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Will GPS Replace RFID as the Privacy Bogeyman?
4 CommentsMark Roberti
There was an interesting article in The New York Times the other day regarding a new GPS device known as the Zoombak (see Zoombak Tracks Your Dog, Your Car, Even Your Children).
The transmitter measures 2.9 inches by 1.7 inches by 0.8 inch, weighs 2.5 ounces and is ruggedly built, with a waterproof cover for the charging jack. "The company suggests that you can install its locator on things like your car (in case it's stolen), your pet's collar, your child's backpack, your older relative's glove compartment, your luggage or the lawn equipment that you lend to your lowlife neighbor," the article states.
You can visit Zoombak.com and click Find Now to see where the transmitter is at any particular moment. The location, accurate to within a few yards, is displayed on a Microsoft Earth map.
The privacy implications of this device, which costs $100, plus a $15-per-month service fee, are obvious. As the Times puts it, "The company daintily avoids mentioning the screamingly obvious, and much more controversial, uses for the Zoombak: secretly tracking the movements of your spouse, children or employees."
To date, privacy advocates have said little about the GPS transmitter in your phone, which is far more useful for tracking people than RFID. Now, we have a personalized spying tool for $100—and yet, so far, I haven't read any articles raising an alarm about how the technology can be abused.
Isn't it funny that Katherine Albrecht's book Spychips talks about all kinds of scenarios in which RFID could be used to track people, even though it's a short-range technology and would thus be ineffective for such an application—and here you have a device that anyone can purchase and use to track his ex-wife, former business partner or object of obsession, anywhere in the world...and we hear nary a word?
Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below. To read more of Mark's opinions, visit the RFID Journal Blog or click here.
There was an interesting article in The New York Times the other day regarding a new GPS device known as the Zoombak (see Zoombak Tracks Your Dog, Your Car, Even Your Children).
The transmitter measures 2.9 inches by 1.7 inches by 0.8 inch, weighs 2.5 ounces and is ruggedly built, with a waterproof cover for the charging jack. "The company suggests that you can install its locator on things like your car (in case it's stolen), your pet's collar, your child's backpack, your older relative's glove compartment, your luggage or the lawn equipment that you lend to your lowlife neighbor," the article states.
You can visit Zoombak.com and click Find Now to see where the transmitter is at any particular moment. The location, accurate to within a few yards, is displayed on a Microsoft Earth map.
The privacy implications of this device, which costs $100, plus a $15-per-month service fee, are obvious. As the Times puts it, "The company daintily avoids mentioning the screamingly obvious, and much more controversial, uses for the Zoombak: secretly tracking the movements of your spouse, children or employees."
Isn't it funny that Katherine Albrecht's book Spychips talks about all kinds of scenarios in which RFID could be used to track people, even though it's a short-range technology and would thus be ineffective for such an application—and here you have a device that anyone can purchase and use to track his ex-wife, former business partner or object of obsession, anywhere in the world...and we hear nary a word?
Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below. To read more of Mark's opinions, visit the RFID Journal Blog or click here.
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READERS' COMMENTS
Isn't this interesting...
Isn't it funny that Albrecht is talking about the widespread use of a technology that is associated with the vast majority of consumer products, and is concerned about how the ubiquity of that technology could constitute a privacy risk? Isn't it interesting the Spychips was written four years ago, before the widespread deployment of GPS following from their affordable prices? Isn't it curious that Katherine has regularly stated that there is a need for advocates to develop expertise in a single area (hers in RFIDs), and let others fill in other gaps (like GPS)? This reads as a cheap shot at Katherine just because she has been critical of the RFID industry, and is a shame given the potential for websites such as this to engage with issues rather than trying to shift to FUD.
Posted By: 4/30/09 at 11:01 AM
Interesting indeed
So in other words, if there is a technology that poses no threat to consumer privacy, keep focusing on it anyway when something that is much more of a threat comes along because advocates need to specialize. And, oh by the way, Spychips was written two and a half years ago, not four years ago, and GPS transmitters have been in all cell phones since 2006.
Posted By: Mark Roberti 4/30/09 at 5:55 PM
Response
I got my four years based on the earliest copyright (2005) - Plume published it in 2006. As for RFID, she is focusing on something that she perceives as a risk to citizens' privacy - there is now a capacity to monitor vast swathes of actions and transactions (e.g. the use of RFID tags to monitor whether trash has been put out and picked up, the ability to use unique IDs in Enhanced Drivers Licenses to develop movement profiles, etc) that were previously hidden from corporate (and government) eyes. The technology in itself isn't necessarily a problem - it is specific uses and (as I read Spychips) the rhetoric of RFID vendors that worries her. As for specializing, you focus on an area and let others fill in areas of their own expertise - this is a normal practice in all walks of life. You don't just jump ship/topics because something new comes along. She perceives a problem, largely based on the rhetoric of vendors and some uses of RFID chips, and as such is cautious of RFID uses and deployments. If everything that she has talked about just dried up, I'm willing to be she would move along - until then, she finds herself fairly busy. Given that I can't possibly see the RFID industry vanishing, I expect she'll be busy for some time to come. As a sidenote: I wasn't suggesting that GPS wasn't in cell phones, but that they were nowhere near as ubiquitious as they presently are, or as cheap as they currently are.
Posted By: 5/2/09 at 2:08 AM
Spychips and FUD
Katherine quotes a lot of interesting documents in her book, and there is no doubt that people who sell would like to know a lot more about their customers if they could. The point I've made for years is that that desire to know more about the customer is offset by protections in the market -- that is, I won't shop at your store if you invade my privacy. It's pretty obvious that I have been proved right. Six years after Katherine raised concerns about privacy invasion, she can't point to a single case of someone having their privacy infringed by RFID. I think she does play an important role in placing checks on companies by raising these concerns. Where I part company with her is on her total unwillingness to recognize that RFID has tremendous positive potential for consumers and society. If she had been raising the same alarms -- and spreading FUD, by the way -- about the Internet in 1995, imagine if she had succeeded in shutting it down. Imagine how much worse off consumers would be.
Posted By: Mark Roberti 5/3/09 at 10:01 AM