RFID – A Future Worth Having

As you make your way north on I-95, you come to the toll booth at the mouth of the Jersey turnpike. Brake lights abound as the congestion mounts as all the cars stop to “get their ticket” as is required to enter the turnpike. But, off to the left, you see cars that are not even slowing down. They are driving 55 mph right through the toll plaza and just as fast as they appeared, they are gone. All while you haven’t moved 10 feet. Are these people special? Or, could they be the beneficiaries of some advanced technology that allows them to get on with their lives and not waste their time in line? The answer is decidedly the later.

They are using a system called EZ-Pass. EZ-Pass allows motorists from Maine to Virginia to use a portable electrical device in their vehicle to avoid stopping at toll booths. In NJ, they have installed what they call EZ-Pass express which allows motorists to traverse the toll plaza at highway speed.

At the core of this system, is a technology called Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID for short. A small transceiver in the vehicle allows sensors to “scan” them to determine their specific identification. Since each box has a unique signature, this information can in turn be used to determine who is passing the toll booth and charge them accordingly.

With this ability to scan and track passing objects, we have a technology capable of tremendous benefits to healthcare, public safety, homeland security, and general public convenience. In addition, with careful adherence to safeguards, any civil liberty concerns can be properly mollified.

RFID involves a small set of electronics that when scanned by a transmitter, sends it unique identification to the receiver. The devices have no internal power source. They are powered by the very devices that are scanning them. This makes for a robust, long-lasting device with applications limited only by the imagination. Frequency ranges can be in the sub-500 KHz band or in the Part 15 device range of 2.4 GHz. The tags can be read at high speeds and one scanner can read hundreds of tags simultaneously. Unlike optical systems such as barcodes, the tags can be read in snow, rain and total darkness as optical conditions do not matter.

RFID tags have an unlimited breadth of possibilities. Just a small sampling of applications include the following:

Railroad containers — With an RFID tag in every railroad car in the United States, and scanners distributed over the rails, dispatchers can know where any shipment is at any time of the day. Currently, the car must enter the railroad yard to be inventoried. At 10 miles increments on the tracks, almost up to the minute information is available for tracking and traffic analysis.

Toll booth collection — As already discussed, the EZ-Pass can automatically track vehicles passing a toll plaza.

Patient Tracking — Every hospital in America places an ID bracelet on its patients. If this bracelet has a small RFID tag and corresponding sensors covering the hospital, nurses can keep constant track of the whereabouts of their charges. Never again would a patient go missinG!

Truck trailer tracking — As with railroad cars, over-the-road shipping containers could be tracked as they pass weigh stations. Cargo can be controlled to ensure proper taxation and ensure proper security and routing of shipments.

Vehicle tracking — If every car in the US had an RFID tag embedded in its license plate, then these vehicles could be tracked. Rather than a police officer having to actively run license plates looking for anomalies, an active scanner in his vehicle can continuously scan every vehicle in his vicinity. As each tag’s unique ID is received, it is submitted to a central server, which in turn looks for outstanding tickets or worse. This allows the officer to focus her attention on the road instead of on a computer in her vehicle.

This last one, vehicle tracking provides a good segue into the question that immediately enters most people’s minds. “Does that mean you can track me in my car?” The short answer is yes.

Any discussion of RFID, technical or not, is naïve to think the legal and civil liberty issues do not factor into its acceptance. With any new technology, suspicions abound. General distrust of the government abounds with any attempt to monitor the movements of its citizens no matter how benign. While this technology may invoke images of an Orwellian future, with proper safeguards, the system will benefit many and harm none.

One problem with the aforementioned vehicle tracking application is how long before we start adding scanners at every rest stop to analyze traffic patterns. The we start to put them on”Main Street, USA” to see what kind of traffic flows are there.

In this benign quest for more accurate data, we put a scanner on every street corner to get highly granular data on traffic patterns. Then, almost without looking, we have a grid that allows some unscrupulous agency to paint a picture of your day — from the time you leave the house to the time you get home. With inter-city agreements, we learn that you went from Washington DC to Arlington, then to Baltimore, then back to Washington.

Even though the original intent was to simply analyze traffic patterns, as technologists, we have to realize that we do not simply let technology rest on the laurels of its intended use.

We improvise, we tinker, we adapt existing technologies to new uses. This is what we do. In this case, however; we will open a Pandora ’s Box that will be the death knell for the “good” uses of RFID

as I previously mentioned. One story in the news about some police department tracking a suspect by the RFID tag in their car, and the technology will be abandoned quicker than it appeared. So as the creators of these systems, we also have a responsibility to ensure their reputation is beyond reproach. We must ensure standards in the tags prevent unauthorized scans and allow people to opt out of the system. Most people have little objection to introducing a “bug” on their person that allows law enforcement to know their exact location.

Everyone of you that carries a cell phone is carrying a person tracking device accurate to 10 feet. Only when someone is convicted with evidence obtained from a cell phone establishing their whereabouts, will the court challenged to all similar technologies start to cast doubt on RFID as a technooogy where the benefits outweight the risks.

The courts will face many 4^th amendment claims of unreasonable searches when these cases are finally brought. But by then the damage will already have been done.

So, I implore you, to embrace this technology, but work with the recognized standards bodies to ensure things like encryption, only allowing authorized scanners and the like.

RFID has the potential to be a wonderful advantage to our lives. With the proper safeguards, we can all ensure it has a long and healthy future.