RFID tags are an alternative technology to printed barcodes, which provide an automatic means of delivering product data without direct contact between the tag, or transponder, and the reader device. Indeed, unlike barcodes there is no requirement for the tag to be in the line of sight of the reader. RFID tags are, unfortunately, relatively expensive compared to barcodes and their uses are not as widespread. The ability to produce RFID tags at a fraction of the present cost could change that.

There are several techniques used to deposit an antenna on plastics: etching, electroplating; and on paper: screen printing, flexography and offset lithography. Now, Camille Ramade and colleagues at the University of Montpellier have demonstrated how a simple thermal evaporation process can deposit an aluminum coil antenna on to paper for use as an RFID tag. Aluminum is a lot less expensive than copper or silver, which are used in some types of RFID tag. The researchers suggest that the approach would reduce the cost of RFID tagging to a fifth of current prices, which could represent significant savings for inventory users operating millions of RFID tags in their systems.

“Prototypes are functional and easily detected by the reader; the next step is to optimize the design for each family of RFID chips. This will significantly improve performance while maintaining the same low-cost technology on paper,” the team says.

And now, swiping is on the way out thanks to RFID (radio-frequency identification). Rather than assign you a plastic card with magnetic stripe, credit card companies are moving toward chips programmed with your relevant information. Have a credit card that says “PayPass” on it? Then you have RFID.

RFID is not new. I once worked a security job where I was assigned an ID card that I passed in front of a scanner at every door I entered. The chip in the card was passive, but got its power from the scanner itself when placed near it. Many of us guards learned that we did not even have to pull our cards out of our wallets, but simply wave the entire wallet in front of the scanner.

And, you can see where this is going.

In the old days (i.e. now), credit card thieves might work at a ritzy restaurant for a bit, harvesting card info with a mag stripe reader they could hide in their vest. Trouble with that was that all those cards had one thing in common: they were all used at that restaurant. On the thief’s shift. At his tables. Arrest was quick.

For about $300, you can purchase a cordless RFID scanning device online. It does have to be pretty close to, but not in contact with, a chip in order to power it and read it.

So, imagine: You get into a crowd, start bumping into people’s purses, back pockets, collecting card info with your scanner. Maybe on the subway, where everyone is headed to somewhere else. Your victim base is decentralized. That’s the first step.

Then, you transfer the card info to a cheap mag stripe card. You can buy them in bulk for 30 cents a piece. Hotels and department stores use them all the time. That equipment to do it will set you back another $350. That done, you now have a clone of that person’s credit card.

From there, it’s all up to what manner of crook you want to be. Sell those card clones for $50 each? For a night on the town, that beats Groupon deals. Hook up with the right gangs in a city or overseas buyers online and you could move many of those at a time.

Or, you could swipe them yourself with smartphone accessories straight into an account. Given the right bank, that could work. Fold them into a grander money-laundering scheme?

What if you paid runners a buck apiece to wander subways, concert halls, and other thickly populated areas with your readers tucked away?

Let’s do the math on one simple scenario that does not involve any cohorts, just willing buyers you meet online and $700 in readily-available equipment. Scan 100 RFID chips per day (easy in crowded areas) and you can recoup that investment in your first day’s “work”. After that, $30 worth of blank cards per day nets you $5,000 from your buyers. $25,000 per 5-day work week. Take a couple weeks vacation each year, like normal folk. Clear $1,250,000 your first year grinding.

Beats a job. Beats selling drugs. Do it all yourself out of an apartment.

If you’re crooked.

All this is possible because credit card companies want you to be embarrassed to pay with cash or check. Their commercials show you inconveniencing people in line behind you, then tell you their products are for *your* convenience. They make it easy to swipe, easy to lose track of your spending. Credit and overdraft fees rack up when you are out of touch with your spending.

And now, they make it easier than ever for thieves to steal you money by taking the card-in-my-hands factor out of the equation. Your info is now broadcast, albeit over a short distance.

Pickpocketing was never easier.

Doubt this all would work? It already has.

Apple is trying to make it harder to hack your shoes by working out a patent that uses the authorized garment system. Most think that this will be an RFID chip that is embedded in the garment to make sure it is an actual authorized Garment. Since RFID security is near non-existent there should be a booming market in RFID cloning for this patent as a way to work around the protection mechanism. The USPTO patent application states:

The Nike iPod Sport Kit.TM. is arranged such that at least one of the Nike+.TM. shoes includes a sensor (that includes an accelerometer/transmitter) mounted under the inner sole and a receiver that communicates with the iPod nano.TM.. In order to accommodate the sensor and provide appropriate data to the iPod nano.TM., the shoe must be a Nike+.TM. model with a special pocket in which to place the sensor. However, some people have taken it upon themselves to remove the sensor from the special pocket of the Nike+.TM. shoe and place it at inappropriate locations (shoelaces, for example) or place it on non-Nike+.TM. model shoes.
Therefore, what is desired is a method of electronically pairing a sensor and an authorized garment. Source: USPTO

Hacking your gear is a time honored tradition, Podophile has a great DIY demonstration on exactly how to do this, where the sensor is located and how to hack your Nike shoe and move the sensor to another system. While Apple states that the sensor placement is important to get accurate data that is debatable, most people with pedometers just attach them to the shoe in any old place to get a rough idea of how far they have walked. If you are looking for scientifically valid data, you won’t use an IPod and a Nike shoe, you will use pounds of scientific equipment on a carefully measured track. Or just wander down to your local high school on the weekend and run their ¼ mile track or walk their ¼ mile track anyway.

 This simple 1 minute video goes right into how to do the hack, and the easy way to support sneaker hackers worldwide.

In all this might be a bad idea for Apple to pursue, and there is no way to know if they will actually do this as they move forward and probably get the patent. You can expect though that there is going to be a brisk market for RFID authorized chip clones to go along with the hack unless RFID chip technology becomes more secure and they use one that cannot be cloned.

In fairness to Schwarzenegger, it would have been hard for him not to sign the bill outlawing mandatory implants – the PR consequences of such a move might have been disastrous.  So much of the blame lies with Senator Joe Simitian, who authored the piece of legislation, and apparently feels that RFID implants pose some sort of clear and present danger in modern-day America.

“RFID technology is not, in and of itself, the issue. RFID is a minor miracle, with all sorts of good uses,” Simitian stated about a year ago.  “But we cannot and should not condone forced ‘tagging’ of humans.  It’s the ultimate invasion of privacy.”

And a certain senator is a master of the obvious.  Also, now seems like a good time to point out that someone (whether it was Simitian or another supporter of the bill, I can’t say) misspelled “governor” in the relevant press release’s title.  Brilliant.

At least Simitian’s bill-turned-law won’t do any harm.  It just doesn’t seem like a necessary piece of legislation.

Do You Want Behavorial Ultra-Targeted Marketing?

The future is in personalization. While ‘Minority Report’ references will be everywhere about the program being promoted to Mini owners, the real news is the continued merging of technology, marketing, and personal information.

As an exclusive brand with the kind of cachet that Apple has in the world of consumer electronics, Mini can take advantage of that position and do these kinds of out of the box thinking experiments. While RFID has been used heavily behind the scenes in warehousing and inventory management, most people who know of it probably just heard how passports use them now.

Mini’s approach as detailed at MotoringFile takes a little bit of owner-contributed information, nothing too personal, and embeds it into an RFID chip. The RFID goes into a keyfob, and the keyfob goes to the owner.

The next time the owner drives the Mini past one of the electronic billboards in Chicago, New York, Miami, or San Francisco, and the message on the RFID chip appears on the screen. The billboards are placed over highways to pick up the RFID signal.

This application of technology and personalized information will be just for fun. Mini wants irreverence, to emphasize the quirky appeal of their little cars. It’s drive-by product evangelism, something that even Apple hasn’t pulled off yet.

We considered the prospect of changeable billboards back in 2005. That was from the context of Google driving its advertising to people everywhere, and the use of wireless technology and ‘electronic paper’ (which does exist today, developed by Fujitsu) to deliver ad messages to people anywhere that a paper ad could be posted.

Mini’s effort uses a digital billboard to display a simple text message. It’s a start, and one that we will probably consider quaint in five years. As for today, it’s a neat implementation of RFID, even though the privacy naysayers will express worries about it.

UPDATE!: I didn’t see this Engadget post about Google and billboards until a few minutes ago, but it looks like the future of Internet connected, interactive billboards could happen sooner than later. Could my prediction from August 2005 be closer to coming true?

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Traditional systems of inventory management lead to many inefficiencies. Adapting newer technology can largely eliminate these. To this end, many companies are exploring silent commerce or exploiting the benefits of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags combined with wireless communication and sensors.

Advantages of Using RFID Tags

RFID is a technology that uses radio waves to automatically identify people or objects. An RFID tag or transponder is a microchip attached to an antenna. It stores a serial number that identifies a person or object. The RFID is the size of a grain of sand and sends out an electronic signal when it is near a sensor. Production costs have been significantly lowered and RFID tags are now finding a host of applications in industry. Their use in lowering costs in the supply chain is of particular significance. Typical applications include the following.

Items with RFID tags reaching a warehouse will not have to be registered manually. The information lodged on the tag is read automatically and entered into the inventory database.

Physical counting and sorting is eliminated. Damaged items or those nearing expiration will be automatically identified.

Packing instructions will be displayed automatically on a reader for the warehouse staff to act upon.

Costs can be cut down substantially as many clerical functions and labor intensive processes are eliminated.

Greater warehouse efficiencies are possible due to greater accuracy in order fill rates, faster inventory turnover, and increased customer satisfaction.

It is easy to track lost or misplaced products, thus enhancing security.

Availability of reliable data makes it possible to do demand forecasting and replenishment applications with greater accuracy.

Data Management Issues

Implementation of silent commerce and associated analytic capabilities raises data management issues that companies must address. Below is a list of the issues:

Standards: The Auto-ID Center, an organization comprising more than 90 manufacturers and companies is doing work on Electronic Product Identification Codes (EPC) that will replace the existing Universal Product Code (UPC). This will enable companies to track products on a real-time basis along the entire supply chain globally.

Data Sharing: Organizations are presently in the initial stage of using RFID tags in their supply chain systems. Most implementations exist in closed system environments. As the systems proliferate and companies realize the advantages of cost saving even in closed systems, they will increasingly be convinced about sharing data with trading partners.

Privacy: Having a chip in various products creates unforeseen privacy issues that have to be addressed. Theoretically, anyone with a scanner will be able to locate any product. There are ways to overcome this, but it does highlight the serious nature of the problem.

Modern technology offers many ways to bring about operational efficiencies in a company’s processes and systems. Using RFID tags can bring about substantial cost savings in an enterprise’s logistics systems. Firms planning to use silent commerce can think of starting a pilot business to business project before implementing the technology on a global scale.

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David Gass is President of Business Credit Services, Inc. His company publishes a free weekly e-newsletter on Small Business Consulting at their web site http://www.smallbusinessconsulting.com

Melanie R. Rieback, Patrick N. D. Simpson, Bruno Crispo, and Andrew S. Tanenbaum have published a paper called “RFID Viruses and Worms.” In it, they reveal some disturbing information. “Up until now, everyone working on RFID technology has tacitly assumed that the mere act of scanning an RFID tag cannot modify back-end software, and certainly not in a malicious way. Unfortunately, they are wrong.

“In our research, we have discovered that if certain vulnerabilities exist in the RFID software, an RFID tag can be (intentionally) infected with a virus and this virus can infect the backend database used by the RFID software. From there it can be easily spread to other RFID tags.” The paper goes over three possible scenarios in which this could be exploited in a harmful fashion.

It also details how to create such worms and viruses. This isn’t quite as bad as it sounds, the group explains. “When talking to people in charge of RFID systems, they often dismiss security concerns as academic, unrealistic, and unworthy of spending any money on countering, as these threats are merely theoretical.’ By making code for RFID malware‘ publicly available, we hope to convince them that the problem is serious and had better be dealt with, and fast.”

Let’s hope this full disclosure works to the public’s advantage.

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What does he do with this? He uses it to start his car. There’s a video of this up on BensCarAudio.com website. I wonder how much this costs.

Would you do this? It’d be pretty hard to forget your keys if you did that.

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Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

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The RFID Solution includes Cisco Application Oriented Network (AON) for RFID, Cisco Services for RFID, a Cisco Wireless Location Service, and supporting RFID-related products from Cisco partners ConnecTerra, Intermec Technologies, PanGo Networks and ThingMagic.

The company calls it the most agile, scalable and highly secure RFID solution portfolio offered in the industry, delivering integrated RFID capabilities and the support that enterprises need to optimize available network capacity and simplify RFID infrastructure deployment.

“Combined with an intelligent network, the Electronic Product Code (EPC) will fundamentally improve the way products move through the supply chain creating greater efficiencies, reduced loss and better product availability…factors that will add substantial benefits to the bottom line of every business,” said Dick Cantwell, vice president of Gillette’s EPC team.

“For Gillette, our EPC-enabled network has allowed us to begin to re-engineer our supply chain bringing with it improved order accuracy and processing, streamlined inventory management systems, increased shipment accuracy and better retail availability in store,” added Cantwell.

The RFID Solution will sell at $16,250 when it begins shipping in October. It will be available in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Next year it will become available in Asia. Cisco offers many more details in their press release regarding the solution.

Chris is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.