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Digital civil rights - Europe
New data retention draft raises
many questions
The Dutch presidency of the European Union drafted a revised
proposal for the mandatory storing of telecommunication
data. The new proposal seems to let the members states
free in choosing the time period and raises many questions
with regard to its scope.
France, Ireland, the UK and Sweden drafted the original
proposal to the Council of the European Union to store
the telecommunication data of all 450 million EU citizens
for a period of 12 to 36 months, for law enforcement purposes.
These so-called traffic data reveal who has been calling
and e-mailing whom, which websites they have visited,
and even where people were with their mobile phones.
The plan addresses providers of telephony and internet,
both networks and services. They will have to store the
traffic data of all their users, not just those of suspects.
The traffic data will be accessible for law enforcement
authorities and intelligence services, not just nationally,
but across all EU-borders. The member states decide themselves
on the powers they grant to obtain access nationally.
The new, revised proposal sets the retention period to
12 months. But no member state will be bound by this limit:
"Member States may have longer periods for retention
of data dependent upon national criteria when such retention
constitutes a necessary, appropriate and proportionate
measure within a democratic society". Where the original
proposal puts the maximum limit at 36 months for law enforcement
purposes, the new draft has no limit at all. The new draft
also allows the retention of certain data (especially
internet traffic data) for a shorter period.
The most significant change might be in article 3 of the
draft. The new draft states that the mandatory retention
applies to "data processed and stored for billing,
commercial or any other legitimate purposes by providers".
It is unclear and unexplained how to interpret this line.
One could read that mandatory retention does only apply
to data already stored by a provider. In other words,
if a provider doesn't store a particular type of data
at all, the data retention obligations would not apply.
Such an interpretation raises many questions. Can telecommunication
providers decide themselves what to store or will member's
states make a list of those data? The proposal does not
offer any explanation on this crucial sentence.
Write: by LuisB
Resources online: Draft
Framework Decision on the retention of data (14.10.2004)
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Technology - RFID
The future on lines; RFIDs vs the
venerable bar code
Three decades ago, a 10-pack of Juicy Fruit gum and a
cashier at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, OH, were the participants
in the first successful test of what we now know as the
UPC (Universal Product Code) bar-code system. Evolution
of the bar-code system continues; for example, US and
European standards-group representatives recently agreed
on a common 14-digit format that, beginning in January
2005, bar-code readers worldwide must support. But, all
in all, bar codes today are mature, pervasive, and well-understood.
(Some ex-presidents may beg to differ on that last point,
though. Remember George HW Bush's befuddlement when, on
the 1992 primary-campaign trail in New Hampshire, he unsuccessfully
attempted to use a bar-code scanner in a grocery store?)
Technology marches on, though, and an up-and-coming contender
to the product-identification throne has emerged: the
RFID (radio-frequency-identification) device. Ironically,
RFID technology is almost as old as bar codes, which in
1934 received their first patents. Great Britain's Royal
Air Force employed RFID-like techniques to distinguish
between friendly and enemy incoming airplanes during World
War II, and Harry Stockman's October 1948 treatise, "Communication
by Means of Reflected Power" in The Proceedings of
the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers) first detailed
the theory and implementation of RFID. Prolific inventor
Charles Walton in 1973 received the first RFID patent
for a passive RFID-based door-lock reader. Walton coincidentally
shares the same last name as the late Sam Walton, the
founder of Wal-Mart, which, along with the US Department
of Defense, has played a leading role in spurring current
RFID deployments.
If RFID is such a timeworn technology, why then has the
interest in it accelerated so dramatically in the past
few years? Part of the reason is chip capability; thanks
to Moore's Law, passive RFIDs sell for less than 50 cents
in high volumes, and analysts predict they'll sell for
less than five cents in high volumes by the end of this
decade. Adequate infrastructure capability is also important;
the dot.com explosion of the late 1990s fueled the development
of networking equipment and powerful servers with speedy
CPUs and I/O connectivity and containing ample memory
and hard drives, and the subsequent dot.com implosion
has resulted in copious underused network bandwidth begging
for someone to harness it.
The final piece of the interest-in-RFID puzzle comes from
customers' needs. Manufacturers, distributors, and retailers
all want to as much as possible automate their systems
to eliminate expensive and unreliable human beings from
the process, and they aspire to have timely and accurate
insight into the location of individual products at a
given time and into various product-staging locations'
inventories. If possible, they'd like to extend their
insight beyond the store, to link each product with an
individual consumer, and, in combination with other collected
data, to ascertain the means by which they can lure that
consumer into buying even more. Governments, too, have
an interest in learning as much as is legally possible
about what their countries' citizens and residents are
up to.
Issues equal opportunities
US journalist, attorney, and motivational writer Napoleon
Hill (1883 to 1970), the so-called Founder of The Science
Of Success, stated that "Every adversity, every failure,
every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or
greater benefit." Keep that quote in mind as you
survey today's seemingly irreconcilable RFID landscape;
sooner or later, it will inevitably sort itself out, and
the companies that guess right will greatly benefit from
that consolidation. Aside from speed-boosting modulation
schemes, such as Infineon's PJM, several other RFID-tag-differentiation
opportunities exist. They include size, as Hitachi's 2.45-GHz
µ-Chips exemplify. The chips, which contain embedded
antennas, measure only 0.3 mm sq. Other differentiators
include power consumption and communication robustness.
(One factor currently limiting the adoption of RFID is
that, in some field trials, it's no more reliable to read
than are bar codes.)
Companies are also investigating various means of supplementing
traditional-RFID functions with environmental sensors
that can report such factors as tire pressure; temperature;
humidity; the presence of various biological agents to
determine contamination, spoilage, and the like; and whether
someone has previously tampered with or mishandled the
item by using excessive force or vibration, for example.
The tag can report real-time data; alternatively, it can
provide a simpler indication that the measurement has
at some point exceeded a threshold value. Cost is, of
course, perhaps the most important improvement factor
that will broaden RFID's applicability. It makes little
sense to attach an RFID tag to an item whose cost is comparable
with or even within one or two orders of magnitude of
the cost of the tag itself. For example, although a retailer
may today be interested in RFID-tagging large cases of
paper towels, RFID costs will have to significantly drop
before the retailer will consider tagging individual paper-towel
rolls. This cost-driven brake on adoption will, at least
in the short term, act as a natural means of addressing
RFID-privacy concerns.
The long-term potential for RFID ubiquity is bright, but
the size and cost pressures that will increasingly affect
tags lead to uncertain prospects that they'll fill many
semiconductor fabs or that they'll be wildly profitable
for their manufacturers. Why, then, are so many people
so excited about RFID? The reason is simple: The worth
of all of that data streaming off RFID tags and readers,
in and of itself of little value, emerges when other hardware
and software on the Internet or a company's Intranet stores,
transports, and manipulates the data. As a result, many
will benefit - CPU vendors, such as AMD, IBM, Intel, and
Sun; their sibling systems divisions; systems partners,
such as Apple, Dell, and HP; networking-equipment vendors,
such as Cisco; and enterprise-software suppliers, such
as Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. The storage, transportation,
and manipulation of that data also drives the fact that
much of the recent media coverage of RFIDs has appeared
in IT publications. This data explosion will, of course,
also enrich the fortunes of DRAM, hard-disk-drive, Ethernet,
and other system-building-block suppliers.
For those designing RFID readers or implementing readers
that others developed, the diversity of frequencies, formats,
modulation, interference-suppression schemes, and other
variables may motivate you, if your customers' cost expectations
allow, to make those readers as flexible as possible.
For the readers' digital subsystems, you can ensure flexibility
primarily by enabling updatable firmware using code storage
in flash memory or a small-form-factor hard-disk drive
instead of ROM and by enabling updatable hardware using
FPGAs and PLDs rather than ASICs. With the RFID readers'
analog subsystems, you might consider implementing programmable
analog arrays from companies such as Anadigm, Lattice
Semiconductor, and Zetex, instead of hard-wired circuits.
Application teasers
The following list includes some of the more interesting
applications for RFID. They might inspire you to use RFID
technology in your future designs and increase your awareness
of the privacy issues associated with RFID.
Wal-Mart's challenge to its suppliers, which it first
issued at the June 2003 Retail Systems Conference in Chicago,
was the key spark that ignited significant industry momentum
behind RFID. Pilot implementations with key suppliers
are under way at Wal-Mart's Sanger, TX, distribution center
and seven Dallas/Fort Worth-area stores. Wal-Mart's top
100 suppliers have until next January to install tags
on items headed for three Texas distribution centers.
By June 2005, Wal-Mart expects to have its RFID project
live in as many as six distribution centers and as many
as 250 Wal-Mart and Sam's Club locations. By January 2006,
the next 200 suppliers are scheduled to join the initiative.
Wal-Mart's competitors, such as Albertsons, Best Buy,
Kroger, Target, and Europe's Metro Group, have responded
by launching their own RFID trials.
The US government, motivated by homeland security, inventory
tracking, and other concerns, is another significant catalyst
for RFID action. Department of Defense suppliers must
by next January begin using RFID on portions of their
inventory. The Department of Transportation's Federal
Highway Administration has also called on RFID manufacturers
to jointly develop DSRC (dedicated short-range-communications)
systems as part of the agency's efforts to halve road
fatalities in the United States within 10 years. Potential
roadway applications include issuing alerts to drivers
about impending intersection collisions, rollovers, and
weather-related road hazards and warning drivers that
their vehicles are traveling too fast to safely negotiate
an upcoming curve. The Federal Communications Commission
in 1999 allocated the entire 5.9-GHz band to DSRC applications.
The State Department is conducting a trial of RFID-inclusive
biometric passports, with an eye toward moving to full
production in 2005. (The International Civil Aviation
Organization has unveiled a similar proposal, with a 2015
deadline.) And the Customs Service's CSI (Container Security
Initiative) and SST (Smart and Secure Trade) Lanes Initiative
are embracing RFID technology as a way to help ensure
container security at US ports. To date, the governments
of the top 20 foreign ports, representing approximately
two-thirds of the volume of shipments to the United States,
have agreed to implement CSI and SST.
Governments outside the United States are also evaluating
and implementing RFID. Persistent rumors suggest that
the European Union is planning to embed RFID tags in high-value
euro notes. (Rumors of RFID tags embedded within US $20
bills, conversely, are unfounded.) The United Kingdom
is also studying license plates with embedded RFID tags,
which readers can decipher from 300 feet away and readers
embedded in the road or surveillance vehicles can decipher
in rapid succession. And electronic ear-tagging of sheep
and goats, fueled by recent "Mad Cow"-Disease
outbreaks, will be compulsory in Europe beginning in January
2008 for member states with livestock populations of 600,000
or more. ISO 11784/85 also stipulates that it will also
be compulsory for animals intended for inter-European
Union trade; domestic-RFID-supplier Philips has been particularly
active in this area. Canada will also implement electronic
tagging of livestock next January. Significant RFID implementation
potential exists in the pharmaceutical industry to track
drugs (likely extending to individual packages, not just
bulk cases) and prevent counterfeiting, unintended redirection,
and theft.
E-Zpass and FasTrak systems implement electronic-highway-toll
collection. Those concerned about privacy should note
that they can log not only your preferred payment method,
but also the dates, times, and locations your car's RFID
tag passed readers. Other RFID-based electronic-payment
systems include ExxonMobil Speedpass, MasterCard's PayPass,
NCR's FastLane system, and FreedomPay. Nokia has unveiled
its first RFID-inclusive cell phone add-in kit for electronic
item payment, the Mobile RFID Kit for the model 5140.
And Nokia, Philips, and Sony have formed the RFID-derived
Magic Touch alliance for mobile commerce and information
exchange.
Many of you are likely familiar with the "chipping"
programs from such companies as Avid and HomeAgain for
identifying pets and returning them to their owners. This
scenario is extending to humans. The Mexican government
recently used technology from VeriChip to subdermally
tag Mexico's Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha,
along with 160 of his employees working at an anticrime
information center in Mexico City. Other places in Central
and South America, including Argentina, Brazil, and Columbia,
are employing the technology in response to escalating
incidents of "flash kidnapping," involving short
amounts of time in captivity. And at the Baja Beach Club
in Barcelona, barely clothed patrons who don't want to
bother with carrying currency are sporting subdermal tags
to enable electronic "credit-card" payment of
their food and drinks.
Japanese primary schools in Osaka and Tabe are tagging
students' clothing, bags, and name-
tags, so that teachers and parents can track the children's
whereabouts. For similar reasons, the Wannadoo City theme
park in Florida is tagging all ticket holders upon entry,
so that members of each group can find each other in real
time. Premium Club Seat ticket holders at the Seattle
Seahawks' Qwest Stadium can use RFID-inclusive PowerBuy
tags that reduce their time in line at concession stands.
Texas Instruments is both an RFID supplier and an RFID
consumer, and it employs RFIDs for tracking work in progress
within its fabs. And 2004 Olympic Marathon and Boston
Marathon participants' shoes contained RFID tags, which
communicated at regular intervals with readers embedded
in the pavement or within mats on the raceway. These tags
not only prevent Rosie Ruiz-reminiscent fraud, they conceptually
also could allow runners' friends, families, and fans
to follow race progress through periodic Web-site updates,
pager alerts, and the like.
Texas Instruments has also worked with the Vatican Library
in Rome to RFID-tag, identify, and manage its extensive
collection of nearly 2 million books, manuscripts, and
other priceless items. And the San Francisco Public Library,
in the face of stiff opposition from the EFF (Electronic
Frontier Foundation) and other privacy groups, is considering
RFID-tagging its collection.
Delta Airlines is running a luggage-tracking pilot between
Jacksonville, FL, and Atlanta and plans a widespread roll-out
for 2007. The Jacksonville airport is planning a year-end
rollout of RFID tagging in advance of next February's
Super Bowl, and Las Vegas' airport is also planning a
spring 2005 RFID implementation. In contrast, San Francisco's
and Seattle's airports have, for now, shelved their RFID
pilots, citing high costs and tag-reading reliability
that wasn't appreciably better than that of the bar codes
currently in use.
Airframe competitors Boeing and Airbus are partnering
to require their more than 2000 suppliers to begin tagging
aircraft and engine parts by mid-2005. The goal is multifold:
to tackle incorrect pricing and part-number data and to
prevent unapproved parts from finding their way into finished
products with consequent excessive costs in the form of
Federal Aviation Administration fines and replacement
downtime. Boeing is currently conducting RFID-tagged engine
parts trials with Federal Express and Delta Airlines.
The three companies' are currently using worldwide-standard,
13.56-MHz tags, which deliver robust operation in high-temperature
and reflection-inducing, metal-rich environments. They
also plan to test higher storage capacity, 915-MHz tags,
but Europe has not yet approved them.
Microsoft has announced plans to include RFID support
within future iterations of its Axapta, Great Plains,
and Navision ERP (enterprise-resource-planning) applications
and to add device-driver-like RFID support to its future
server operating systems. Microsoft in April launched
an RFID Council.
Oil ID Systems plans to use RFID "motes," each
about the size of a grain of sand, to track oil as the
company stores, ships, and sells it. Along similar lines,
Japanese company Kureha Kankyo, an affiliate of Kureha
Chemical Industry, in partnership with IBM Japan, is testing
the ability to track medical waste by embedding RFID tags
and antennas within cardboard and plastic containers.
Other "out-there" conceptual applications include
RFID-inclusive clothing that automatically configures
the washing machine and dryer, food that alerts the refrigerator
- and you - when it has expired and automatically adds
itself to an electronic grocery list, and medications
that track your consumption and alert you and, perhaps,
also your physician and pharmacist to deviance from its
prescribed usage, as well as warning of contraindications
with other drugs currently in your medicine cabinet. |
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World AIDS
Day
World AIDS Day is the international day of action
on HIV and AIDS which takes place every year on
1 December.
Date: 1-Dec-2004
Link: World
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Out
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Hexxagon
happens to be one of those games that's easier to
play than it is to explain. You play as the red
diamonds, and your goal is to take over the board
by leaping into the spaces adjacent to your opponent's
watery globules.
Source: Neave
Games
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