DVDs Tracked By New Chips!

[Jerry Jones]

http://tinyurl.com/s7qhp

DVDs will soon be tracked with embedded radio transmitter chips to prevent copying and piracy, according to the company which makes movie discs for Warner, Disney, Fox and other major studios.

"Big Brother" is alive and well in the country formerly known as the "United States of America."



Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

RFID's & similar devices will soon be in everything from candy bar & condom wrappers to discs and all the h/w in your system, car, clothes, groceries, cell phones etc. etc.

Most of these will be inventory control, but anyone with a wireless reader network around placed along the town streets could track them. These readers could be on light poles, garbage cans, in store fronts or even in the sidewalk or roadbed.

Odds are that if you have a chronic medical condition you'll have one implanted so rescue squads & ER's can be informed of it if you're unconcious. Some health care providers are already offering this service.

CNN article....

Tracking just immigrants (for now)....

Tracking vehicles....

Feeling better?

[Jerry Jones]

Yeah, I can see it now.

Thugs with computers.

They target your home and burglarize/rob you based on the RFID signals they track.

Not so beautiful.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[KvHagedorn]

This technology serves no useful purpose other than to curtail the freedom and privacy of the individual. But then, the individual does not matter.. only big corporations matter.

[Dr Mordrid]

Nothing new about 'em. If you have one of those tap-pass credit/debit/gift cards (no black magnetic strip, just a colored band) or gas station tags you already have RFID's in your pocket.

[Tjalfe]

the reading distance for such small tags will not allow tracking more than a few inches away from the reader..

[Dr Mordrid]

Actually 450 feet with long range readers & tags;

http://www.iautomate.com/r500sp.html

http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=123899

[Tjalfe]

Actually 450 feet with long range readers & tags;

http://www.iautomate.com/r500sp.html

http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=123899

Did you happen to take a look at the tags this system is ment for?.. they are on the same page as the readers.

I can't believe that you cannot tell the difference between Active RFID, which contains a battery, and is a physically large tag, and a passive RFID tag, which is small enough to be put in a DVD. Passive readers power the tag, so no battery is needed.

An example of a passive RFID tag would be the TIRIS tags used in esso gas stations, or the ones inplanted in pets. Please show me how to read those from a distance which makes them useful for tracking people.

Passive tags in the GHz range has the best range, but even those are severly limited, especially if they have to be small enough to conceil in a DVD

[Dr Mordrid]

Today is one thing, tomorrow another. Upcoming long range passive RFID's are expected to work out to 8 meters, ~25 feet, and those are what will really cause the privacy issues.

BTW: do you really think the RFID's now in some vehicles are passive?

[Tjalfe]

Today is one thing, tomorrow another. Upcoming long range passive RFID's are expected to work out to 8 meters, ~25 feet, and those are what will really cause the privacy issues.

it would take a highly directional antenna and a fair bit of power in the gigaherz range to obtain such range. Not something which will be implemented in DVD's, where they will keep the cost low.

BTW: do you really think the RFID's now in some vehicles are passive?

when did I ever make you believe I could not tell the difference?

btw. I develop RFID systems as part of my day job. So far we have only had a need for the low frequency 125KHz and 13.56MHz readers and have some prototype 433MHz active tags developed too.

[Dr Mordrid]

We're talking past each other. You're talking the limited devices you know & I'm looking at the future implications such as IEEE-P1902.1 (RuBee), long range passive RFID etc. that can read/track products we use at longer distances, and thereby us.

Also;

http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/060917_bluscreen.html

[Jammrock]

It's nothing a magnet can't fix

[Tjalfe]

We're talking past each other. You're talking the limited devices you know & I'm looking at the future implications such as IEEE-P1902.1 (RuBee), long range passive RFID etc. that can read/track products we use at longer distances, and thereby us.

Also;

http://www.livescience.com/scienceof...bluscreen.html

IEEE-P1902.1 will also be battery powered to obtain the rated 50' read range, and it will be credit card sized, hardly something you can hide in a consumer product.

If people want to be tracked, then having yourself or a child carry an active RFID tag around is defenitely a possibility. The tag will be large and will have to have new batteries installed every so often, depending on how often the tag is read. This is already in use in some theme parks to locate your kids.
For products to have tags in them to track consumers without their knowledge, the tag will have to be small, passive and cheap. That means the read distance will be small. Also all tags are affected by metal, and if you shield a tag the read distance drops to nearly nothing, if you can read it at all.

Long range passive RFID still uses large creditcard sized tags and in the GHz range. Small passive tags just does not give you the needed long range

[Dr Mordrid]

Size is mainly a function of battery size these days. RuBee is projected to have a 10 year battery life using Li Ions, but a recent advance at Brown Iniv. in polymer battery/supercapacitor hybrids promises a 100:1 increase in power density.

Some even think this polymer tech could make the power & circuitry part of the product; cloth, packaging, antennae etc. Imagine the RFID/RuBee implications of that.