[Politech] John Gilmore's horrific, dystopian view of an RFID world [priv]

[Declan McCullagh]

[I always learn something from John Gilmore, and this is no exception.
Although parts of his dystopia are already true: I travel with a cell
phone, 802.1x devices, and Bluetooth devices that broadcast my identity
(to a sufficiently savvy adversary) even more efficiently than an RFID
tag would... --Declan]


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] Computerworld falls for RFID "sniper rifle" hoax?
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 13:21:35 -0700
From: John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
CC: politech at politechbot.com
References: <408F2D74.8040301 at well.com>

Nice hoax.  But the opposite is more likely to come true.  Rather than
shooting RFID chips into people, people with RFID chips already in or on
them will be shot.  People with RFID chips in their clothing, books,
bags, or bodies could be targeted by "smart projectiles" that will zero
in on that particular Smart.

Today's "smart bombs" already self-guide toward laser-identified or
RF-identified or heat-identified targets.

The technical challenges involved in guiding a missile toward an RFID
chip would probably relate to the speed of the missile compared to the
range at which the RFID chip can be made to respond and the agility
with which the missile can change course.

Such a missile could probably more easily be designed to *arm* or
*trigger* its explosion when a particular RFID chip is in range.  That
way, if fired at innocents, it would be a dud that would only cause
minimal damage, but if fired at the right person, it would blow up.

But we need not get so science-fiction about it.  Rather than bring
the mountain to Mohammed, let's let Mohammed come to the mountain.
Let's see what this technology would do for an everyday practice of
today's freedom fighters who are defending their country by opposing
one of the US Government's current wars of occupation.  In order to
comply with government labeling mandates resulting from the huge
Firestone tire recall, Michelin has announced that it plans to put
RFID chips in every tire it sells to car makers (and eventually
in every tire they sell).  Similar plans are afoot for many other
automotive and personal products.

Imagine being able to bury an explosive in a roadway -- that would
only go off when a particular car drove over it.  You could bury these
bombs months in advance, in any or every major or minor roadway.  You
could change the targeting whenever you liked (e.g. via driving a
radio-equipped car over it and transmitting new instructions to it).
You could give it a whole list of cars that it would explode for, or a
set of cars and dates.

If you put such bombs throughout a metropolitan area, a car could
drive through the area for months without triggering anything --
taking evasive routes, etc.  But on the appointed day, each the bombs
surrounding the area would know to go off when that same car passed.
Without the responsible parties having to visit the sites later than
days or weeks beforehand (making them hard to catch or deter).

Such explosives would be detectable by their radio emissions -- RFID
pings.  But in a world where RFID pings are being transmitted by
everything around you, including every cellphone and doorframe and cash
register and ATM machine and camera and car and computer and palmtop
and parking meter and cop car ... you won't even notice.  Places with
"congestion pricing" like central London, or any toll road anywhere, would
even have plenty of active RFID readers buried in the roadway already.
And I'm sure the cops anywhere would love to have them for tracking
where everybody is driving -- individually.

Welcome to automated personal death.  Courtesy of RFID and leading
shortsighted global corporations, with government encouragement.

	John

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--- end forwarded text


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The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'