Big Brother has a Bigger Brother

kw: book reviews, science fiction, political fiction, rfid

In a previous post (Big Brother in Your Pocket... ), I reviewed a book warning about the risks of proliferating RFID devices, such as toolroad pass tokens, smart cards, and trackable clothing tags. Now I find that, just about a year ago, a novel that illustrates the same premise appeared: The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks. After a bit of searching, I read that the book is the first of a planned trilogy. Will the final denouement be tragic, as is 1984? We'll have to wait and see.

The author claims to live "off the Grid." The Grid is the web of technology that tracks us: financial transactions such as our use of personal checks and ATMs; use of electronic convenience tokens such as EZ-Pass and Speedpass; purchases with credit cards. Recently I showed my wife how to look through the traffic system's surveillance cameras. I use them sometimes to look ahead on a planned trip, where congestion is likely. As we watched an intersection near our home, the camera's view suddenly slewed around, and it zoomed in on one car waiting for the light. The angle didn't allow reading the plate, but it would have been possible. However, the make and color of the car were evident. I told her, "The police just took control of that camera to look for something or someone. We're along for the ride."

Project the trends forward a few years, maybe ten at most. What will life be like? John Twelve Hawks shows us one possibility. While there is a mystical element to the story—it is a fantasy about Travelers who can roam free of their bodies—the dystopian background is all to possible.

There are dozens of Web pages with speculation about who Mr. Twelve Hawks really is. If his novel has the appropriate effect, we'll never find out. If instead the violent reaction of the public to recent attempts to spread RFID tracking becomes complacency, we'll know who the author is in just a few years, at the point it has become both physically impossible and a criminal offense to live off the Grid.

A few points to ponder:

• Most electronically operated doors use a fail-safe mechanism: they open when power is removed. The ones where I work use a strong electromagnet. Others use a latch held in place by a solenoid that drops out when the current is cut off. All such doors can be opened by a HERF device, a High-Energy Radio Frequency pulse generator that burns out electronics from a distance. You don't harm the electromagnet or solenoid, just the tiny transister that controls it. At present, public safety laws don't allow the sale of door latches that would lock someone inside a building if they fail. That just means Big Brother paranoids will have to make their own...
  
• A Traveler who is one personality of a Dissociator or Multiple Personality won't have to leave his/her body unattended.
  
• Any RFID device cannot communicate from inside a metal shield, a foil wrapping, metal-mesh lining of a glove on the hand for an implantable type, or a conductive plastic bag such as the gray or black bags delicate electronic parts are sold in.
  
• A smaller version of the HERF device should disable any tag, particularly if you know the RFID tag's resonant frequency. It wouldn't do the damage a microwave oven does to smart cards and clothing tags.
  
• Finally, do keep up-to-date by bookmarking Caspian and check in from time to time.