Today’s Washington Post has a story, Electronic Passports Raise Privacy Issues, on the new passport card that’s part of the DOS/DHS Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. The program is controversial since the cards use “vicinity read” radio frequency identification (RFID) technology that can be read from a distance of 20 or even 40 feet. This is in contrast to the ‘proximity read’ RFID tags in new US passports that require that the reader be within inches. The cards will be available to US citizens to speed their processing as they cross the borders in North America.

“The goal of the passport card, an alternative to the traditional passport, is to reduce the wait at land and sea border checkpoints by using an electronic device that can simultaneously read multiple cards’ radio frequency identification (RFID) signals from a distance, checking travelers against terrorist and criminal watchlists while they wait. “As people are approaching a port of inspection, they can show the card to the reader, and by the time they get to the inspector, all the information will have been verified and they can be waved on through,” said Ann Barrett, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services, commenting on the final rule on passport cards published yesterday in the Federal Register. src”

As described in the ruling published in the Federal Register, the Government feels that privacy concerns have been addressed.

“The government said that to protect the data against copying or theft, the chip will contain a unique identifying number linked to information in a secure government database but not to names, Social Security numbers or other personal information. It will also come with a protective sleeve to guard against hackers trying to skim data wirelessly, Barrett said.” src

Of course, if you carry the card in your purse or wallet, your movements can still be tracked by the unique ID on the card. There are also security concerns since the tag’s ID may be cloned.

“Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance, represents technology firms that make another kind of RFID chip, one that can only be read up close, and he is critical of the passport card’s technology. It offers no way to check whether the card is valid or a duplicate, he said, so a hacker could alter the number on the chip using the same techniques used in cloning. “Because there’s no security in the numbering system, a person who obtains a passport card and is later placed on a watchlist could easily alter the number on the passport card to someone else’s who’s not on the watchlist,” Vanderhoof said.” src

I recently bought a GPS (Garmin Mobile 10) that works with my WM5 Smartphone. In the process of trying to install the Garmin Mobile XT application (which was very problematic and a huge pain, but I digress ….), I ended up uninstalling Google Maps.

When I went to download and reinstall it though, I noticed that they have a new beta feature (My Location) that shows you where you are. It can either use a GPS, or use cell tower information. Basically, it sees which cell tower your phone is signed up to (and what signals it is seeing from others), and uses this to estimate where you are to within a 1000 meters.

This is interesting, because we did it the same way back when there used to be AMPS / CDPD and Palm IIIs and Vs with cellular modems. Our project was called Agents2Go, and we published a paper about this in the MCommerce workshop of Mobicom in 01. I remember that Muthu et al from AT&T had a similar paper in MobiDE that year as well.

The problem at that time was that there was no publicly accessible database of all cell tower locations. Also, we heard informally from at least one telco that while doing this for research was Ok, if anyone ever tried to make money from it they would want to be a part of the loop. I guess Google has found a way to work with the various telcos ? Or maybe in the interim cell tower ids and locations have been made public knowledge ?

Of course Google maps also works with GPS, except that it refuses to work with my Garmin. I’ve tried all the tricks that a search on Google will reveal (mainly, setting the serial port used by Bluetooth to talk to the GPS) , but to no avail

FON (Wikipedia article) is “a global community of people who share WiFi.” The idea is intriguing and has potential, so much so that the Madrid-based startup behind just raised $22M from investors that include Google, Skype and eBay. Here’s how it is supposed to work.

“In order to become a Fonero, you go to FON, to download software that you install in your router, you place your antenna by a window and you share bandwidth with other Foneros from anywhere in the world. You can also buy the FON Ready router from our web site, plug and play. FON creates a free WiFi roaming environment for those who contribute WiFi signals, namely those who have already signed up with a local ISP and downloaded our software into their WiFi routers.”

FON currently provides software for the Linksys WRT54G/GL/GS routers. Since launching three months ago, they have added 3,000 Foneros to the network, but US coverage is still quite sparse (and nothing in the Baltimore DC area!).

Like all VC funded startups, there has to be a business plan, so what is it? If you are not a Fonero you pay to use a hotspot, probably with some kind of prepaid scheme like Skype’s. Foneros will come in two varieties: Linus’s who benefit by getting free access via any FON node and Bill’s, who don’t get free access but do get half of the payment for the users who go through their routers.

It remains to be seen how ISPs will react to this if it catches on. Most ISPs prohibit bandwidth sharing in their service agreement. Speakeasy is the only ISP who is listed as welcoming FON.

The MIT Tech reports on a plan in which MIT is collaborating with the city of Cambridge to deploy a free wireless mesh network. The article has some interesting technical details and says that the plan is based on MIT’s roofnet project, an experimental 802.11b/g mesh network in development at MIT CSAIL.

A collaboration with MIT researchers may provide Cambridge with a free, city-wide, wireless internet service as early as late summer. The project will rely on a mesh networking technology that allows individual computers to become new access points, projecting the reach of the network beyond its original antennas.
…
Traditionally, a wireless network is centralized around one wireless access point, which communicates with a wireless card in any laptop or desktop computer, Hart said. Mesh technology allows individual computers to propagate the network and act as new access points, making it unnecessary for a user to be within range of the original wireless signal, she said.
…
[the wireless access points] are constructed from $15 commercial access points purchased from the software manufacturer NETGEAR, he said. The 40 milliwatt chip inside the commercial product is replaced with a 400 milliwatt chip and ‘hacked’ to include computer code that enables the mesh technology, he said.
…
The code, which is publicly available, was written by an MIT research group called Roofnet. Daniel E. Aguayo G, a Roofnet researcher, said that though they were not the first to write a code for mesh technology, they were the first to conduct a large-scale test of their software. …

FIPA is an IEEE Computer Society standards organization that promotes agent-based technology and the interoperability of its standards with other technologies. Jim Odell reports that FIPA’s P2P Nomadic Agent Working Group has released a draft of its specification. The group describes it’s focus as:

“The objective is to define a specification for P2P Nomadic Agents, capable of running on small or embedded devices, and to support distributed implementation of applications for consumer devices, cellular communications and robots, etc. over a pure P2P network. This specification will leverage presence and search mechanisms of underlying P2P infrastructures such as JXTA, Chord, Bluetooth, etc. In addition, this working group will propose the minimal required modifications of existing FIPA specifications to extend their reach to P2P Nomadic Agents. Potential application fields for P2P Nomadic Agents are healthcare, industry, offices, home, entertainment, transport/traffic.”

There is also a document from the Review of FIPA Specification Study Group that reviews and critiques the current inventory of 25 specifications.

Technicians in Ireland are testing a device capable of skipping between incompatible wireless standards by tweaking its underlying code. A report from NewScientist states:

The device can impersonate a multitude of different wireless devices since it uses reconfigurable software to carry out the tasks normally performed by static hardware… The technology promises to let future gadgets jump between frequencies and standards that currently conflict. A cellphone could, for example, automatically detect and jump to a much faster Wi-Fi network when in a local hotspot.

Anand mentioned the (alleged) British spy rock as a good example of an advance that pervasive computing technology has wrought.

Russia’s state security service has accused British diplomats of spying in Moscow using electronic rocks. It’s an obvious hack, when you think about it — a bluetooth enabled PDA in a hollowed out rock could be used to drop off or pickup heavily encrypted documents from spys as they stroll by. The only problem would be power. Such a bluetooth rock would be much better than Alger Hiss’s pumpkin patch.

In an infamous spy case from the early days of the cold war, US State Department official Alger Hiss was accused (by a young Richard Nixon!) of passing documents via rolls of microfilm secreted in a hollowed-out pumpkin on his Maryland farm. But, technology marches on, with wireless rocks replacing pumpkins.

The March of Progress
1948	2006
In 1948 Alger Hiss was accused of transferring secrets using microfilm in a hollowed out pumpkin.	In 2006 the British were accused of transferring secrets using a wireless enabled PDA in a hollowed out rock.
cost: low encryption: no durability: low models: Jack-o’-lantern, squash vulnerable to: rodents, fungus, kids pluses: organic, biodegradable negatives: decay, rot	cost: medium encryption: yes durability: high models: igneous, sedimentary vulnerable to: bluejacking, spyware pluses: tetris, plays mp3s negatives: heavy

A group of UMBC students working with Professor Zary Segall have built a prototype music player that senses its user’s emotional state and level of activity and picks appropriate music. The prototype system uses BodyMedia’s SenseWear, which detects continuous data from the wearer’s skin and wirelessly transmits the data stream to the xpod prototype. The physiological data includes energy expenditure (calories burned), duration of physical activity, number of steps taken, and sleep/wake states. A neural network system is used to learn associations between these biometric parameters and the user’s preferences for music and the resulting model is then used to dynamically construct the xpod’s playlist. Read more about the xpod prototype in this recent paper:

XPod a human activity and emotion aware mobile music player, Sandor Dornbush, Kevin Fisher, Kyle McKay, Alex Prikhodko and Zary Segall.

XPOD is a prototype portable music player that can sense a user’s context — what she is doing, her level of activity, mood, etc. — and that to refine its playlist. The device monitors several external variables from a streaming version of the BodyMedia SenseWear to model the user’s context and predict the most appropriate music genre via a neural network.

German engineers are working on a new smart car that knows how to find empty parking spaces and park itself.

Parkmate, which is expected to be available from 2008, is part of a battery of technology being developed by Siemens VDO, one of the world’s major suppliers of in-car electronics.

I heard a report on 411-Song on NPR this morning and it’s a clever idea and an impressive technical accomplishment (I think, anyway).

“How many times have you heard a song and wished you knew who it was or wished you could get it before you forget it? Now you can, just call (866) 411-SONG, here’s how: * Hear a song you love; * Call (866) 411-SONG; * Wait for the beep and hold your cell near the music for just 15 seconds; * We identify the song and send you a text with all the song info (artist and song name) and a link to GET it.”

They claim a database of 2.5M songs with a focus on pop rather than classical, jazz or fringe music. You can try it for free, but after that it’s $.99 a song or $3.99 a month for all you can eat.

NMK, the company behind 411-song, has licensed the proprietary audio recognition technology from Shazam, which offers a similar service in the UK and some other countries.

I wonder how long it will be before the Google offers such a service?