an antenna (that’s the curly shape you see) that allows RFID reading devices to read at that data remotely. A reader can be a handheld device that people wave over the tag at the checkout counter, or a device hidden in a doorway that checks…
