Difference between revisions of "Soctech seminar, Fall 2006"

Revision as of 04:33, 28 August 2006

Fall 2006: RFID Technology

The goal of this seminar will be to explore the broader legal and sociopolitical implications of radio frequence identification (RFID) technology.

Seminar organization

The seminar will be discussion-driven, each period led by a small group of seminar participants and/or including invited guest experts. We are also going to try to produce a seminar position paper that summarizes our thoughts upon RFID and what material we've covered. The intent is that we will have produced a document after a full quarter's discussion. The document will be collaboratively authored and all seminar participants will be required to contribute, although we intend this to be relatively low-investment attenuated over the course of the quarter.

Basic description of RFID:

• Roy Want, The Magic of RFID.

Research:

• RFID Ecosystem
• Building a cheap, long range RFID skimmer

Applications:

• Government:
  • Passports (trial programs in a few countries, e.g. US)
• Commercial:
  • supply-side tracking of inventory (e.g. walmart)
  • gathering more detailed information about consumers (increasing information asymmetry between sellers/buyers)
  • enabling buyers to gather more information about products (decreasing above information asymmetry)

Security concerns:

• hacking Dutch RFID passports
• RFID viruses (many say the claims are exaggerated)

Privacy & Surveillance concerns:

• article expressing concern about being tracked everywhere...
• Anti-RFID site

(Proposed) laws:

• Wisconsin law bans forcible implanting of RFID tag
• (old) proposed legislation in California that would attempt to protect consumer privacy

Potential speakers:

• Gaetano Borriello
• Roy Want

A few companies...

• Alien Technology
• VeriChip
• RFIDsec