• Privacy in an Age of Terabytes and Terror. Peter Brown. Introduction to SciAm’s issue on Privacy. Our jittery state since 9/11, coupled with the Internet revolution, is shifting the boundaries between public interest and “the right to be let alone.”
• Data Fusion: The Ups and Downs of All-Encompassing Digital Profiles. Simson L. Garfinkel. Mashing everyone’s personal data, from credit card bills to cell phone logs, into one all-encompassing digital dossier is the stuff of an Orwellian nightmare. But it is not as easy as most people assume.
• Do Social Networks Bring the End of Privacy?. Daniel J. Solove. Young people share the most intimate details of personal life on social-networking Web sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, portending a realignment of the public and the private.
• How Loss of Privacy May Mean Loss of Security. Esther Dyson. Many issues posing as questions of privacy can turn out to be matters of security, health policy, insurance or self-presentation. It is useful to clarify those issues before focusing on privacy itself.
• Cryptography: How to Keep Your Secrets Safe. Anna Lysyanskaya. A versatile assortment of computational techniques can protect the privacy of your information and online activities to essentially any degree and nuance you desire.
• Internet Eavesdropping: A Brave New World of Wiretapping. Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau. As telephone conversations have moved to the Internet, so have those who want to listen in. But the technology needed to do so would entail a dangerous expansion of the government’s surveillance powers.
• How RFID Tags Could Be Used to Track Unsuspecting People. Katherine Albrecht. A privacy activist argues that the devices pose new security risks to those who carry them, often unwittingly.
• Beyond Fingerprinting: Is Biometrics the Best Bet for Fighting Identity Theft?. Anil K. Jain and Sharath Pankanti. Security systems based on anatomical and behavioral characteristics may offer the best defense against identity theft.
• Digital Surveillance: Tools of the Spy Trade. Steven Ashley. Night-vision cameras, biometric sensors and other gadgets already give snoops access to private spaces. Coming soon: palm-size “bug-bots”.
• Tougher Laws Needed to Protect Your Genetic Privacy. Mark A. Rothstein. In spite of recent legislation, tougher laws are needed to prevent insurers and employers from discriminating on the basis of genetic tests.
• Industry Roundtable: Experts Discuss Improving Online Security. Experts from Sun, Adobe, Microsoft and MacAfee discuss how to protect against more numerous and sophisticated attacks by hackers; security professionals call for upgraded technology, along with more attention to human and legal factors.

“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

“When you approach the door and you’re carrying groceries, it opens and lets you in. This doorknob is so smart, it can let the dog out but it won’t let six dogs come back in.

It will take FedEx packages and automatically sign for you when you’re not there. If you’re standing by the door, and a phone call comes in, the doorknob can tell you that ‘you’ve got a phone call from your son that I think you should take.”

This smart doorknob is part of a MIT research project called “Internet of Things” (see IHT). An interesting thing about this system is that it relies on the extensive usage of RFID tags. When it comes to RFID technology, some people are very worried, and some others are very excited.

Machines and objects to overtake humans on the Internet: ITU, AP, Nov 17

Machines will take over from humans as the biggest users of the Internet in a brave new world of electronic sensors, smart homes, and tags that track users’ movements and habits, the UN’s telecommunications agency predicted.

In a report entitled “Internet of Things”, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) outlined the expected next stage in the technological revolution where humans, electronic devices, inanimate objects and databases are linked by a radically transformed Internet.

“It would seem that science fiction is slowly turning into science fact in an ‘Internet of Things’ based on ubiquitous network connectivity,” the report said Thursday, saying objects would take on human characteristics thanks to technological innovation.
…more…

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Brit License Plates Get Chipped, Mark Beard, Wired News, 9 august 2005

The British government is preparing to test new high-tech license plates containing microchips capable of transmitting unique vehicle identification numbers and other data to readers more than 300 feet away.
…
Proponents argue that making such RFID tags mandatory and ubiquitous is a logical move to counter the threat of terrorists using the roadways, and that it will scoop up insurance and registration scofflaws in the process.
…
The U.K. Department for Transport gave the official go-ahead for the microchipped number plates (as they are called in the United Kingdom) last week, and the trial is expected to begin later this year. The government has been tight-lipped about the details. One of the vendors bidding to participate in the trial said it would start with smartplates added to some police cars.

The point of the test is to see whether microchips will make number plates harder to tamper with and clone, said U.K. Department for Transport spokesman Ian Weller-Skitt. Many commuters use counterfeit plates to avoid the London congestion charge, a fee imposed on passenger vehicles entering central London during busy hours.

MORE (via Bruce Schneier)

Here’s a marketing tip: get the door to occasionally say “Gee, you’ve lost weight, haven’t you?” and it will sell like hotcakes.

I found these quotes, from Link), to be misleading:

Kimberly Weissman, spokeswoman for the US-VISIT program at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told The Whig-Standard yesterday that the new devices can’t be tracked outside the border crossing area. “It has a range of 10 to 15 metres,” she said. “The UHF frequency that we’ve chosen makes it impossible to locate a specific person.”

She must have meant that (1) while the tags were in the border crossing area they couldn’t be read from outside the area; (2) the tags are not designed for localization. Such mistatements, which I assume were due to carelessness, can come back to haunt.