

Stop worrying and embrace RFID - evo_9
http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/141277-stop-worrying-and-embrace-rfid

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voidr
> In reality, RFID isn’t that scary, and we should embrace it.

It was never about RFID, it was about te level of tracking the students had to
put up with.

> In reality, these concerns are minor and based on fear of technology. This
> is just a tinfoil hat situation on a larger scale than normal.

People do not fear RFID, people fear of being tracked all the time, it invades
our privacy, which is a basic human right.

> It appears from the known details about this story that these badges aren’t
> even being used at the individual class level. The low-tech method of having
> teachers taking roll call in class is even more refined than this RFID
> solution. If this was legitimately about privacy concerns, advocates would
> be against roll call in school as well. Instead, this whole situation is
> about fear mongering — not privacy concerns.

I don't even know what to make of this, the whole point of RFID is to track
people at an individual level, the fact that teachers do not use it instead of
roll calling, does not make it less invasive. There are better ways to ensure
school presence that do not invade the user's privacy.

> While there are some issues with the technology, specifically relating to
> other people accessing the information on the chip, this doesn’t showcase
> them. Preventing unauthorized access to the chip’s data is a problem, but it
> can be handled with cryptography. For example, requiring a password or using
> rolling codes can thwart evil-doers successfully.

Either the author has being living in a cave for at least the last 30 years or
is completely ignorant. Cryptography is not some module that you can turn on
and makes anything instantly secure, if that would be the case we would never
hear about so many successful hacking attempts on the news.

Sure we have good solutions for security, but who will ensure that these will
always stay secure? Who will make sure that advances in technology won't just
render our bulletproof security method useless?

But let's pretend that we have found a security algorithm that will work
forever, what if one rouge human operator will leak our sensitive data?

> While RFID can be abused just like anything else, the technology isn’t
> inherently bad. Even the more paranoid among us should embrace RFID, and
> stop worrying about the tech so much. After all, common technology like
> smartphones and tablets are more susceptible to nefarious use. Give RFID a
> break.

It's not the technology, it's the way people want to use it, we should not ban
RFID, we should ban any attempt at tracking people everywhere.

~~~
sigsergv
Original article looks soooo troll-ish so I think it has been written is such
way intentionally, to draw attention to the problem for example.

------
wakoumel
This article is entirely bullshit. a) RFID has been shown to be trivial to
fake and circumvent. b) Nowhere was the issue of a slippery slope addressed
once we're all used to having a "harmless" chip put on our persons. c) I am
not military so why would the DoD using them have any relevence for civilians?

I'll leave with Rambam's first law: All databases will eventually be used for
unintended purposes.

