Out of financial chaos, futurist predicts cashless society and robocops

“An alternative road may bypass the main path of history, shortcircuiting the organic stages of consensus, value formation, and the experiences of common enterprise generally believed to underlie political community. This relies on a grave crisis or war to bring about a sudden transformation in national attitudes sufficient for the purpose. According to this version, the [New World] Order we examine may be brought into existence as a result of a series of sudden, nasty, and traumatic shocks.”

- A World Effectively Controlled by the United Nations by Lincoln P. Bloomfield. Prepared for IDA in support of a study submitted to the Department of State, dated February 24, 1961

If you were surprised by the financial crisis, wait until you hear what’s coming next. Futurologist Richard Watson journeys into tomorrow’s world

Future trends: money as a physical object might well become extinct

Telegraph | Sep 19, 2008

Futurologist Richard Watson’s 2050 vision: Goodbye Belgium, hello brain transplants

After a week when it’s been impossible to predict which financial giant will still be standing at the end of the day, let alone the year, it would seem like a fool’s errand to talk about decades down the line.

These days, if you raise your gaze to the horizon, you’ll find experts warning of a host of problems: melting ice caps, global pandemics, terrorism, the end of oil, meteor strikes, even robot uprisings.

It’s all too easy to become paralysed by such possibilities – and yes, there are ideas, discoveries and events over the horizon that we can’t possibly comprehend. But while the future is unknown and unwritten, we can begin to trace its outline, and prepare the first drafts.

For example, the financial services industry has been in quite a state recently. Despite today’s troubles, we can say that we’ll always need banking and insurance. But will we get them from the same places? Asda and Tesco already sell insurance alongside carrots and spaghetti, and are certain to expand their offerings.

What would happen to the big banks if Wal-Mart, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Vodafone all applied for banking licences to deliver services such as electronic payment, as I believe they will? And will we still need high street branches staffed by human beings once artificial intelligence really kicks in, and you can talk to a machine that’s checking the market every second for the best loan or insurance policy?

Even the nature of how we pay for such things will be different. It is estimated that by 2020, only 10 per cent of financial transactions will be in cash. We can safely predict that the idea of money as a physical object might well become extinct not long after – especially if a global pandemic starts us thinking about all the germs on those grubby notes. Instead, digital transactions will be made through computers, or cell phones, or even chips inserted into our forearms.

Wherever you look in society, massive changes will be taking place. If my predictions are accurate, by 2050 there won’t be DVDs, or national currencies, or a monarchy, or a unified Belgium, but we might well have a ladder into space, robotic policemen and diets based on our individual genome. I’ve picked out some of the more important or exotic arrivals and departures in the list below.

If it feels slightly overwhelming, remember that too much information, twinned with not enough time, is something we will all have to get used to in the future.

However, if you want a simpler take, there are five key factors to remember.

The first is ageing. In Japan, the percentage of people aged over 75 is forecast to increase by 36 per cent between 2005 and 2015, meaning that taxes would have to go up by 175 per cent in a generation to maintain current levels of benefit.

We’re spending a record amount on pharmaceuticals, but we’ll spend more on them as we age – and on technology to replace or store our memories, and refurbish our worn-out bodies (not to mention ways of designing packaging that those with weak hands and poor eyesight can actually open).

Second, the environment will remain vitally important, but climate change won’t be the only game in town – the approach of peak oil, peak coal, peak gas, peak water, peak uranium and even peak people (a severe shortage of workers in many parts of the world) will also have an impact, and require a profound shift towards sustainability.

In political and economic terms, the shift of power to the east, and the rise of countries such as China and India, will continue – the third factor to remember.

We already know that the world is getting smaller, and the fourth idea – greater connectivity – will continue to change how people live, work and think. One billion of us are already online, and this is expected to double within a decade or so. As a result, privacy will be dead or dying – but we may get smarter at making decisions, because our connectivity will allow instant polling of a crowd whose wisdom is nearly always greater than any single member’s.

Finally, there is technology. As the “Grin” technologies converge – genetics, robotics, internet and nanotechnology – we could see self-replicating machines, with intelligence equal to or greater than our own. We might be able to download not only our memories but also our consciousness into such a machine, and live for ever inside it. And to think that in 2008 we were worried about getting too much email.

The future will not be a singular experience, and nor is it a foregone conclusion. Some of us will embrace technology and globalisation, while others will try to escape them.

If history teaches us anything, it is that revolutionary thinking can overturn so-called inevitabilities and impossibilities. But even when it feels, as it has this week, like the end of the world, it’s better at least to start thinking about the future, than not to think about it at all.

• ‘Future Files: The 5 Trends that will shape the next 50 years’ by Richard Watson (Nicholas Brearley) is available from Telegraph Books for £11.99 + £1.25 p&p. To order, call 0870 428 4112 or go to www.books.telegraph.co.uk

Visa helps man live on plastic for ten months in cashless society experiment

Earlier this year Visa found out about his quest, and offered its support as he was using one of its Visa payWave cards, which enables him to pay for items costing less than £10 simply by touching the card against a sensor.

A man has spent the past 10 months not using cash to see if it is possible to live in a cashless society.

Telegraph | Sep 19, 2008

Man lives for ten months without cash

James Allan, 25, vowed not to handle or use any currency with the Queen’s head on it, including notes, coins and even stamps, for a year as part of a drunken bet made last December in a pub that did not accept cards.

The web content editor, who lives in London, said he wanted to see if it was possible to live a cash-free life, although he admitted that he thought his friend was the subject of the bet and not himself.

As a result he has had to rely solely on using credit and debit cards to buy goods and services.

He said: “It was all right at first because I had a very supportive girlfriend who bailed me out, but when the relationship went awry in January, I realised how difficult it was going to be.”

Mr Allan, who believes he is the only person to ever try to live without using cash for a whole year, said he had now got used to only going to places that would accept payment by card.

He has also changed many of his leisure activities from browsing the East End’s markets, to going to things that are free or clubs that do not charge you to go in.

But there have been some low points, including not being able to use supermarket trolleys because they require a £1 coin to unlock them, and having to walk past a £50 note he found lying in the street.

Another bad time was when he was forced to walk 10 miles across London one night because he could not find anywhere to top up his Oyster card, while he has often had to make extra purchases in corner shops to meet the minimum £5 spend needed to pay by card.

He said friends’ birthdays could be difficult if people decided to go to a pub or club that did not accept card payments, meaning he was not able to drink.

But Mr Allan said the thing that had upset him most was when a band his housemates were in performed in a small cafe and at the end, when a glass came around for people to make donations towards the cost, he had been unable to contribute.

He said even though everyone there knew what he was doing and were supportive of him, having to pass on the glass without putting anything in it had been a “horrible experience”.

Another problem arose when he needed to put down a £800 cash deposit on his accommodation, and he had to get his mother to come down from Oxford to handle the transaction for him.

Earlier this year Visa found out about his quest, and offered its support as he was using one of its Visa payWave cards, which enables him to pay for items costing less than £10 simply by touching the card against a sensor.
He said the best thing about having the support from Visa was that if a machine he needed to use was broken, he could ring them up and complain.

Mr Allan said he was likely to continue to live without cash when the year comes to an end.

He said: “I keep changing my mind but I find money unbelievably vulgar now. It is filthy and dirty and I have really gone off it.”

Shoppers to use fingerprints or eye scans to pay for goods

Barclaycard has announced it is investing a seven-figure sum in “contactless payment” technology  Photo: Getty Images

Shoppers could soon be able to pay for goods and services using their fingerprints, or iris identification techniques.

Telegraph | Sep 8, 2008

By Myra Butterworth

The futuristic systems, like those used by Tom Cruise in the science fiction film Minority Report, are being developed by scientists for Barclaycard.

The company has announced it is investing a seven-figure sum in “contactless payment” technology.

This allows customers to use everyday items they carry around with them – such as mobile phones, key fobs or even their eyes or fingerprints – to make payments.

It means shoppers will no longer have to rely on cards.

Barclaycard, which is part of Barclays, has already introduced a new-style cash machine in the United Arab Emirates enabling people to use their fingerprints to withdraw money and shoppers in the UK may soon be able to use the same technology.

Antony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclaycard, said: “It’s possible we’ll see an end to plastic in the next five to 10 years with new technologies to take its place emerging now. It could turn out to be one of the shortest lived payment methods in history, going from being ubiquitous to a museum piece in the same way as the video cassette.”

Barclaycard also aims to have one million customers upgraded to its contactless payment system OnePulse by the end of the year. OnePulse enables people to buy items for less than £10 by touching their card against a sensor, without even having to take it out of their wallet. It can also be used as an Oyster card on London transport.

Barclaycard said people may soon be able to hover their mobile over the price label of an item in a shop, confirm their purchase and take it away without having to go to a checkout or get a receipt.

Mr Jenkins said: “If I had said to you 10 years ago that you couldn’t pay with a cheque at the supermarket, you wouldn’t have believed me. That is now the reality, and we see plastic cards going the same way eventually.”

How RFID Tags Could Be Used to Track Unsuspecting People

Average consumers may not realize how many RFID tags they carry around. The devices are embedded in personal items and even some clothing.

Related

E-Passports ‘can be cloned’
Microchipped passports the Government claim are foolproof can be cloned in minutes, it has been reported.

A privacy activist argues that the devices pose new security risks to those who carry them, often unwittingly

Scientific American | August 2008

Radio-frequency identi fication (RFID) tags are embedded in a growing number of personal items and identity documents. Because the tags were designed to be powerful tracking devices and they typically incorporate little security, people wearing or carrying them are vulnerable to surreptitious surveillance and profiling. Worldwide, legislators have done little to address those risks to citizens.

By Katherine Albrecht

*excerpts*

If you live in a state bordering Canada or Mexico, you may soon be given an opportunity to carry a very high tech item: a remotely readable driver’s license. Designed to identify U.S. citizens as they approach the nation’s borders, the cards are being promoted by the Department of Homeland Security as a way to save time and simplify border crossings. But if you care about your safety and privacy as much as convenience, you might want to think twice before signing up.

The new licenses come equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags that can be read right through a wallet, pocket or purse from as far away as 30 feet. Each tag incorporates a tiny microchip encoded with a unique identification number. As the bearer approaches a border station, radio energy broadcast by a reader device is picked up by an antenna connected to the chip, causing it to emit the ID number. By the time the license holder reaches the border agent, the number has already been fed into a Homeland Security database, and the traveler’s photograph and other details are displayed on the agent’s screen.

Although such “enhanced” driver’s licenses remain voluntary in the states that offer them, privacy and security experts are concerned that those who sign up for the cards are unaware of the risk: anyone with a readily available reader device—unscrupulous marketers, government agents, stalkers, thieves and just plain snoops—can also access the data on the licenses to remotely track people without their knowledge or consent. What is more, once the tag’s ID number is associated with an individual’s identity—for example, when the person carrying the license makes a credit-card transaction—the radio tag becomes a proxy for that individual. And the driver’s licenses are just the latest addition to a growing array of “tagged” items that consumers might be wearing or carrying around, such as transit and toll passes, office key cards, school IDs, “contactless” credit cards, clothing, phones and even groceries.

RFID tags have been likened to barcodes that broadcast their information, and the comparison is apt in the sense that the tiny devices have been used mainly for identifying parts and inventory, including cattle, as they make their way through supply chains. Instead of having to scan every individual item’s Universal Product Code (UPC), a warehouse worker can register the contents of an entire pallet of, say, paper towels by scanning the unique serial number encoded in the attached RFID tag. That number is associated in a central database with a detailed list of the pallet’s contents. But people are not paper products. During the past decade a shift toward embedding chips in individual consumer goods and, now, official identity documents has created a new set of privacy and security problems precisely because RFID is such a powerful tracking technology. Very little security is built into the tags themselves, and existing laws offer people scant protection from being surreptitiously tracked and profiled while living an increasingly tagged life.

Beyond Barcodes

The first radio tags identified military aircraft as friend or foe during World War II, but it was not until the late 1980s that similar tags became the basis of electronic toll-collection systems, such as E-ZPass along the East Coast. And in 1999 corporations began considering the tags’ potential for tracking millions of individual objects. In that year Procter & Gamble and Gillette (which have since merged to become the world’s largest consumer-product manufacturing company) formed a consortium with Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers, called the Auto-ID Center, to develop RFID tags that would be small, efficient and cheap enough to eventually replace the UPC barcode on everyday consumer products.

But the possibility that the security of such cards could be compromised is just one reason for concern. Even if tighter data-protection measures could someday prevent unauthorized access to RFID-card data, many privacy advocates worry that remotely readable identity documents could be abused by governments that wish to tightly monitor and control their citizens.

China’s national ID cards, for instance, are encoded with what most people would consider a shocking amount of personal information, including health and reproductive history, employment status, religion, ethnicity and even the name and phone number of each cardholder’s landlord. More ominous still, the cards are part of a larger project to blanket Chinese cities with state-of-the-art surveillance technologies. Michael Lin, a vice president for China Public Security Technology, a private company providing the RFID cards for the program, unflinchingly described them to the New York Times as “a way for the government to control the population in the future.” And even if other governments do not take advantage of the surveillance potential inherent in the new ID cards, ample evidence suggests that data-hungry corporations will.

Living a Tagged Life

According to the patent, here is how it would work in a retail environment: an “RFID tag scanner located [in the desired tracking location]… scans the RFID tags on [a] person…. As that person moves around the store, different RFID tag scanners located throughout the store can pick up radio signals from the RFID tags carried on that person and the movement of that person is tracked based on these detections…. The person tracking unit may keep records of different locations where the person has visited, as well as the visitation times.”

Protecting the Public

If RFID tags can enable an amusement park to capture detailed, personalized videos of thousands of people a day, imagine what a determined government could do—not to mention marketers or criminals. That is why my colleagues in the privacy community and I have so firmly opposed the use of RFID in government-issued identity documents or individual consumer items. As far back as 2003, my organization, CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering)—along with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and 40 other leading privacy and civil liberties advocates and organizations recognized this threat and issued a position paper that condemned the tracking of human beings with RFID as inappropriate.

In response to these concerns, dozens of U.S. states have introduced RFID consumer-protection bills—which have all been either killed or gutted by heavy opposition from lobbyists for the RFID industry. When the New Hampshire Senate voted on a bill that would have imposed tough regulations on RFID in 2006, a last-minute floor amendment replaced it with a two-year study instead. (I was appointed by the governor to serve on the resulting commission.) That same year a California bill that would have prohibited the use of RFID in government-issued documents passed both houses of the legislature, only to be vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

On the federal level, no high-profile consumer-protection bills related to RFID have been passed. Instead, in 2005, the Senate Republican High Tech Task Force praised RFID applications as “exciting new technologies” with “tremendous promise for our economy” and vowed to protect RFID from regulation or legislation.

Meanwhile the RFID train is barreling forward. Gigi Zenk, a spokesperson at Washington’s licensing agency, recently confirmed that there are 10,000 enhanced licenses “on the street now—that people are actually carrying.” That’s a lot of potential for abuse, and it will only grow. The state recently mustered a halfhearted response, passing a law that designates the unauthorized reading of a tag “for the purpose of fraud, identity theft, or for any other illegal purpose” as a class C felony, subject to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Nowhere in the law does it say, however, that scanning for other purposes such as marketing—or perhaps “to control the population”—is prohibited. We ignore these risks at our peril.

Note: This article was originally published with the title, “RFID Tag–You’re It”.

Full Story

Actor blasts school for Big Brother control over students

School fingered over ‘Big Brother’ control

Cotswold Journal | Jul 10, 2008

By Simon Crump

THE actor famous for playing Eric Catchpole in the Lovejoy television series has accused Chipping Campden School’s headteacher of planning to control her pupils Big Brother-style.

Headteacher, Annette France, responded to Chris Jury’s accusation by saying he was being alarmist and denying that new technology being installed at the school would threaten pupils’ freedom.

Mr Jury, a Blockley resident whose children attend the Cidermill Lane school, made his accusation in an open letter to Ms France.

He was responding to a letter she circulated to her pupils’ parents announcing biometric machines would be installed at the school.

Each of the 1,200 11-to-18-year-old pupils will be asked to insert a fingertip into one of the machines when arriving at school every day.

The machine will record the child’s unique digital signature to identify him or her for electronic registration – intended to improve security – and cash-less catering which will remove the need for children to carry money to purchase school meals, thus reducing the likelihood of loss, bullying and theft and eliminating stigma associated with free school meals.

This technology will also shorten the time it takes pupils to be served school meals.

Parents can opt their children out of this system, which would see the youngsters use a card-swipe alternative.

However, in his letter to Ms France, Mr Jury said he was disturbed by the introduction of the technology which he believes is the latest example of an authority seeking to infringe the public’s freedom on the grounds that people need protection from various threats.

He said pupils will be exposed to the threat of being tracked and manipulated for sinister purposes, as in the novels Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Nineteen Eight-Four by George Orwell.

Mr Jury, who has also directed episodes of the Eastenders TV soap opera, said: “I read Brave New World and 1984 while at school in the seventies, now my own children don’t have to read about it – they can experience it everyday at their delightful Cotswold school.

“The use of this technology is simply not justified by your stated aims of reducing truancy and lunchtime queues.

“I urge you to reconsider this proposal.”

Ms France said she wished Mr Jury had raised his concerns with her before going public.

She said third parties would not access the biometric data and the school already securely held the pupils’ names, addresses and dates of birth.

Saying the technology was only being introduced because it was more efficient, Ms France added: “Mr Jury’s being a bit alarmist.

“I’m not infringing human rights and I’m not managing their behaviour, I’m checking they are in lessons; it’s my job.”

Secret Bilderberg Agenda To Microchip Americans Leaked

Elitists want to microchip Americans in name of fighting terrorism, Europeans universally opposed to attack on Iran, Globalists fear oil prices rising too quickly

Prison Planet | June 10, 2008

by Paul Joseph Watson

Sources from inside the 2008 Bilderberg meeting have leaked the details of what elitists were discussing in Chantilly Virginia last week and the talking points were ominous – a plan to microchip Americans under the pretext of fighting terrorist groups which will be identified as blonde haired, blue eyed westerners.

Veteran Bilderberg sleuth Jim Tucker relies on sources who regularly attend Bilderberg as aides and assistants but who are not Bilderberg members themselves. The information they provided this year is bone-chilling for those who have tracked the development of the plan to make the general public consider implanted microchips as a convenience as routine as credit cards.

“Under the heading of resisting terrorism there were points made about how the terrorist organizations are recruiting people who do not look like terrorists – blonde, blue eyed boys – they’re searching hard for those types to become the new mad bombers,” said Tucker.

As we have documented, the blue eyed blonde haired Al-Qaeda line is a familiar talking point that has been pushed on Fox News and within other Neo-Con circles in an attempt to turn the anti-terror apparatus around to target dissidents, protesters and the American people in general.

Ominously, Tucker’s source also told him that Bilderberg were discussing the microchipping of humans on a mass scale, which would be introduced under the pretext of fighting terrorism whereby the “good guys” would be allowed to travel freely from airports so long as their microchip could be scanned and the information stored in a database.

Tucker said the idea was also sold on the basis that it would help hospital staff treat a patient in an emergency situation because a scan of the chip would provide instantaneous access to health details.

Tucker underscored that Bilderberg were talking about subdermally implanted chips and not merely RFID chips contained in clothing. The discussion took place in a main conference hall and was part of the agenda, not an off-hand remark in the hotel bar.

Such a bizarre concept may seem unbelievable to some, but over the last ten years there have been dozens of examples of people accepting implanted chips for a variety of different reasons.

In 2004, Mexico’s attorney general and 160 of his office staff were implanted with tracker chips to control access to to secure areas of their headquarters.

The Baja Beach Club in Barcelona and other nightclubs around the world are already offering implantable chips to customers who want to pay for drinks with the wave of a hand and also get access to VIP areas of the club lounge.

Bilderberg skeptical of attack on Iran

Tucker’s source told him that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates did attend Bilderberg despite him not appearing on the official list.

Tucker said that his sources told him Gates was in attendance to present his case for war with Iran, but that the majority of Bilderberg members were against an attack at this time.

“The Europeans were generally opposed to an invasion of Iran – Gates made the regular war propaganda drill about how Iran is a nuclear threat to everybody,” said Tucker, adding that European Bilderbergers made snide comments about where such nuclear weapons actually were being kept and at one point joking that they were possibly “in Saddam Hussein’s tomb”.

Despite Bilderberg opposition, Tucker said that the administration was still considering an attack before Bush leaves office in January.

“At least 90 per cent of the Europeans oppose a war, probably closer to 100 per cent,” said Tucker, adding, “most of the Americans were passive and deferential to the Secretary of Defense and Condoleezza Rice’s pitch in so far as Iran is concerned”.

Tucker said that most Americans present at the meeting were opposed to attacking Iran but dare not be as visible and loud in their opposition as the Europeans.

Energy and oil prices

“One of the Bilderberg boys raised this question – should we put a lid on the rise in oil prices, are we reaching the point of diminishing returns,” said Tucker, adding that Bilderberg noted how Americans were trading in their SUV’s in record numbers for small and more fuel efficient cars and using more public transport to combat high gas prices.

Tucker’s source said that Bilderberg were predicting $5 for a gallon of gas by the end of this summer and oil over $150 dollars a barrel, but that this was a ceiling and oil prices would probably begin to decline thereafter because they thought the acceleration had happened too quickly.

As we previously reported, Bilderberg called for oil prices to soar in 2005 when oil was a mere $40 a barrel.

During the conference in Germany, Henry Kissinger told his fellow attendees that the elite had resolved to ensure that oil prices would double over the course of the next 12-24 months, which is exactly what happened.

During their 2006 meeting in Ottawa Canada, Bilderberg agreed to push for $105 a barrel before the end of 2008. With that target having been smashed months ago, the acceleration towards $150 is outstripping even Bilderberg’s goal, which is why the elitists expressed a desire to cool prices at least in the short term.

Just two days after he left Bilderberg, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, George W. Bush and others expressed support for a strong dollar and Bernanke hinted that interest rates could rise, which immediately caused oil prices to drop in line with Bilderberg’s consensus.

Shell station customers ‘pay by touch’

 

Shell Oil provided this photo of a Pay By Touch enrollment kiosk. Chicago drivers have a new way to pay for gasoline: with their fingertips.Ten Shell gas stations in the Windy City are testing biometric systems that let consumers walk up to the pump, scan their fingertips on a device and fill up their vehicles. The systems, also installed at Shell convenience stores, are directly linked to customers’ checking or credit-card accounts for payment.

AP | Nov 1, 2007

By LAUREN TARA LaCAPRA

NEW YORK – Chicago drivers have a new way to pay for gasoline: with their fingertips.

Ten Shell gas stations in the Windy City are testing biometric systems that let consumers walk up to the pump, scan their fingertips on a device and fill up their vehicles. The systems, also installed at Shell convenience stores, are directly linked to customers’ checking or credit-card accounts for payment.

“When we talk to customers, they’re always looking for ways to make buying gasoline quicker and easier, and always looking for ways to make their transactions faster and more secure,” said Chris Susse, Shell’s manager of global refueling innovations. “They don’t want to carry more cards, kits and keychains, and they want it to be free.”

Customers will be able to initially scan their fingerprints at a kiosk inside the gas station and can link payment information either at the store or online.

The biometric devices, made by a San Francisco-based company called Pay By Touch, are one part of a technological trifecta Shell is rolling out at its gas stations.

Shell has partnered with Fuelcast Media International LLC to offer local news, weather and sports on digital screens at the pump. Fuelcast pays Shell for the ability to display advertisements along with the content from local NBC stations. The monitors are installed at 300 Shell stations across the U.S.

In addition, gas station attendants are testing hand-held wireless devices that allow full-service customers to pay electronically at their car window.

The high-tech push is a multi-prong initiative to build customer loyalty, stay ahead of competitors on the technological curve and gain revenue from the Fuelcast deal. Shell said it is the first brand to launch the biometric systems, though expansion hinges on whether its customers take to the futuristic finger scanners.

Brandon Wright, spokesman for the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, said he had not heard of any gas stations using biometrics, but wouldn’t be surprised if they were featured on the “next generation of pumps” as consumers demand quick, convenient payment methods.

Shell, which is part of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, has not yet promoted the systems, so uptake has been minimal, Susse said.

Sunflower Market, a Chicago grocery store, also has Pay By Touch systems installed. About 2 percent of its customers signed up for the payment option, said the store’s manager, Debbie Britton.

“I think it scares people,” Britton said. “They’re more confused about the whole system. Some of them say, ‘Well, now the FBI can find me.’”

Shoppers who consider signing up for such systems should find out whether their information is shared with affiliates or third parties, said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

Shell said it will not share personal information of Pay By Touch customers with third parties, and it still offers traditional forms of payment for those uncomfortable with the system.

Shell officials note that the system is less susceptible to identity theft since it’s impossible to duplicate or steal a fingerprint. Alternatives like cash, credit cards and keychain payment cards with radio-frequency identification chips can be stolen and used by others.

Industrywide adoption depends on whether gas station owners will be willing to pay for new pumps, which can cost “thousands to tens of thousands of dollars,” the PMAA’s Wright said.

Shell is uncertain of how much the high-tech initiative will ultimately cost or how the devices will be received, although the pilot program is not a major expense, Susse said.

Nonetheless, the Houston-based company is betting that making its brand distinct from other gas stations will make customers come back.

“We’d like to see an increase in customer loyalty because we’re the only gas retailer offering this service,” Susse said.

RFID Revolution: Your cars will be tagged

Enabling every car with RFID would help the government track them remotely…

Economic Times | Sep 25, 2007

by Rajat Guha & Nirbhay Kumar

NEW DELHI: The ministry of heavy industries is considering a proposal to make it mandatory to fit RFIDenabled devices in the cars manufactured in India. It will be the responsibility of the car manufacturers to ensure that all new cars have these radio-frequency identification tags. It is believed that RFID tags would help in traffic management as traffic violations by motorists could be tracked and all violations identified. Also, motorists would get charged automatically as soon as they enter a toll area.

The RFID-based system that is proposed to enable tracking of vehicles relies on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transporters . An RFID tag is an object that can be fitted on any object for the purpose of identification using radiowaves.

“The expected increase of cars and SUVs from 2005 to 2035 is 13 times (35.8 million to 236.4 million vehicles), while two wheelers are expected to increase about 6.6 times (35.8 million to 236.4 million vehicles). This coupled with declining share of public transport is leading to severe problem of congestion , inflicting a high cost on the economy in the form of travel delays, loss of productivity and increase in road fatalities and air quality deterioration. Therefore, enabling every car with RFID would help the government track them remotely,” an official said.

In Singapore, public transport buses and trains employ passive RFID cards known as EZ-Link cards. Traffic into crowded downtown areas is regulated by variable tolls imposed using an active tagging system combined with the use of stored-value cards (known as cash cards). RFID is also used in Malaysia Expressways payment system, known as ‘Touch ‘n Go’ . Due to the name and design, the card needs to be touched for usage.

The ministry of urban development has already discussed a similar agenda with many states. The ministry has proposed a ‘core area charge’ for different cities to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s nerve centre. So, people could end up paying a special levy to drive into Connaught Circus, the heart of the Capital.

According to government officials, the important areas in major metropolitan cities like Connaught Place in Delhi, MG Road in Bangalore and Colaba and Andheri in Mumbai have been facing chaotic traffic and attendant environment problems. The Delhi government is planning to substantially increase the parking fee and entrance charge in such core areas to convert them into traffic-free zones.

McDonald’s previews new system using cell phones to place orders and pay

RFID News | Sep 17, 2007

McDonald’s RFID Reader on PnoneMcDonald’s has teamed up with SK Telecom to offer a new way of ordering. The new ordering scheme, which uses RFID was unveiled at a McDonald’s in western Seoul. According to an article in The Korea Times, customers have to first download a program to their handsets using SK Telecom’s Nate mobile Internet service in order to use the system. Once inside McDonald’s, each table has an RFID enabled menu as well as an RFID reader that plugs into the handsets. Customers plug the reader into their mobile phones, and point them at the item on the menu that they wish to eat or drink. The bill is then charged through the mobile phone and when the meal is ready, the system sends a text message to the phone so the customer can pick up the ready tray at a designated counter.

Big Brother Hits The Beach

AP | Jul 31, 2007

by Wayne Parry

OCEAN CITY, N.J.— At the beach of the future, high tide will meet high-tech.

Visitors will wear wristbands that automatically debit their bank accounts or credit cards to pay for beach access, food and parking. Garbage cans will send e-mail to cleanup crews when they’re ready to be emptied.

And people won’t even think about trying to sneak in: Beach checkers could scan the sands with handheld devices and instantly know who didn’t pay.

This southern New Jersey city plans to deliver a variety of public services and Internet access using radio-frequency identification chips and Wi-Fi wireless technology. The $3 million project is expected to be finished by next summer.
Beach badges, those plastic or cloth scourges of the Jersey shore, could become a thing of the past. The beach-access fees — $5 per day, $10 for a week, or $20 for the entire summer — will remain.

“This is the future,” said Karen Kinloch, a summer resident. “It’s where we’re at right now. It’s probably overdue. It’s kind of antiquated to take a piece of plastic and pin it to your swimsuit.”

Will McKinley, a badge checker stationed on boardwalk at the 19th Street beach, said the new system would make his job easier.

“It will take the hassle out of going up to people and asking to see their badges,” he said. “They’re more OK with it up here. On the beach, they don’t like to be hassled.”

But the new system also could eliminate McKinley’s job. Last year, Ocean City spent more than $282,000 to pay 170 badge checkers. Jonathan Baltuch, whose Atlanta-based Marketing Resources Inc. is helping the city plan the system, estimated the new gear could cut that cost in half.

Nationwide, nearly 20 coastal municipalities have wireless Internet systems, mostly in California and Florida, according to the Web site MuniWireless.com. But few, if any, boast the kind of features Ocean City is planning.

The system Ocean City is envisioning should be relatively easy to build and operate, said Esme Vos, MuniWireless’ founder. The wide, unobstructed beach, combined with relatively few trees and almost no tall buildings to interfere with wireless signals, all work in Ocean City’s favor, Baltuch said.

Ocean City would use a combination of Wi-Fi to provide Internet access, and RFID, which is the type of tracking technology that libraries and department stores use to make sure no one sneaks books or merchandise out the door.

One feature of the planned technology should prove itself popular with parents — the ability to link one wristband to others. A mother going to the beach with three small children, for instance, could have her bracelet linked to those of her children.

If one of them passes an electronic sensor at the entrance or exit to the boardwalk without the right adult, a text message would instantly be sent to her cell phone.

“I’ve helped lost children try to find their parents on the beach, and that would be a great thing,” Kinloch said. “It’s easy for them to stray off. You only turn your head for a second, and they can be gone. It does happen.”

Even the trash cans on this beach would be high-tech. Special solar-powered units would have sensors that, when the container is three-quarters full, would automatically send an e-mail to the public works department asking a worker to come empty them.

And parking lots near the beach would have signs that would tell drivers the location and number of open spots.

The network would be owned by the city but paid for by a vendor. The city has requested proposals from interested companies, and hopes to award a contract by early September.

The network would enable city officials to know exactly how many people are on the beach at a particular time.

“They can see that at 1:30, there are 60,000 people on the beach, and say ‘Hey, we need to get some more police into that area,’ ” said Baltuch, the consultant.

He estimated the network could generate $14 million in revenue for the city over the first five years, and $12 million for the company that operates it, through user fees and advertisements to be sold on the network.