August 23rd, 2006
RFID-Based Digital Dog Tags Have Already Been Cloned
By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
Note: This is article not the same as earlier stories that came out yesterday about embedding chips in US troops. New developments include the CLONING of this technology, and more about its origins.
I am a big fan of RFID technology in theory. Tracing palettes of corn flakes from truck to warehouse to store shelf is my idea of industrial efficiency. And I also don’t care if you drive by my home and scan it to find corn flakes box number 45376657 sitting in my cupboard. But RFID chips make people really really nervous when you start talking about embedding them in things like passports, and people. (Read our series on the various issue surrounding potentially traceable US passports using RFID technology…we’ll wait.)
Today we found out that the company hoping to land a big Pentagon contract for new RFID-based digital dog tags has had its technology cloned twice and to make mater worse, the technology is nothing but a cheap modification of the pet tracking chips used to keep Fido from getting lost.
VeriChip Corp. is “in discussions” with the Air Force, Navy and the Department of Veterans Affairs to sell its radio frequency identification chips, said Scott Silverman, CEO of VeriChip’s parent company. VeriChip says that the devices are secure, but Annalee Newitz, a contributing editor at Wired magazine, and software engineer Jonathan Westhues, say that’s not true. Newitz wears a VeriChip under her arm, and last month at a computer hackers’ conference in New York, she and Westhues made a copy of her VeriChip — and her private medical data — using a homemade device.
“VeriChip puts absolutely no security on this at all. There’s no encryption, no security features,” Newitz told The Examiner during a phone interview Monday from her San Francisco home. “These are basically modified pet tags. All they’ve done is tweak that a little bit for humans,” Newitz said, adding that she was “stunned” that VeriChip wants to put the device in U.S. troops. “You’re not concerned that your pet’s tag might be read by an enemy on the field.” Source: SF Examiner
We Say: There will be a work-around, so let’s not get all hysterical, but maybe a baby step would be a physical dog tag with a chip and then an upgrade? Let’s not start tagging our poor soldiers like dogs. That makes the whole dog tag concept more insult than injury protection. Don’t you think?
MissingFrame says:
Wait, didn’t we already give military personal, ahem, dog tags?
August 23rd, 2006 at 12:59 pm
David Johnston says:
My dog has one of those RFID tags and I think it’s a great idea for dogs. However, I don’t think any kind of human RFID tagging is a good idea unless it’s completely voluntary. I know I wouldn’t want one.
August 23rd, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Kidder014 says:
I bet your dog didn’t want it either… did you think about that?
August 23rd, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Alice says:
I have cats and I can assure you that would rather die than have a chip implanted under their skin. Going to the vet for shots is enough.
August 23rd, 2006 at 1:31 pm
Eric says:
This is ridiculous. An enemy would simply wander around with an RFID scanner and find the tags. Even if they’re encoded, you don’t need to read the tags to find them. Or worse, if these are really poorly made, someone could simply wander around with something that measures the EM radiation in the air and look for spikes.
August 23rd, 2006 at 2:22 pm
AC says:
How about RFID triggered anti-personnel mines or improvised explosive devices? There is almost no end to the reasons why this should not be done.
August 23rd, 2006 at 2:50 pm
Ozik says:
“…has had its technology cloned twice and to make mater worse…”
You could hardly make my mother worse through RFID technology.
August 23rd, 2006 at 2:55 pm
What? says:
“Tracing palettes of corn flakes…”
I didn’t know cereal could paint.
(Ozik’s not the only smartass)
August 24th, 2006 at 3:58 am
Olo Baggins of Bywater says:
Eric…verichips only work at very short distances. Typical max is 18 inches. It is very important to note that implantable chips don’t work the same way as the (UHF, 915 MHz) tags used on cereal boxes. It is a physical impossibility to exploit them at any useful distance, say beyond three feet.
Anybody scanning that frequency, at 120-140 kHz, is easily detectable a long way off…with a modified AM radio.
Verichips use public standards. Any military use of similar tags should get the standard military security treatment…proprietary, unpublished, and tight as a drum.
August 24th, 2006 at 5:15 am
John Corliss says:
What is it about some people that they don’t understand the first step is to get a group of idiots to willingly implant ID devices in their bodies. The second step is to PASS LAWS REQUIRING SUCH IMPLANTS!
Use your FREAKING HEADS, people! Those who don’t defend their freedoms deserve to lose freedom entirely.
August 24th, 2006 at 5:36 am
Olo Baggins of Bywater says:
Hey John…if my kid is a casualty in a war, it would sure be nice to be able to identify him. This has nothing to do with freedom, it’s about a high-tech version of a dog-tag.
And to be honest, I’m amazed at how little many columnists know about this technology yet write alarmist articles about it anyway.
Cloning is a non-issue, BTW.
August 24th, 2006 at 6:36 am
John Corliss says:
Olo, apparently you didn’t read the entry about how it would probably not be hard for such RFID tags to be read by the enemy and thus for them to detect our troups in the field. Besides, I wasn’t talking about military applications, but civilian. How many science fiction movies and television episodes have you seen where somebody has to remove a chip from their body somehow in order to remain undetected?
If you want to give away your privacy, go right ahead. But don’t do anything that leads to me having to give away MINE.
August 25th, 2006 at 4:04 am
Bill M says:
Three feet would be about the ideal distance to trigger an anti-personnel mine or IED. Since the bad guys would know that only US troops have the RFID chips, they would not care about being able to read them, just know that the chip is there. Picture an al-Qaeda family with a bunch of these set around the house, not big bombs, just few ounces of C4 or equivalent. The kids could come and go, guests wander in and out, perfectly safe. GI comes in to search, boom. RFID in combat troops does NOT sound like a good idea to me.
August 25th, 2006 at 5:20 am