Customer Reviews

RFID: Applications, Security, and Privacy

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3 star:		(1)
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This is a compilation of papers from numerous organisations with diverse opinions on how this technology will develop. RFID presents opportunities for great improvement in business efficiencies for corporations and better service for customers and consumers. The flip side is that RFID has the potential to negatively impact individual privacy more than most technologies.

What sets this book apart is that it covers both sides of the argument. The chapters authors represent most perspectives on this emerging technology:
- RFID Hardware and Software Vendors
- Organisations that have deployed RFID
- Privacy Advocates

The cases for and against RFID are both well made. RFID can make shopping easier, stock processing more efficient, speed up payment and aid loss prevention. An excellent example of where privacy concerns are outweighed by convenience is highway tolls.

At the same time, security flaws will likely become evident and individuals, organizations and governments could misuse the very same technology. RFID has the potential to be more invasive than video surveillance.

Papers within the book cover include current real world illustrations and how the technology may develop. Most importantly, this is the most comprehensive survey to date. If anyone can suggest a better one, please do write a review and refernce.

This is not a "how to" book. It does not delve into the technology or provide a detailed methodology. Given the diversity of perspectives and content it couldn't be.

This book is a must read if you want to be informed on a key emerging technology. The issues and rewards of RFID will increase as the processing power of RFID chips increase. Increase in processing power is nearly a given.

In isolation the individual papers (chapters) are good. But this is a clear instance of the the sum being greater than the parts. For my two cents, this book will have a long and useful shelf life.

The chapters are written by different authors, concerning various aspects about RFID. The topics give an idea of the scope of RFID deployment. None of the chapters would be considered technical. You are not required to be an electrical engineer to follow any chapter.

One chapter talks about inserting RFID tags into livestock. In part to combat the age old problem of rustling, which still exists. The chapter has an engagingly termed section "World Livestock Roundup", which showcases RFID in livestock in several countries. The deployment is quite advanced. Already, the EU and New Zealand mandate it for all livestock, and have done so for over 5 years. Given the cost of a cow or sheep, the tags are quite affordable. This chapter is significant. Unlike virtually the rest of the book, it demonstrates RFID as already existing in a mature deployment, and not as blue sky musings.

Other chapters are more speculative. In part because when the tags might be associated with or carried by people, serious issues of privacy arise. Some deployments are described under the rubric of enhancing child safety. But the extension to adults is highly contentious. Even more so when one considers not the carrying of a tag, but the insertion of a tag into a person's skin. In the US, we can readily envisage deep discontent over this, from libertarians to the religious right.

It turns out that many of the suggested difficulties are not primarily technical. Rather, they exist in the business or social realm, and may be harder to solve.

First, you should know that I'm the editor of this book.

Second, there seems to be some confusion in the way that the publisher has positioned the information that the book contains. Although the idea for this book came about because of the 2003 RFID Security & Privacy workshop that I chaired at MIT, only three of the chapters in this book are based on papers that were presented at the workshop. The rest of this book is all new material that was specially written for this project.

In RFID: Applications, Security and Privacy, I've tried to bring together voices from across the RFID debate. In one volume we have chapters from manufacturers, users, critics, policy wonks, and even philosophers of natural science. That is truly an impressive accomplishment.

Yes, this book does not contain nuts-and-bolts information about technical RFID protocols and APIs. That's because the world of RFID is vast and is in flux right now. I and the rest of the authors believe that what's really needed now is information that paints the entire landscape, rather than focusing on the specific technical abilities of, say, the GEN2 tags.

But more than a good book about policy issues, this book is really a fun read. There's the privacy nightmare chapter. There's the chapter written by the student who built a prox card cloner. There's the chapter about implantable RFID chips. It's just a lot of fun. I'm the editor, yes, but as I read the final proofs before it when to the printer, I kept saying to myself over and over, "this is a great book! My gosh, this is really a great book."

And it is.

RFID, radio frequency identification, is one the first major
technology of the new century. After building machines
capable of doing things (nineteenth century) and machines
that can mimic thinking (twentieth century), time has come
to have machines to perceive.

The book edited by S. Garfinkel, B. Rosenberg is a balanced,
comprehensive, and digestible presentation of RFID. RFID is
not a Devil plot on spying on everyone, and it is not a
technological form of totalitarism (although there is a
potential to become each of them). RFID is a form of
enabling machines to sense. Warehouses will sense whether
they become low on stock or, perhaps, overstocked, luggage
will be routed automatically from airport to airport;
healthcare, libraries, energy, will be all influenced if
not changed by RFID. Benefits are potentially immense, but
so are the risks.

One (almost) certainty: like or not, this technology is
going to stay, so we cannot afford to ignore it. The book is
an important step towards an informed debated about its
future.

I needed to seriously update my knowledge of RFID for my new job at Trac Tech Systems, which is an RFID for jewelry company. This book was excellent - It explained complex issues simply, and made it clear exactly how insanely beneficial RFID could be for most businesses, but jewelry businesses especially do to their high value per-item.

This is a collection, apparently mostly based on a workshop organized by the authors in late 2003 but with more recent materials. As with all collections, the chapters are uneven, with some mere marketing hype and others substantial. There is an excellent contribution from Sanjay Sarma detailing the history of the AutoID labs and EPCglobal, and numerous fairly sensible discussions of the up- and downsides of various kinds of RFID tags for personal privacy and security. Erdos provides a nice if overly brief discussion of the real issues in authentication with RFID tags; there are chapters on pharmacy, library, and livestock applications, and discussions of methods to block tag reads as well as tag killing and alternatives, plus some unexpected bonuses like a chapter on cracking Bluetooth and another on hacking proximity ID cards. This book is a necessary tool for people involved in privacy / security issues, and of interest for market / product development folks, though not very helpful for those who work in the technology side [at the moment they should refer to Finkenzeller's handbook].

For those who want faster diving in RFID technology I would recommend to take a look at DataBrokers TagTracker. Their new version works with LF and HF transponders and uses Hibernate to store scanned data in a database. It comes with PIRF-Lite (Java written API) which allows the user to make new transponder layouts and interact with the RFID reader differently than it is shown in TagTracker. TagTracker itself is enough to collect RFID data from different locations (RFID readers) and store it in a common database. Like a data pump. All you need is to create your own interface to query the database using your preferred languages/tools , etc.