EPC Gen 2 RFID tags were designed to enable tracking, have minimal or no security, and are readable from up to 10 meters away. RF-enabled smart cards contain a fully functioning microprocessor and can deliver security such as public-key cryptography, mutual authentication and encrypted communications. They operate over a 10-centimeter range to prevent tracking or eavesdropping.
Randy Vanderhoof
Smart Card Alliance

Basis of the Bulge
In “A Solar Big Gulp” [News Scan], David Appell refers to an analysis concluding that in billions of years, as the sun loses mass and expands, its rotation rate will slow down, creating a tidal bulge on its surface whose gravity will pull Earth inward. A tidal bulge, however, is not caused by rotation but by differential gravitation from an external body.
David C. Halley
via e-mail

APPELL REPLIES: Halley is right: an external body, not rotation, causes a tidal bulge. But only when the sun’s rotation is very small or nonexistent does its tidal bulge lag behind Earth in orbital motion, pulling Earth back in its orbit, taking energy out of Earth’s orbital motion and causing the planet to spiral inward. Otherwise, with rapid rotation, the bulge is ahead of Earth, which would be pulled forward and spiral outward (as happens to the moon in the Earth-moon system).

Note: This story was originally printed with the title, "Letters".

4 Comments

1. 1. Nathaniel 01:57 PM 12/27/08

   Privacy and anonymity is for people with something to hide. Keep no secrets, tell no lies, and take responsibility for your actions and you've got nothing to worry about.
   
   I think the most useful thing RFID chips could do is relate medical info so that emergency crews can quickly find out if you have any medical issues or allergies they need to know about. For instance, if you're found unconscious after a car accident and you're wearing a medical bracelet that says you're diabetic that's pretty useful... but what if you're also allergic to latex? An RFID chip in the bracelet could easily relate that information to an emergency crew with the proper device to read it. It could also have your name and perhaps a patient number so that your medical records can be transmitted to the doctors at the emergency room before you even arrive. I could imagine that saving quite a few lives.

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2. 2. fusiondog 05:59 AM 12/29/08

   "Keep no secrets, tell no lies, and take responsibility for your actions and you've got nothing to worry about."
   
   That is a bit idealistic to think that if everyone where simply honest that they wouldn't have issues of oppression. In a society that loves to judge and condemn there is no one of us that wouldn't be found at fault by someone for what we consider harmless or human. With no way to protect yourself from scrutiny then you are subject to review by any standard from anyone at any point in any spectrum of morality. For instance, I can now judge you as a person with short foresight and a narrow view of social norms, who is most likely inclined to view the world in black and white terms. I could even choose to extrapolate well beyond that point, but I think I have addressed the issue enough.
   
   RFID paranoia is just that. There are potential abuses available to the creative mind, but they will not likely be a norm or tool of a totalitarian regime any time soon given the limited range and complexity. Granted, awareness of possible abuses should not be ignored, however the possible uses most likely outweigh any of those concerns for the foreseeable future.

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3. 3. eoleen 09:36 PM 1/3/09

   Rfid tags are a non-problem. IF, repeat IF, they turn out to be used for tracking people, it is quite simple - in a technologically-alert society - to defeat the tracking with a "chip" - it need not be anything as small as an embedded rfid tag - that, when interrogated by a reader, returns a random string of bits with the proper (or appropriate) length. Since this device need not be anything near as small as a "legitimate" rfid tag, it can be powered by a battery and thus emit a signal strong enough to block the signal from any "legitimate" chips in the neighborhood. Furthermore: if it is know or suspected that a particular chip is being tracked, it would not at all difficult to create clones of this chip, most likely by reprogramming the powered pseudo-chip. The result of trying to track someone who apparently is nearly instantaneously in New York and Chicago and Las Vegas and London, England as well as London Connecticut should rapidly discourage any such tracking attempt...

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4. 4. Trussell_Rules_over_Karen 02:09 PM 12/17/10

   You have absolutely NO privacy whatsoever when you live with or near Karen Franklin Barnett. Beware Gardena, CA 90247. She can see you. Die Spy!
   
   Ken Trussell Rules over Karen Franklin Barnett (fat ugly pig shit cuunt!)

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