Speaker 1: Text with Technology with tex Stuff from hast works dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: senior writer, Jonathan Strickland. I worked for a hell stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com and we look at the entire universe
Speaker 1: and break it down for you one topic at a time,
Speaker 1: and today I wanted to cover something that was in
Speaker 1: the news recently, at least as of the recording of
Speaker 1: this podcast. If you're listening to this and I don't know,
Speaker 1: then it happened a long time ago, but it's recent
Speaker 1: as of the recording here. Recently, this company called three
Speaker 1: Square Market made the news because they were moving forward
Speaker 1: with an interesting and some would say troublesome plan involving
Speaker 1: employees getting microchip r F I D implants. Now, some
Speaker 1: headlines made it sound like this was a compulsory decision
Speaker 1: that you would come into work, you would clock in,
Speaker 1: go under the knife, and get a grain of rice
Speaker 1: sized microchip implanted under the skin between your thumb and
Speaker 1: your forefinger, and then your tracked for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. Other headlines were a little less reactionary and
Speaker 1: gave a better indication of what the story was actually about.
Speaker 1: But to really appreciate what this means and why it's happening.
Speaker 1: I thought it would be good to do a full
Speaker 1: episode about r f I D technology and the history
Speaker 1: of human microchipping, because, despite what some outlets claimed, this
Speaker 1: is not the first time a US employer offered up
Speaker 1: this option. In fact, the first example happened more than
Speaker 1: a decade ago, in two thousand and six. But we'll
Speaker 1: get there first. Let's talk about the concept of r
Speaker 1: f I D in the first place. The basic concept
Speaker 1: is pretty simple. R f I D stands for radio
Speaker 1: frequency identification technology. It's a way to identify something wirelessly
Speaker 1: through radio frequency transmissions, and some would argue that this
Speaker 1: concept dates all the way back to World War Two,
Speaker 1: although obviously not in the form of r f I
Speaker 1: D D r f i D tags, but rather just
Speaker 1: the concept of using radio frequencies to identify something. During
Speaker 1: World War Two, radar was proving its value as a
Speaker 1: detection and tracking tool for both the Axis and Allied powers.
Speaker 1: But one thing radar could not do was actually identify
Speaker 1: what it was tracking. So if you were a radar
Speaker 1: operator and you picked up a signal on your apparatus
Speaker 1: and indicated that there was a plane that was flying
Speaker 1: toward you. You couldn't be sure that the plane was
Speaker 1: one of yours or one belonging to the enemy. And this,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, is a very important distinction during
Speaker 1: times of war. You kind of want to know is
Speaker 1: it one of ours one of theirs? And with basic
Speaker 1: radar all you got was a blip saying, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: it's coming this way. Now, the access powers came up
Speaker 1: with a kind of cluege way to get around this problem.
Speaker 1: German pilots would execute a role maneuver. As they approached
Speaker 1: their home base. Radar operators would see that the radio
Speaker 1: signals that were bouncing back were being reflected in a
Speaker 1: different way over the course of the role, So the
Speaker 1: surface of the plane that was reflecting radio waves back
Speaker 1: to the radar operators was changing because the orientation of
Speaker 1: the plane itself was changing. By establishing this specific maneuver
Speaker 1: when approaching a home base, they were able to distinguish
Speaker 1: the German planes from other planes. So the radar signals
Speaker 1: themselves would hit different parts of the planes as they
Speaker 1: completed their roles that would be reflected in those returning signals,
Speaker 1: and in that way, German radar operators would know who
Speaker 1: was coming towards them, and thus they wouldn't launch an
Speaker 1: attack against their own planes. Over on the Allied side,
Speaker 1: there was a very secret operation in which British pilots
Speaker 1: had their planes outfitted with an active I f F system.
Speaker 1: I f F in this case stands for Identify Friend
Speaker 1: or foe. This was a transmitter, uh specifically a transponder.
Speaker 1: It would activate only when it came within range of
Speaker 1: an outgoing signal from a base, and then it would
Speaker 1: transmit a signal of its own, indicating that the plane
Speaker 1: belonged to the Allies. So transponders are transmitters and responders.
Speaker 1: They respond to an incoming signal with their own signal,
Speaker 1: and that way British radar operators knew it was one
Speaker 1: of their own boys coming back. Whenever they sent out
Speaker 1: a signal and this one returned to them. If it
Speaker 1: didn't return to them, they would know that chances are
Speaker 1: it was an enemy plane on its way in. Now,
Speaker 1: this concept of using radio waves as a means of
Speaker 1: identification is the very heart of r F I D,
Speaker 1: though the implementation of r F I D is a
Speaker 1: little bit different. The first r F I D patents
Speaker 1: were filed in nineteen seventy three. One of them was
Speaker 1: by Mario W. Cardulo, who filed a patent for rewriteable
Speaker 1: r F I D tags. Charles Walton also filed and
Speaker 1: received a patent for a door lock system in which
Speaker 1: a passive transponder would respond to an active reader to
Speaker 1: unlock a door. The active reader would send out signals.
Speaker 1: When the passive transponder would come in within range, it
Speaker 1: would return a signal, and that returning signal would tell
Speaker 1: the scanner, Hey, this guy's got a key for the door.
Speaker 1: Unlocked the door. It's the essential basis for card based
Speaker 1: security doors that we use today. But that leads us
Speaker 1: to another question. What exactly is a transponder? You know
Speaker 1: those devices in those British planes were transponders. Essentially, the
Speaker 1: ones inside these cards were transponders. They received radio signals,
Speaker 1: they transmit a different signal. It is a combination of
Speaker 1: transmitter and responder. But the ones in the British planes
Speaker 1: were different from the ones in the cards. They were
Speaker 1: larger for one thing, but they were also active transponders.
Speaker 1: That means that they relied on a power source inside
Speaker 1: the plane and that would boost the outgoing signal. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like an amplifier. They were actively transmitting their
Speaker 1: signal to those radar operators, but they're also passive transponders,
Speaker 1: like in the case of that card. These harvest energy
Speaker 1: from incoming radio waves sent out by the signal generator,
Speaker 1: the reader in other words, that security reader that's typically
Speaker 1: mounted on a wall somewhere. Then they respond with their
Speaker 1: own signal by harvesting that energy and generating the return signal.
Speaker 1: The more on that in a minute, We'll get into
Speaker 1: the mechanics, or or rather the technical aspects of that
Speaker 1: a little bit later on. Early uses of r f
Speaker 1: I D technology included not just simple locking mechanism for doors,
Speaker 1: but for stuff that could have an impact on national security,
Speaker 1: like nuclear materials. Los Alamos National Laboratory developed an r
Speaker 1: f I D tracking system for such material at the
Speaker 1: behest of the Energy Department in the United States. Trucks
Speaker 1: shipping nuclear materials were to carry a transponder that would
Speaker 1: respond to readers at gated facilities, So a signal sent
Speaker 1: out from the reader at the gate would activate the
Speaker 1: transponders aboard the trucks. Those transponders would then send a
Speaker 1: and identifying signal back. That signal would carry information with
Speaker 1: it like the identity of the truck, what it was carrying,
Speaker 1: and sometimes even the person who was assigned to drive
Speaker 1: the vehicle. Eventually, this proprietary system became a commercial product
Speaker 1: and it was put to use in the civilian world,
Speaker 1: often as part of a toll system for bridges and
Speaker 1: tunnels and that sort of thing. Los Alamos also created
Speaker 1: a passive r f I D tag system to track cows.
Speaker 1: It's one of the elighest implementations of r f I
Speaker 1: D tags was to track cows, and it was to
Speaker 1: make it easier to keep track of those cows as
Speaker 1: they received various vaccinations and injections. The tax system allowed
Speaker 1: farmers to keep track of which cows had received the
Speaker 1: treatments and avoid double dosing or missing a cow. That
Speaker 1: we're now talking about microchipping employees, and we were originally
Speaker 1: talking about tracking cows seems a little poetic to me,
Speaker 1: but maybe that's the cynical side of me showing. Now.
Speaker 1: Over time, technologies with r f I D became smaller
Speaker 1: and more efficient, which led us to the possibility of
Speaker 1: microchipping things like our pets and even ourselves. The person
Speaker 1: credited with having the first r F I D implant
Speaker 1: is Kevin Warwick, a British scientists sometimes referred to as
Speaker 1: a cyborg, though personally I thought that was going a
Speaker 1: bit far now. Warwick's implant interacted with various electronic systems
Speaker 1: in his office, including office lights and doors. It was
Speaker 1: only a temporary arrangement. He only had the implant for
Speaker 1: a short time I think maybe a week and a
Speaker 1: half or so before he had it removed. He underwent
Speaker 1: another surgery later on with a slightly more sophisticated implant
Speaker 1: that was a little bit more than just an r
Speaker 1: F I D chip. But I did a full tech
Speaker 1: stuff episode about him in the past. The important thing
Speaker 1: to point out here is that this happened in nearly
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, when we had the first human getting
Speaker 1: a microchip, totally voluntary and mostly as kind of a
Speaker 1: proof of concept to show what could be possible in
Speaker 1: the future. This idea of having an electronic component to
Speaker 1: your identity and it's always with you, and it allows
Speaker 1: you to interact with your environment in interesting ways, and
Speaker 1: you don't have to use things like passwords or other
Speaker 1: types of authentication in order to get access to various
Speaker 1: systems or interact with things like lighting or other technology. Now,
Speaker 1: the first story I saw about employees electing to get
Speaker 1: microchips as part of their work did not happen in TV,
Speaker 1: as some headlines have stated where they say this is
Speaker 1: the first time ever. It happened in two thousand six.
Speaker 1: That's when two employees of a company called city watcher
Speaker 1: dot Com elected to do this. City watcher dot Com
Speaker 1: is a surveillance equipment company, and these two employees elected
Speaker 1: to have r F I D microchips implanted in their forearms.
Speaker 1: They're a little bit bigger. They were about twice the
Speaker 1: length of the ones that have been talked about for
Speaker 1: three square Market. Now, the tags that the city watcher
Speaker 1: dot com employees got gave them access to special vaults.
Speaker 1: It was essentially a security measure, and those special vaults
Speaker 1: contain sensitive client information like surveillance footage and other stuff
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't want falling into the wrong hands. Now,
Speaker 1: it's a lot harder and honestly a lot more grim
Speaker 1: to steal someone's arm than it is to steal, say
Speaker 1: a security card. So story a three square market is
Speaker 1: not unique. It has happened before, not on as large
Speaker 1: as scale as what three Square Market is hoping to do,
Speaker 1: but it certainly is not brand new. But what is
Speaker 1: going on with three Square Market? Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: the company is in the business of making vending services.
Speaker 1: They make micro markets for one thing. Now, a typical
Speaker 1: micro market kind of looks like a simple refrigerated display
Speaker 1: that you might see in a grocery store, and it
Speaker 1: contains stuff like sandwiches or salads and drinks that kind
Speaker 1: of the stuff. And as a customer, you typically pick
Speaker 1: up an item from this display. You would go to
Speaker 1: a kiosk that would be part of the display, and
Speaker 1: you would enter in the item that you wanted to buy,
Speaker 1: perhaps scanning it. A lot of them have optical scanners
Speaker 1: attached to them, and then you would use the kiosk
Speaker 1: to pay for this item. Typically you would use a
Speaker 1: credit hard maybe it's a tap credit card, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's a chip and pen, but however you would do it.
Speaker 1: You would interact with the device in this way. Uh
Speaker 1: then you go on your merryway and you'd eat your snack.
Speaker 1: At some point, some companies contract with three Square Market
Speaker 1: to provide these sorts of vending machines in their break rooms.
Speaker 1: How stuff works isn't one of them. But then we
Speaker 1: also have a lot of free snacks, so I really
Speaker 1: can't complain on that. On that front, three Square Market
Speaker 1: is now giving employees the option to have an r
Speaker 1: F I D microchip implanted in their hands to get
Speaker 1: somewhere around the between the thumb and four finger area.
Speaker 1: As I understand it now, those implants would allow employees
Speaker 1: to do a lot of different things without ever having
Speaker 1: to fish for various security cards or dongoles or credit cards.
Speaker 1: For example, they could be used to purchase items in
Speaker 1: the break room micro market. You just stroll up to it,
Speaker 1: grab a tagged Cobs salad, and then the system would
Speaker 1: I detect that r f I D chip in your
Speaker 1: hand and charge it to your account, so you don't
Speaker 1: have to fish for a credit card or put any
Speaker 1: information in It's all automated and it's seamless. Other implementations
Speaker 1: could include the stuff we've talked about already, things like
Speaker 1: getting access to security doors. You know, you just hold
Speaker 1: your hand up close to the reader and it picks
Speaker 1: up on the transponder signal and thus unlocks the door
Speaker 1: for you. Or you might use it to unlock computers
Speaker 1: so that you don't have to use a password. It
Speaker 1: just identifies that you are, in fact the person you
Speaker 1: say you are. Essentially, you could program the r F
Speaker 1: I D chip to hold information linked to the respective
Speaker 1: employees identity. That information could then be linked to other
Speaker 1: data on the back end, So in other words, you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have to encode everything that the chip will
Speaker 1: be able to do on the actual chip. You just
Speaker 1: have to establish a unique identifier, and then on the
Speaker 1: back end you could have all the functionality so that
Speaker 1: when it came into contact with that unique identifier, it
Speaker 1: would spawned in the appropriate way. So for example, if
Speaker 1: I have a microchip and I have access to every
Speaker 1: door but one in this office, then when I come
Speaker 1: to that one forbidden door, it won't activate, not because
Speaker 1: that door wasn't programmed in my microchip, but because in
Speaker 1: the back end computer system, when it looks for the
Speaker 1: numbers that are associated with the access level for that door,
Speaker 1: it does not find my number, and thus I do
Speaker 1: not get access. So it really just means where do
Speaker 1: you put the work? Do you put it on the
Speaker 1: chip side or on the back end side. Now you
Speaker 1: could just put a tag inside a piece of equipment
Speaker 1: and have the employee carry that around like a wrist
Speaker 1: band or something. You don't have to implant it in
Speaker 1: an inside a person. Although if it is i'mplanted in
Speaker 1: a person, it does decrease the possibility that you will
Speaker 1: misplace it. It doesn't completely eliminate it. There are gruesome
Speaker 1: accidents that can happen, but it's severely reduces that risk.
Speaker 1: And it is also important to remember that that backside approach,
Speaker 1: the having the back end handle most of the work.
Speaker 1: It's pretty important when you're talking about a a method
Speaker 1: that might involve surgery, even if it's minor surgery to
Speaker 1: get a microchip implanted under the skin. Obviously, if it's
Speaker 1: a type of r F I D where you would
Speaker 1: need to switch it out in order to get more access,
Speaker 1: that requires another surgery, something that a lot of people
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't look forward to. Now, this process is completely voluntary.
Speaker 1: They are not compelling any of their employees to undergo
Speaker 1: the surgery, and according to The New York Times, about
Speaker 1: fifty of the eighty employees of three Square Market have
Speaker 1: already signed up for the procedure. The company also states
Speaker 1: that the technology will not be used to track employee
Speaker 1: movements and activities, but obviously those are things people should
Speaker 1: be concerned about. There are potential misuses of this technology
Speaker 1: that pose very real threats to privacy and security. I'll
Speaker 1: cover more on that in just a little bit. Now,
Speaker 1: before I get all doom and gloom, I've got a
Speaker 1: lot of other things I want to say about how
Speaker 1: r F i D technology actually works. But first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. All Right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to really just concentrate on what are called
Speaker 1: passive r f i D systems here, because active and
Speaker 1: semi passive r f i D systems tend to use batteries.
Speaker 1: That makes those tags much larger and not practical for
Speaker 1: lots of implementations, including implants. You don't want to have
Speaker 1: to have a battery implanted underneath your skin if you
Speaker 1: don't if you don't absolutely need it for some medical purpose.
Speaker 1: So we're really looking at passive r f i D.
Speaker 1: And this idea kind of goes back to radar. You
Speaker 1: have a reader or a scanner. Typically these devices are
Speaker 1: just constantly sending out a radio signal of a specific frequency.
Speaker 1: Early implantable passive r f i D systems used low
Speaker 1: frequency radio signals that around a hundred twenty five killer hurts.
Speaker 1: These were small enough to work as implants for cows,
Speaker 1: but they had a limited range and low data transfer rates,
Speaker 1: so if you wanted something that worked at a better
Speaker 1: range and had faster throughput, you needed to use a
Speaker 1: higher frequency. So the next generation of r F I
Speaker 1: D tags moved to that part of the electro magnetic
Speaker 1: spectrum at the thirteen point five six mega Hurts range.
Speaker 1: Number hurts is telling you how many UH waves passed
Speaker 1: through a given point within a second. Every hurts represents
Speaker 1: one wave for that second, so h hurts tells you
Speaker 1: that a hundred twenty five thousand of those wavelengths past
Speaker 1: a given point within a second. Thirteen point five six
Speaker 1: tells you thirteen point five six million hurts. Because it's
Speaker 1: mega hurts past that given point within a second. That
Speaker 1: means the wavelengths are significantly smaller and the frequency is
Speaker 1: much higher the range, and that frequency is mostly unregulated
Speaker 1: and unused throughout the world. There are very few places
Speaker 1: that have that says, aside for specific reasons, so there
Speaker 1: was little worry about interference. Using thirteen point five six
Speaker 1: mega hurts is the range for r f I D tags,
Speaker 1: and it also offered a better read range and faster
Speaker 1: data transfer rates than the lower frequency r f I
Speaker 1: D tags. This frequency is used for lots of access systems,
Speaker 1: whether it's a door or a computer terminal. They're also
Speaker 1: used in lots of payment systems and contactless smart card systems.
Speaker 1: So you might find a system running on this frequency,
Speaker 1: that is, for a subway. You might have a subway
Speaker 1: card and you tap it against a little UH sensor
Speaker 1: and it ends up completing this transaction that allows you
Speaker 1: to pass through and it deducts, however much from your account,
Speaker 1: or if you have an account that is based on
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time, then as long as you're
Speaker 1: within that time limit, you're allowed to pass through. Anti
Speaker 1: THEFTO heisis in. Some cars also use this as a
Speaker 1: reader inside the car will scan for a returning signal
Speaker 1: from a transponder contained within a plastic key housing. UM.
Speaker 1: I have a car, it's like, well, my wife has
Speaker 1: a car that's like this, where it's not gonna go
Speaker 1: anywhere if it doesn't have the actual one of the
Speaker 1: actual keys inside the car. UM, if it doesn't detect
Speaker 1: that key, it won't turn on. Also, if you try
Speaker 1: to leave the car with one of the keys inside it,
Speaker 1: it will tell you because it can detect the fact
Speaker 1: that the key is still there while you are obviously
Speaker 1: trying to walk off to get into Wally World, which
Speaker 1: by the way, is closed. The moose outside should have
Speaker 1: told you. In the ninety nineties, IBM began to work
Speaker 1: on ultra high frequency or UHF r f i D systems.
Speaker 1: These had a read range of around twenty feet, which
Speaker 1: is pretty strong, and it had even faster data transfer
Speaker 1: rates than the Mega Hurts range. This technology has found
Speaker 1: its way into various warehouses around the world and is
Speaker 1: used as a sort of inventory management system. In Amazon
Speaker 1: announced a partnership with the r F I D Lab
Speaker 1: at Auburn University to explore ways to use r F
Speaker 1: I D tags to optimize Amazon fulfillment centers. Those tags
Speaker 1: would help these centers keep an accurate count on what
Speaker 1: was and wasn't in stock at any given time, and
Speaker 1: thus help Amazon fulfill orders and make delivery times. Warehouse
Speaker 1: inventory is insanely complicated stuff because you've got new merchandise
Speaker 1: moving in and orders moving out constantly, so keeping an
Speaker 1: accurate inventory record is crucial if you want to meet
Speaker 1: incoming orders. As for how it's working at all, it
Speaker 1: comes down to two critical components on the tag itself
Speaker 1: and antenna and the transponder, And it helps if we
Speaker 1: take a quick refresher on radio here. So let's say
Speaker 1: you want to transmit a radio signal and you've got
Speaker 1: a scanner or a reader, or in the case of
Speaker 1: traditional radio, you've got a broadcast station. You would create
Speaker 1: an electrical signal, you would modulate it in some particular
Speaker 1: way to create the frequency you want, and you would
Speaker 1: send this signal into a transmission antenna. The electrical current
Speaker 1: running through the antenna will generate electromagnetic radiation in the
Speaker 1: form of radio waves. Radio waves will travel outward from
Speaker 1: the source the receiving antenna you use the radio or
Speaker 1: r F I D tag. The antenna itself has to
Speaker 1: be the right length to pick up those frequencies. If
Speaker 1: you were to take a traditional radio, it would most
Speaker 1: likely have two antennas. You'd have one antenna that would
Speaker 1: be the FM antenna, which an old radio has tended
Speaker 1: to be a telescoping antenna that you would extend from
Speaker 1: the set, and then you would have an AM antenna,
Speaker 1: and that usually was a wire, a much much longer
Speaker 1: wire than the FM antenna, and normally it would even
Speaker 1: be contained with inside the radio itself, so it would
Speaker 1: just be a coil of wire that's wrapped up inside
Speaker 1: the radio. You can't even see it. Some radios or
Speaker 1: sets did have that wire extend out from the radio,
Speaker 1: but that ends up becoming a tripping hazard. Now, the
Speaker 1: reason that you would have two different lengths of antenna
Speaker 1: is that the radio wavelengths of FM and AM are
Speaker 1: very different. AM radio waves are much longer than FM
Speaker 1: radio waves, so the antenna for a M has to
Speaker 1: be longer to pick up those frequencies effectively. Generally speaking,
Speaker 1: the antenna's length needs to be about half a wavelength
Speaker 1: of the radio wave itself, or it could be a
Speaker 1: quarter of the length of the wavelength itself in order
Speaker 1: to effectively pick up the signal. So if you've got
Speaker 1: a signal that's a meter long, ideally you would have
Speaker 1: an antenna that's half a meter long in order to
Speaker 1: pick up that signal. That was just a random example,
Speaker 1: by the way. So let's say that you want to
Speaker 1: build a very simple radio. You could get an antenna,
Speaker 1: which could just be some copper wire that will pick
Speaker 1: up radio frequencies within a certain range based upon the
Speaker 1: length of the antenna itself. Um, you would have to
Speaker 1: have antenna that's long enough for it to pick up
Speaker 1: a M frequencies. This really works with a M radio. Now,
Speaker 1: when it encounters this electromagnetic radiation in the form of
Speaker 1: radio waves, those will induce an electric current to flow
Speaker 1: through the antenna. It makes electrons wiggle, essentially moving back
Speaker 1: and forth along the length of that antenna. If you've
Speaker 1: listened to my episodes about electromagnetism and electricity, this is
Speaker 1: gonna sound really familiar to you, as it's essentially the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing that kind of happens. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't kind of happen. It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: thing that happens when you move a conductor through a
Speaker 1: magnetic field that induces current to flow. It's not dissimilar
Speaker 1: to that, except now we're talking about radio waves, not magnetism,
Speaker 1: not a magnetic field, but it also can induce current
Speaker 1: to flow through that antenna. Now, technically you don't need
Speaker 1: any sort of power source to make a simple working
Speaker 1: AM radio. You can make what is called a crystal radio.
Speaker 1: You need an antenna, a tuner, and a crystal earpiece
Speaker 1: and a diode as well. The tuner allows you to
Speaker 1: select a specific frequency. Otherwise you would get all available
Speaker 1: A M signals simultaneously and you wouldn't really be able
Speaker 1: to make anything out unless you only had one signal
Speaker 1: nearby that you could pick up. So the tuner helps
Speaker 1: you tune in on a specific frequency. The earpiece has
Speaker 1: the crystal in it. It's a piece of electric crystal.
Speaker 1: These are crystals that vibrate when electric current is applied
Speaker 1: to them, so by applying a varying electric current, you
Speaker 1: can make them vibrate at different frequencies, which in turn
Speaker 1: makes sound. Now, someday I may do a video to
Speaker 1: actually show how to build a crystal radio and explain
Speaker 1: how each of these little parts work, because it's pretty
Speaker 1: fascinating stuff to really see how a very simple radio works.
Speaker 1: But for now we're just going to use it as
Speaker 1: a general example, largely because without the benefit of visual aids,
Speaker 1: it gets really tricky to explain this stuff without it
Speaker 1: getting too confusing, at least for me. Anyway, that simple
Speaker 1: crystal radio is lacking something that your typical radios and
Speaker 1: stereos have which is a power source, or at least
Speaker 1: a power source that you plug into, either as a
Speaker 1: battery or plugging into an outlet us because all the
Speaker 1: energy you need to hear what the radio is playing
Speaker 1: is coming from that electromagnetic radiation, inducing a current to
Speaker 1: flow through your simple radio. Depending upon the transmitting stations,
Speaker 1: broadcast power, and your distance from that broadcast station, the
Speaker 1: volume could be pretty low. It might even be difficult
Speaker 1: for you to detect. But if you're close enough and
Speaker 1: the radio station is powerful enough, you'll be able to
Speaker 1: hear what it's transmitting. Even without any other power source.
Speaker 1: You're effectively harvesting energy from the radio waves themselves. This process,
Speaker 1: by the way, has led some people to propose energy
Speaker 1: systems that would harvest electricity from radio waves in general,
Speaker 1: the thought being radio waves are all around us all
Speaker 1: the time, why don't we have special antenna to capture
Speaker 1: that energy and convert it into electricity. But those systems
Speaker 1: have some really big limitations. For one thing, the amount
Speaker 1: of electricity you harvest depends heavily on that transmission power
Speaker 1: from the transmission station and how far away from it
Speaker 1: you happen to be, so as you double your distance
Speaker 1: from a radio source, the power of the radio signal
Speaker 1: reaching you is one quarter of what it was before.
Speaker 1: It's the inverse square law. Now. Based on that alone,
Speaker 1: it would mean you'd have to be very close to
Speaker 1: several powerful transmitting stations if you wanted to harvest a
Speaker 1: significant amount of energy, And that also means you have
Speaker 1: to pump a huge amount of energy into the actual
Speaker 1: transmission part of the system. So it's not an efficient
Speaker 1: means of transmitting energy. It is possible, but it's not practical,
Speaker 1: not as a means of actually transmitting energy itself. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool, but again, if you're trying to pump that
Speaker 1: much energy into a transmitter, you're on the losing side
Speaker 1: because you you lose so much energy over distance that
Speaker 1: it's just not worth it. But back to r f
Speaker 1: I D tags. They contain an antenna. Uh, it might
Speaker 1: be wire, it might be conductive ink. It all depends
Speaker 1: upon the implementation of the tag itself. But that antenna
Speaker 1: will pick up the frequencies given off by whatever the
Speaker 1: respective scanner or reader is, whatever it was designed for,
Speaker 1: when that frequency hits the antenna, so it's it's being
Speaker 1: omitted by a reader. The frequency comes out, it hits
Speaker 1: the r f I D tag, hits that antenna. That
Speaker 1: induces a current in the antenna which powers the transponder.
Speaker 1: The transponder has been programmed with information. It may just
Speaker 1: modulate the UH, the frequency that's receiving, and then send
Speaker 1: back that modulated signal. The scanner detects that because it
Speaker 1: has its own antenna that's looking for those echoes, and
Speaker 1: thus you are able to transmit information from what is
Speaker 1: a passive system to the active reader. Early are F
Speaker 1: I D tags could only contain nineties six bits of information.
Speaker 1: Remember a bit is a zero or a one, and
Speaker 1: early r f I D tags could only hold nine
Speaker 1: six bits zeros and ones in a row, and that's it.
Speaker 1: It's not very much, but since you can use those
Speaker 1: ninety six bits to assign a unique identify R and
Speaker 1: then you could do all the heavy lifting on the
Speaker 1: back end of the system, it's enough. Later r f
Speaker 1: I D tax could hold up to a couple of
Speaker 1: kilobytes of data, so they were able to expand on
Speaker 1: that dramatically. There are three general types of r f
Speaker 1: I D data storage strategies. There's read only, which means
Speaker 1: that the data that's on the tag is unalterable. You
Speaker 1: can read it, but you can't write to it. It's
Speaker 1: hard coded on the R F I D tag itself
Speaker 1: and will remain the same forever and ever, assuming the
Speaker 1: tag remains viable. Then there's read write tags. That means
Speaker 1: you can overwrite and alter the information that's on the tag,
Speaker 1: and you can do that to your heart's content. You
Speaker 1: can wipe it, change it, tweak it, you can put
Speaker 1: a brand new thing on there. And finally you have
Speaker 1: worm tags. That's w O r M. It's an acronym
Speaker 1: that stands for right once read many. That means you
Speaker 1: have a tag that you can change precisely. One time
Speaker 1: you write to the tag, you can alter it once,
Speaker 1: and after you change it that one time, it behaves
Speaker 1: as a read only tag. These tags could end up
Speaker 1: being the future of shopping. It requires getting the price
Speaker 1: down low enough so that it's an economical solution, but
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of uses, like what we alluded
Speaker 1: to earlier with inventory management. Let's take a hypothetical situation,
Speaker 1: one that has some practical implementations in the real world already.
Speaker 1: So let's say you walk into the supermarket of the future.
Speaker 1: It's probably owned by Amazon. At that point, you head
Speaker 1: over to the dairy section and you pick up a
Speaker 1: dozen eggs. You pause for a moment to wonder why
Speaker 1: eggs are with dairy because they come from a chicken,
Speaker 1: and you can't milk a chicken, at least not in
Speaker 1: the state of Georgia, because I have been expressly told
Speaker 1: to stop trying whenever I visit my hometown of Gainesville.
Speaker 1: It's poultry capital of the world. But that's a tangent
Speaker 1: for another day. You pick up a carton of eggs.
Speaker 1: The eggs have an r f I D tag on
Speaker 1: the package itself. The tag maybe it's a shiny sticker
Speaker 1: which houses both the antenna and the transponder. You bring
Speaker 1: your smartphone up near this tag. Now, your smartphone happens
Speaker 1: to be equipped with near field communication or NFC technology,
Speaker 1: which can interact with passive r F I D chips,
Speaker 1: and so your phone can act like a scanner. Your
Speaker 1: phone ends up interacting, gets the signal back from the carton,
Speaker 1: and it shows you lots of information about the eggs.
Speaker 1: It might show you how fresh the eggs are, how
Speaker 1: much they cost, how much that breaks down per egg.
Speaker 1: Maybe you even get other information like where did those
Speaker 1: eggs come from? What farm did they come from? And
Speaker 1: this is true for all the stuff you can shop for.
Speaker 1: Every item has its own r F I D tag
Speaker 1: that gives its own unique information, and therefore you are
Speaker 1: able to learn more about those products. Uh. Then you
Speaker 1: load up your cart with eggs and I don't know,
Speaker 1: motor oil or something, and you walk right out of
Speaker 1: the supermarket to your car. You don't go to the
Speaker 1: cash register. There is no cash register. It's because there
Speaker 1: are scanners at the entrance to the supermarket and as
Speaker 1: you walk by them, they pick up on the r
Speaker 1: F I D tags of all the products that are
Speaker 1: in your cart, and they also pick up information on
Speaker 1: your smartphone or maybe a dongle that you carry as
Speaker 1: a customer of this particular Amazon owned grocery store chain.
Speaker 1: And as you leave the store, the system counts this
Speaker 1: as a purchase. It says, these items have left the store,
Speaker 1: this person has purchased those and it will run the
Speaker 1: purchase against your account, so you are charged the appropriate
Speaker 1: amount based upon the products that are in your cart.
Speaker 1: It's seamless to you, and it's all happening through radio
Speaker 1: frequency transmissions behind the scenes. Now that's how it might
Speaker 1: work in the future. The current concept stores, which are
Speaker 1: called Amazon Go, reportedly do not rely on r f
Speaker 1: i D technology at this time. Now that's according to Amazon,
Speaker 1: but the company has not gone so far as to
Speaker 1: explain what actually is happening on the technology side of
Speaker 1: their Amazon Go stores. But they are talking about being
Speaker 1: interested in using r f i D chip technology in
Speaker 1: the future. So an r f i D enabled store
Speaker 1: would essentially do the same thing that Amazon Go is doing.
Speaker 1: But what about you know, other items, like what what
Speaker 1: are the other considerations with r f I D technology.
Speaker 1: That's how it would affect the consumer, But how's it
Speaker 1: effect in other realms of the world. Well, we'll explore
Speaker 1: that in just a minute, but first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. All Right, we just
Speaker 1: described what it's like from the customer side of things
Speaker 1: to walk into that shopping center of the future, but
Speaker 1: on the store side, there's a lot more going on.
Speaker 1: So while you are walking out with your eggsit motor oil,
Speaker 1: the store can track with recision how many units of
Speaker 1: any given product are available in the store at any
Speaker 1: given time. It knows the full inventory of the store. UH.
Speaker 1: It can also track trends, such as if there's an
Speaker 1: increase in demand for one product versus another. Let's say
Speaker 1: everyone's getting motor oil this week. It can track that
Speaker 1: and perhaps even respond dynamically by placing orders for new
Speaker 1: shipments of those products to be delivered to the store
Speaker 1: in order to replenish depleted stocks. Maybe it is able
Speaker 1: to run specials so that it can entice even more
Speaker 1: people in. It could keep track of freshness dates on
Speaker 1: various produce so that way items that are getting close
Speaker 1: to expiring can be cleared away and replaced with new
Speaker 1: items and you don't have spoil edge sitting on your shelves.
Speaker 1: It can also provide data that might change what items
Speaker 1: are ordered entirely because let's say a long time has
Speaker 1: gone by since someone has bought a Guatemalan insanity pepper,
Speaker 1: for example, the storm might stop ordering Guatemalan and sandy
Speaker 1: peppers entirely to free up space for something else and
Speaker 1: avoid wasting food. Now, one thing that would make this
Speaker 1: easier is a standardized language for shopping, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of the motivation behind something called the Electronic Product Code
Speaker 1: or EPC. This is a universal standard for identifying every
Speaker 1: physical object. It's not tied to any specific technology, so
Speaker 1: it's not unique to r f i D technology, but
Speaker 1: it is often talked about in concert with r f
Speaker 1: I D tags. A universal standard would mean you wouldn't
Speaker 1: need dozens of different apps to interpret the r f
Speaker 1: I D identify IRS on products at all different stores
Speaker 1: you go to, for example, because the r f i
Speaker 1: D tags used by those stores would rely upon a
Speaker 1: common coding system. And this wouldn't just be for the
Speaker 1: stuff you encounter in stores, but all sorts of stuff
Speaker 1: to end up inside things we buy. For example, computers
Speaker 1: are made up of lots of parts like a motherboard, CPU,
Speaker 1: graphics card, power source. All these sorts of things those components.
Speaker 1: Each of those would have its own unique designation with EPC,
Speaker 1: which makes it much easier to track supply chains. The
Speaker 1: same thing is true with say cars, You would have
Speaker 1: specific identifiers for every single component. That way you know
Speaker 1: at any given moment within your warehouse what you need,
Speaker 1: what you don't need, what you might have too much
Speaker 1: of UH, and be able to pull together all the
Speaker 1: parts you need for any given job. This code would
Speaker 1: be a designation, but the language it would be written
Speaker 1: in is something else. It would be a product markup
Speaker 1: language or PML, which is based on the extensible mark
Speaker 1: up which or x AML that you find on the web.
Speaker 1: This would allow different computer systems running different implementations of
Speaker 1: different software packages to understand one another when referring to
Speaker 1: specific r f i D tags, very much the way
Speaker 1: that HTML can be read by browsers on different operating
Speaker 1: systems Unix, Windows, Mac, same sort of concept. You want
Speaker 1: something that is agnostic when it comes to operating systems.
Speaker 1: All right back to people and whether or not we
Speaker 1: should be terrified about getting microchips implanted in US. There
Speaker 1: obviously are some big concerns about privacy and security here,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about privacy first. Now, it doesn't take
Speaker 1: a lot to imagine a world in which r f
Speaker 1: i D scanners are placed at regular intervals around the
Speaker 1: workplace tracking chipped employees, even if we're not talking about
Speaker 1: an implant here, but a security card or some sort
Speaker 1: of bracelet or something along those lines. Assuming that every
Speaker 1: card contains a unique identifier that is associated with a
Speaker 1: specific employee, the results are the same. As employees move
Speaker 1: around the workspace, the system could track those movements you
Speaker 1: come within range of a scanner, it ends up marking
Speaker 1: down the time when you moved within range of that
Speaker 1: particular scanner. It can actually effectively track your movements from
Speaker 1: one part of an environment to another, not in real time,
Speaker 1: but as in, you know, within this span of time
Speaker 1: it was in range of this one scanner and then
Speaker 1: moved on to the southern scanner, and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth. So you can kind of piece together and
Speaker 1: employees movements over the span of say a day. So
Speaker 1: now imagine that you have a busy body boss of
Speaker 1: the future. Heck, let's say it's a robot and this
Speaker 1: robo boss is looking over the data and sees that Johnson,
Speaker 1: head of sales, is frequently away from her desk. So
Speaker 1: it robot boss analyzes Johnson's behavior over the course of
Speaker 1: several weeks and identifies patterns and looks at how much
Speaker 1: time she is spending away from where she usually sits.
Speaker 1: This has nothing to do with her job performance, of course,
Speaker 1: but it has to do with the expectation that she's
Speaker 1: going to be in her office more often than not
Speaker 1: during working hours. And robo boss has really strict standards
Speaker 1: about these sort of things, or imagine a workplace where
Speaker 1: you're every trip to the break room or bathroom, or
Speaker 1: or just a quick jaunt outside to stretch your legs
Speaker 1: is logged and later used during your employee evaluation. It's
Speaker 1: not a very pleasant thought. And of course, there are
Speaker 1: some workplaces where you have to clock in every time
Speaker 1: you come back to your desk and clock out every
Speaker 1: time you want to leave. This would be a system
Speaker 1: that would just track you whether you were actively doing
Speaker 1: that or not. It is completely possible to implement this
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and it could lead to some pretty
Speaker 1: unpleasant work conditions and the belief that it would lead
Speaker 1: to greater productivity. I, for one, submit that it does
Speaker 1: not lead to creator productivity to chain your employees to
Speaker 1: your desk, because it just decreases employee morale. Then there
Speaker 1: are security issues. It's not just the privacy issues of
Speaker 1: the people who are carrying around these chips, but also
Speaker 1: security for the systems and for the people themselves. R
Speaker 1: have I D is by its nature, tied to the
Speaker 1: identity of something. It might be a person, could be
Speaker 1: an animal in the case of a pet, could be
Speaker 1: a product, and there are security concerns including identity, theft,
Speaker 1: tag readers can be a vulnerable point something that hackers
Speaker 1: could potentially exploit. Tag readers are collecting data through that
Speaker 1: radio frequency communication. You might have someone spoof a tag reader,
Speaker 1: so in other words, they're using their own scanner to
Speaker 1: get hits back from r f I D chips and
Speaker 1: use that to attempt to steal identification information or pick
Speaker 1: up other valuable data. Or hackers might be able to
Speaker 1: clone own tags and thus get unauthorized access to buildings
Speaker 1: or systems. So you might have an r f I
Speaker 1: D reader that is able to pull information off of,
Speaker 1: say a a security card that gives you access to
Speaker 1: a building, and then hackers could perhaps replicate that card
Speaker 1: with one of their own and get access to that
Speaker 1: building despite not being authorized to do so. Now, one
Speaker 1: way to mitigate that problem is through the use of encryption,
Speaker 1: in which the data retrieved by any spoof scanner is
Speaker 1: on its own, largely useless or difficult to decrypt. This
Speaker 1: is the effect of finding a seemingly garbled message. It
Speaker 1: has no real meaning to you, and so intercepting the
Speaker 1: message provides you no value because you don't know what
Speaker 1: the message means. But there's also the back end communication
Speaker 1: within the system itself. You have to consider that's another
Speaker 1: attractive target for hackers, not just the people carrying around
Speaker 1: these r f i D tags, but the system that
Speaker 1: ALEXA information itself. It's another vulnerable point and an attractive
Speaker 1: target because the back end captures all r f i
Speaker 1: D transmissions that move through the system, as opposed to
Speaker 1: seeking out a specific target one at a time. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, instead of having to walk up to
Speaker 1: somebody and try and scan their card without them noticing,
Speaker 1: if I'm able to compromise the actual system, the scanning
Speaker 1: system itself, I'm getting all the information that comes into
Speaker 1: contact with that system, not just one instance of it.
Speaker 1: R f I D security is an evolving field, and
Speaker 1: like all types of security, it's a constant game of
Speaker 1: trying to stay ahead of those who would compromise the system.
Speaker 1: And it involves lots of different strategies used in varying
Speaker 1: degrees and different combinations. So among some there's a healthy
Speaker 1: distrust of r f i D technology, and I would
Speaker 1: say that distrust is at least partly reasonable. R f
Speaker 1: i D is a technology that can be easily abused
Speaker 1: if you're not careful with it. Even if you assume
Speaker 1: a company is implementing the technology ethically. Errors can lead
Speaker 1: to big problems, ranging from identity theft to unauthorized access. Now,
Speaker 1: this does not mean r F I D technology is
Speaker 1: bad or inherently flawed. It just means that any implementation
Speaker 1: needs to be done carefully and with transparency so that
Speaker 1: you avoid instances of abuse. As for the employees at
Speaker 1: three Square Market, I'll really be interested to follow their
Speaker 1: experiences with these implants. I personally would probably not jump
Speaker 1: on this wagon if I were one of those employees,
Speaker 1: not because I would have a fear of abuse necessarily,
Speaker 1: but more because of not certain we won't have an
Speaker 1: alternative and possibly superior approach in the near future. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like going out and buying a brand new computer.
Speaker 1: You might feel some reluctance because you know, by the
Speaker 1: time you get at home, a newer, more awesome computer
Speaker 1: is going to hit the store shelves and make your
Speaker 1: purchase obsolete. Well, anything that would make an implant obsolete
Speaker 1: would be a huge slap in the face. If I'm
Speaker 1: gonna undergo any kind of surgical procedure, I want to
Speaker 1: make sure that that decision is a good one. For
Speaker 1: a good long while. Ah. Now I'm curious about you, guys.
Speaker 1: If you would end up taking on this approach, would
Speaker 1: you get an r f I d implant if it
Speaker 1: would mean that certain aspects of your lives would be
Speaker 1: more convenient and seamless, if you could get through security doors,
Speaker 1: you know, the appropriate ones, without having to carry an
Speaker 1: extra card or dongle of some sort, or if you
Speaker 1: were able to finally get that salad out of the
Speaker 1: micro vending machine and just walk away and everything would
Speaker 1: be taken care of. You wouldn't have to fiddle with
Speaker 1: any cards or anything like that. Is that worth it?
Speaker 1: Do you? Or do you think that this technology is
Speaker 1: largely it should just remain the realm of products and
Speaker 1: maybe pet but not people. I go back and forth.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of this technology can be solved
Speaker 1: with something you carry, something you own, but obviously that
Speaker 1: raises security questions too, because if someone else gets hold
Speaker 1: of that something, they might also get access to all
Speaker 1: of those other systems. So what do you guys think?
Speaker 1: Let me know? Send me a message my email addresses
Speaker 1: tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you
Speaker 1: can always let me know on Twitter or Facebook the
Speaker 1: handle at both of those is tech Stuff HSW. That
Speaker 1: wraps it up for this episode. You guys have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes, contact me and why those ways
Speaker 1: I just mentioned, let me know what you think, And
Speaker 1: of course, you can always tune in at twitch dot
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Speaker 1: You can watch as I fumble my way through these
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