“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.” – Marie Curie

There are many debates surrounding the big business of Radio Frequency Identification, specifically, that the tags are great –but privacy-rights advocates fear the tiny chips will invite corporations and the government into our personal lives.

It looks fairly innocuous, a metal-and-plastic square with wires coiled up like an angular snail, a lot like the anti-theft tag you’d find if you pried apart a DVD you’d just bought at a local Borders book store. But it’s a Radio Frequency Identification tag, RFID for short, and each one has a tiny antenna that can broadcast information about the product, or person, to which it is attached.

To the industry that makes and markets RFID, it’s simply the next logical step from bar codes: providing an inexpensive, easy way to keep products on the shelves, consumers happy and companies making money. In addition, bar codes have come a long way. With the ability to track consumer spending habits, and new software that enables a consumer to download and decipher bar codes with connectivity to web pages that include everything from recipes to more products, and free services.

To many privacy-rights advocates, RFID tags could be the forerunner to nightmare scenarios in which RFID technology is the Trojan horse that brings Big Brother into your home, snooping through your medicine cabinets, fridge and underwear drawer to find out what you do, buy and believe, and, ultimately, what you are.
This small tag has, so far, largely flown under the radar of consumers and the mainstream press. But in early October of 2005, privacy-rights advocates Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre published a book, Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID, that has RFID proponents on the defensive.

The book manages to instill evidence to back up the fears of people who otherwise might be written crazy conspiracy theorists. Citing examples such as IBM taking out a patent for a “person-tracking unit” that uses RFID tags to identify individuals, their movements and purchases in stores. Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart collaborating on a test that put cameras on a store shelf in Oklahoma and watched customers sample lipsticks off an RFID-enabled shelf. A Sutter County grade school’s experimental program requiring students to wear RFID-enabled badges to track their on-campus movements, thanks to supplies donated by the InCom Corp. based 50 miles northwest of Sacramento. And the federal government plans to put RFID tags in passports, prescription medications and perhaps driver’s licenses and postage stamps. One day, the Spychips authors fear, the tiny tags could be on everything from candy bars to dollar bills, compromising both privacy and personal security.

With technological advances, the scrutiny, the fear and the “worst case scenario” are usually in the forefront. It is sometimes hard to see beyond the fringe and consequently, the scary ideas are easier to believe and gravitate toward. Although the RFID industry (which researchers say will be a $4.2 billion-a-year business by 2011) is steadily climbing, there are a few forward thinking damage control specialists that are effectively informing consumers on the technology. RFID Ltd., bought space on Google, eBay and Amazon to assist consumers and to combat the fear instilled by Spychips authors and during their search for “Spychips,” a link to a 24-page rebuttal pops up.

“We felt we had a responsibility to educate consumers,” said Nicholas Chavez, president of RFID Ltd., who co-authored the rebuttal released November 2005.

The applications cited in the book “presupposes applications that aren’t within the current capabilities of the technology” says Chavez.
RFID was first envisioned in the 1940s, combining the existing disciplines of radio broadcast technology and radar to communicate via reflected power, according to a history by AIM Global, the Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that technical capabilities caught up with the vision and RFID began to be applied commercially. While “active” RFID tags send out radio signals, the more typical “passive” tags lie dormant until picked up by devices called readers, which can be positioned anywhere from a couple of inches to several feet away. The reader transmits the information to a database, where it can be stored. There’s some debate over actual vs. intended read range.
While some chips are smaller than a grain of sand, the ones currently in use on shipping crates are the size of a credit card.

RFID Ltd. may have its hands full dealing with public and private scrutiny but at the help, Chavez is turning controversy into education and a pro-active approach to the next wave in brilliant technology.
Nicholas Chavez is President of RFID, LTD, a company that specializes in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) solutions for small-to-medium sized suppliers required to comply with the Wal-Mart and Department of Defense mandates.

Chavez is a much sought-after expert on radio frequency identification by broadcasting and print media throughout the nation, and is a leading industry spokesman to counteract spurious claims about RFID technology such as those made by the authors of Spychips.

Entrepreneur Magazine says of Chavez: “Like other trailblazers in technology and business, Nicholas Chavez has that certain savoir-faire—that ability to make age and appearances a non-issue. Behind that is his seemingly innate confidence that propels him to the top.”
Nicholas Chavez started blazing a trail by speaking in front of crowds at age 5, by starting his first computer consulting company at age 15, and by being hired by Packard Bell, IBM and Lucent Technologies at age 17. A year later, the U.S. Department of Defense was calling on him.

When Chavez went to work for Packard Bell he made such an impression retooling the company’s Help Desk that IBM hired him away the first year. IBM loaned him to Lucent Technologies where Chavez provided technology support to all the Lucent plants in the U.S. and abroad. By age 17 Chavez was earning a 6-figure salary, supervising a team of 30, and meeting regularly with IBM and Lucent VPs. In 2004 Chavez founded RFID, LTD which in a very short time has risen to pre-eminence in the field.

Chavez has launched five dot.coms: ProjectVault (online database for architects and construction teams); lluminatiSystems.com (Web design and hosting); WowRecruits.com (a recruiting database for sports scouts and players; http://homes.com (a service for real estate agents); and RideOnTime.com (a geo-mapping system in 94 U.S. cities).

Not all tech and metal, Chavez is also a film buff and an amateur filmmaker. “Among his short films is Alternative Ending, a fictional account of JFK Jr’s disappearance and an official submission to the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

RFID, Ltd. has taken on the challenge of being the “good guys”.
This is a tall order. Small companies that once served giants like Wal-Mart are forced to comply with new processes that in most cases, will actually benefit even the mom and pop distributor that may generate $150,000 per year in income from one retail giant to providing them with opportunities to work with additional box retailers and enable them to be proficient and competitive –thus quadrupling their annual revenue potentials.

Keeping these small companies in business is task one for RFID Ltd. –and to do so, Chavez is in the forefront rebutting the controversy and fears instilled by such books as Spychips.

“It may seem silly to rebut something as simple as the title of a book; however, it’s important to examine the aggregate influence of each and every accusation that the authors make using the term “spychips.” Read in rapid succession, such subtle indictments have a compounding effect on the mind – and ultimately on the opinion – of the reader,” says Chavez.

Chavez begins his 25 page examination of the book (available online) with the title itself: The SPYCHIPS book is subtitled “How major corporations and government plan to track your every move with RFID.”

“The authors, within the full title and throughout the book, utilize the phrase “spychips” as a replacement for the term “RFID” which is the most commonly used acronym for the technology known as Radio Frequency Identification. Of course such an ominous phrase casts the technology in a sinister light – not to mention that the phrase-used-as-title only makes sense if you already agree with every contentious position put forth by the authors,” says Chavez.

“When the authors replace the industry-accepted term with one of their own creation, we lose the common platform of language and objectivity.”

Here to refute many of the book’s accusations, Chavez gives a thorough account of his take on the controversy. To view the document in its entirety, visit www.packagedrfid.com/spychips_rebuttal.pdf

Tracking Everything Everywhere

“Ms. Albrecht and Ms. McIntyre began the book Spychips with a reasonably credible but ultimately inadequate definition of RFID: “Radio frequency identification, RFID for short, is a technology that uses tiny computer chips – some smaller than a grain of sand – to track items at a distance.” The authors constantly state throughout the book that the tiny chips can be placed on anything from car tires to undergarments,” says Chavez.

“The reason why attention is drawn to this quote is that much of the rest of the book is predicated on this incomplete definition of RFID. The book’s insufficient definition begs the question “At WHAT distance may items be tracked, precisely?”
The answer is quite simple. Passive – or non-powered – RFID chips smaller than a grain of sand have a read distance of no more than a few millimeters, a very short “distance” by anyone’s definition,” Chavez explains.

“Someone would have to sneak up behind you on a subway and rub an RFID interrogator device all over your body to find the miniscule RFID chip. This, of course, would be an invasion of privacy and incredibly easy to detect.”

“For the authors’ scenario of global tracking to be viable, manufacturers would have to place a active – or powered – RFID or GPS enabled tag about the size of a chalkboard eraser in the consumer product of reference.”

“The idea of personal tags the size of chalkboard erasers is preposterous. They would be both extremely uncomfortable and decidedly unfashionable as undergarment accessories. Luckily, the tags could be removed rather easily, and consumers need not worry about this application due to the prohibitive cost of active RFID tagging at the item level – not to mention the preposterous notion of it all.”

“The authors spend much of the rest of the book implying that consumers can be tracked by a device smaller than a grain of sand, but never offer credible evidence of such an occurrence or even a technical definition of how such a scenario would work in the real world.”

““For example if…”, “Imagine if…”, and “We expect that…” is the preamble to many of the authors’ RFID nightmare scenarios. Once again, as entertaining and thought provoking as they may be, the scenarios remain entirely fictional,” concludes Chavez.

Spychips 101
“Magic lives in curves, not angles.” – Mason Cooley

“In this chapter, Ms. Albrecht and Ms. McIntire further attempt to elaborate on the genesis and capabilities of RFID technology; while their findings are well documented through footnotes, much of the material has been misinterpreted and exaggerated to provide support for the authors’ otherwise unfounded allegations,” claims Chavez.
“When discussing the history of RFID, the authors use an infamous example: the “Great Seal Bug.” This wooden plaque was given to a U.S. Ambassador as a gift and contained a bugging device,” he says.
“The authors describe the electronics in this bug as being “…nothing less than an early form of RFID in its debut performance as a spying technology.” The problem with this assertion is that this device was not at all a form of RFID. Intrinsic logic states that only one “Great Seal Bug” ever existed and hence there was never a need to “ID” it. The purpose of the Bug was to eavesdrop, not track anything logistically. Although there are some similarities in that passive RFID is powered by radio waves, the Great Seal Bug was simply not an RFID device at all. As such, the authors’ choice of the Great Seal Bug is a dubious one, establishing a menacing basis for the roots of RFID, where otherwise one would not exist.”

“There is, however, an example that is often cited by industry experts as the first RFID system,” explains Chavez. “During World War II, radar had been developed to track planes and the same technology was used by both the Allied and Axis powers. The shared use of a common technology created difficulty in distinguishing Allied planes from those belonging to the enemy. Sir Robert Watson-Watt was able to develop a transponder that would receive radar signals and send back a signal that identified the plane as friendly – very clearly a tracking and identification function. The authors of SPYCHIPS ignored the more widely accepted and technically correct example of RFID technology’s origin. Possibly, they may have found it difficult to shift readers into an anti-RFID mindset when the most credible example of early RFID technology gave the Allied forces an edge in defending themselves from World War II air raids.”

“The authors give an elementary overview of an RFID system and its requisite components in Chapter Two and give real world examples of RF or Radio Frequency: It uses electromagnetic energy in the form of radio waves to communicate information at a distance. These silent, invisible waves are similar to the radio waves that allow you to listen to your favorite FM radio station.

Good stuff! However, even that basic definition of RF technology is followed by: “...and like other radio waves, they can travel right through windows, wood, and even walls.”

I suspect this is to preface claims later in the book about persons driving by to collect information about the valuables in your home. Here is the news: 100% of the items being tagged by consumer product companies are tagged with passive tags that have a read range of a no more than a few feet. Could you read one through a wall? Maybe...if you had someone hold the item up to the wall and you were rubbing the RFID interrogator on the other side of the wall. Powered vs. non-powered tags and their corresponding read range is once again the factor here.”

Downshifting into Surveillance Mode
“The people’s right to change what does not work is one of the greatest principles of our system of government.”
– Richard Nixon

Chavez describes his interest reading the authors’ opinion regarding Accenture’s work in telematics: “Accenture wants to help car manufacturers siphon information and use it as a way of ‘never saying goodbye to the customer.’” The book states.
I worked as a technical architect for Accenture and was also ostensibly the youngest person ever to reach the executive ranks at the ripe age of twenty-one. I didn’t work on any telematics programs while at Accenture, yet in 2002, Jeff Goldstein and I were working on a design for something that we codenamed “Scrambled Eggs.” “Scrambled Eggs” could be best described as a series of four RFID chips embedded in a drivers license and an RFID interrogator implanted in a vehicle’s license plate. The system would work like this:

1. The drivers license is a programmable smart card, utilizing passive RFID technology.
2. The government issues the card, and the user takes it to the insurance agency to activate it.
3. The interrogator in the license plate then reads the information from the four RFID chips, garnering the following information:
a. Does the driver carry adequate insurance?
b. Does the vehicle have current inspection certification?
c. Is the vehicle currently registered for operation in the state?
d. Does the name on the drivers license match that of the registration?
4. A series of visible, multi-colored LED lights on the license plate would allow police officers to monitor the above information. Police cars would also have interrogators that could actively notify officers if there were a violation, just by driving past a series of cars.No more data entry.

The benefits would be as follows:
1. Increased government revenue
2. Decreased police fatalities
3. Decreased insurance premiums from uninsured motorists
4. Decreased car theft

“Even though “Scrambled Eggs” is dead, says Chavez, “RFID, LTD. does have other projects in this area that we will be presenting to selected state governments. The thought never entered our minds to use the technology to track the movements of unsuspecting Americans. The book’s authors’ statement that “Government-sponsored RFID transportation initiatives are promoted as ways to make us all more efficient and keep us safer” is absolutely correct.”
“The benefits of these systems are not hype; they are projections based upon reasonable assumptions and hypotheses,” he says.

Are You Next?
“It has been more wittily than charitably said that hell is paved with good intentions. They have their place in heaven also.” – Robert Southey

“100% of the work we do at RFID, LTD is logistics tracking of non-biological entities through the supply chain,” says Chavez. “This ratio is nearly the same for the entire RFID industry, although there are some specialty companies that use RFID to track livestock and some that use RFID technology for biometric security-access purposes by implanting passive RFID chips into clients who have requested it.”
“The authors cited an example where the RFID industry was called in to assist with implanting RFID chips into the corpses of the victims of the Southeast Asian tsunami. I suspect they included this reference for shock value. I also assume that implanting RFID chips into corpses is infinitely preferable to marking them with permanent marker and chaining them to stop signs – the interim solution in the United States after our own country was ravaged by hurricane Katrina.”
Citing the Persephone patent application mentioned above, the authors ask, “Who said RFID couldn’t be used to control and enslave people?”

“This line of questioning is illogical,” says Chavez. “Anything can be used to enslave people if it is far enough ingrained into a society. However, boundaries are set by our democratic method of government, where appropriate measures are decided by voters relying upon simplistic but reliable sources of innate information such as common sense, common decency and an inherent desire for freedom.”

“Bottom line: Mandatory RFID implants would never pass muster with the American people...ever,” states Chavez.

The Nightmare Scenario
“One must care about a world one will not see.”
– Bertrand Russell

“What if Hitler had RFID?” is the subtitle of the sixteenth Chapter of SPYCHIPS.
Chavez explains, “The authors’ response to this question attempts to articulate how bad RFID technology could be when it falls into the wrong hands. The authors point out that Jews in Germany were forced to wear a yellow Star of David so that they could be easily identified.”

“They punctuate this historic observation with the statement, “[Nazi’s] would have almost certainly tagged every Jew with a mandatory RFID implant, preferably deep in the body where it would be next to impossible to remove.”

“They don’t mention another tactic used during this same time period, the practice of forcing Jews to change family names such as “Harris” to ones more easily recognizable as Jewish such as “Goldstein.” And this is, in fact, what happened to the ancestors of one of the contributors to this rebuttal document.”

“The point is that technology – whether in the form of weapons, television, the printing press, airplanes, the Internet or anything – can be misused by the powerful as tools of oppression.”

“Arbitrarily selecting RFID technology as a corollary to the Nazi’s misuse of the Star of David needlessly taints a very promising technology with what is considered to be the most atrocious dehumanizing crimes of the 20th century,” Chavez argues.
“The authors pepper the SPYCHIPS book with dangerous misinformation that needlessly shakes non-technical readers to their very core.”

Imagine what it would mean for society if RFID actually lived up to its promise and made it possible for the authorities to single us out as individuals and have 100 percent, round the-clock accuracy about who we are, where we go, whom we associate with, and what we do with our time...RFID could fulfill dictators’ wildest evil dreams, providing near total omniscience and control over every aspect of society. When RFID goes bad, it will be unlike anything we’ve seen before.

“While we have a tremendous amount of respect for the authors, they claim that RFID backers slight them with statements such as “Privacy Activists Are Alarmists.” Of course we have no grievance with privacy activists; after all, we who work in the RFID industry are consumers with privacy concerns too. However, in light of the above quotations, it’s, sadly, difficult not to categorize the authors of SPYCHIPS as alarmists,” he states.

The Good, The Bad and The Possibilities

At the opening of SPYCHIPS, Ms. Albrecht and Ms. McIntyre dedicate their work to those “…who have worked to fight oppression throughout history.”
“Perhaps the best way to continue this fight is not by pushing for abandonment and outright demonization of a specific technology, but rather focusing on guidelines and legislation for its proper use,” says Chavez. “To that end, we fully support most aspects of the legislation proposed by the authors and hope to lead the RFID industry in efforts of cooperation with privacy advocates. In the spirit of cooperation and enlightenment, we hereby offer to fund the RFID+Certification Training of either Ms. Albrecht or Ms. McIntyre. Perhaps with this newfound knowledge regarding RFID technology and it’s specific applications within the realm of supply chain logistics, we can once again regain the common ground of language and move away from derogatory terms such as ‘spychips.’”