Radio-frequency identification
[4] Since RFID tags can be attached to physical money, clothing, and possessions, or implanted in animals and people, the possibility of reading personally-linked information without consent has raised serious privacy concerns.
[6] In 1945, Leon Theremin invented the "Thing", a listening device for the Soviet Union which retransmitted incident radio waves with the added audio information.
Mario Cardullo's device, patented on January 23, 1973, was the first true ancestor of modern RFID,[10] as it was a passive radio transponder with memory.
[10] In 1973, an early demonstration of reflected power (modulated backscatter) RFID tags, both passive and semi-passive, was performed by Steven Depp, Alfred Koelle and Robert Freyman at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
[14] In 1996, the first patent for a batteryless RFID passive tag with limited interference was granted to David Everett, John Frech, Theodore Wright, and Kelly Rodriguez.
Mercedes was an early adopter in 2011 at the PGA Golf Championships,[51] and by the 2013 Geneva Motor Show many of the larger brands were using RFID for social media marketing.
In the railroad industry, RFID tags mounted on locomotives and rolling stock identify the owner, identification number and type of equipment and its characteristics.
In addition to information also contained on the visual data page of the passport, Malaysian e-passports record the travel history (time, date, and place) of entry into and exit out of the country.
[citation needed] Other countries that insert RFID in passports include Norway (2005),[63] Japan (March 1, 2006), most EU countries (around 2006), Singapore (2006), Australia, Hong Kong, the United States (2007), the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland (2006), India (June 2008), Serbia (July 2008), Republic of Korea (August 2008), Taiwan (December 2008), Albania (January 2009), The Philippines (August 2009), Republic of Macedonia (2010), Argentina (2012), Canada (2013), Uruguay (2015)[64] and Israel (2017).
The department will also implement Basic Access Control (BAC), which functions as a personal identification number (PIN) in the form of characters printed on the passport data page.
A prepaid card is required to open or enter a facility or locker and is used to track and charge based on how long the bike is parked.
Originally meant for large ranches and rough terrain, since the outbreak of mad-cow disease, RFID has become crucial in animal identification management.
[74] A year later, British professor of cybernetics Kevin Warwick had an RFID chip implanted in his arm by his general practitioner, George Boulos.
[75][76] In 2004, the 'Baja Beach Club' operated by Conrad Chase in Barcelona[77] and Rotterdam offered implanted chips to identify their VIP customers, who could in turn use it to pay for service.
[79] There is controversy regarding human applications of implantable RFID technology including concerns that individuals could potentially be tracked by carrying an identifier unique to them.
Some are concerned this could lead to abuse by an authoritarian government, to removal of freedoms,[80] and to the emergence of an "ultimate panopticon", a society where all citizens behave in a socially accepted manner because others might be watching.
[89] The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recently announced plans to deploy RFID in hospitals across America to improve care and reduce costs.
A 2004 Dutch estimate was that a library which lends 100,000 books per year should plan on a cost of €50,000 (borrow- and return-stations: 12,500 each, detection porches 10,000 each; tags 0.36 each).
St Charles Sixth Form College in west London, England, starting in 2008, uses an RFID card system to check in and out of the main gate, to both track attendance and prevent unauthorized entrance.
Similarly, Whitcliffe Mount School in Cleckheaton, England, uses RFID to track pupils and staff in and out of the building via a specially designed card.
Alternatively, a chip plus a very large (125 mm square) antenna can be incorporated into the bib number worn on the athlete's chest at a height of about 1.25 m (4.1 ft).
EPCglobal, a joint venture between GS1 and GS1 US, is working on international standards for the use of mostly passive RFID and the Electronic Product Code (EPC) in the identification of many items in the supply chain for companies worldwide.
[130] Several prototype systems are being developed to combat unauthorized reading, including RFID signal interruption,[133] as well as the possibility of legislation, and 700 scientific papers have been published on this matter since 2002.
[134] There are also concerns that the database structure of Object Naming Service may be susceptible to infiltration, similar to denial-of-service attacks, after the EPCglobal Network ONS root servers were shown to be vulnerable.
[136][137] In an effort to prevent the passive "skimming" of RFID-enabled cards or passports, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) issued a set of test procedures for evaluating electromagnetically opaque sleeves.
Low-frequency LowFID tags, like those used in implantable devices for humans and pets, are relatively resistant to shielding, although thick metal foil will prevent most reads.
High frequency HighFID tags (13.56 MHz—smart cards and access badges) are sensitive to shielding and are difficult to read when within a few centimetres of a metal surface.
[155] In the book SpyChips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move by Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, one is encouraged to "imagine a world of no privacy.
This simple method cannot safely be used to deactivate RFID features in electronic devices, or those implanted in living tissue, because of the risk of damage to the "host".
However the time required is extremely short (a second or two of radiation) and the method works in many other non-electronic and inanimate items, long before heat or fire become of concern.
