Poster day jitters

Well I must admit I am a little worried the people who's posters I reviewed are going to come to me in search of blood. I did not understand that we were not critiquing the posters rather the research. So the first couple of days thinking the posters mattered more I commented on the poster itself. Oh well if I can hold on to my sanity just two more weeks maybe then I can get enough sleep to understand what in the hell has passed this semester. Wish me luck.
D

Fed up

There is no need to make the argument to me that I and my fellow students will need to be capable of working in teams in "the real world" because I have been living in it for many years now. I have had many different jobs in the last 10-12 years and all of them have a variable amount of team work required. I have been successful in every job that I have had and have never left a job because I could not work cooperatively and productively in a team.

This being said, there is a tremendous difference between team work in a job place and team work in academia. In a work place when a team member fails to preform that person is removed from the team and often from their position within the organization. The simulations presented in academia do not offer this level of motivation and therefore fail to meet their intended goals. The goals of the simulations are to teach students to compromise, to be flexible, considerate, manage time and learn to fulfill commitments. Instead team projects teach students that they can not rely on their peers, they must be prepared to produce the results of the team themselves and accept the fact that the team will all take credit for the product of the individual. In the end the quality of product represented by the team is of a poorer grade than what would have been produced by the individual had that individual started off the project knowing that they would be solely responsible for the project.

Academia needs to reformulate the way in which it attempts to simulate the expectations of the professional world.

Long lost prospectus

Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is a technology where a small device a RFID uses radio frequency to identify an object. "RFID chips" are usually composed of small circuit and an antenna that collects the radio waves, which in turn power the circuit. RFID is used to track inventory, to control access to sensitive areas and identify personnel in many commercial and government agencies. RFID “chips” have been successfully implanted in animals and humans. The U.S. government has started embedding RFID into the U.S. passports issued to its citizens and is considering embedding “RFID chips” into convicted criminals.

The interesting aspect to the RFID is the amount of interest and application of RFID without consideration of the ethical costs. Using RFID to store and/or collect data from retail customers to a nation’s citizens puts end users privacy at risk. These days identity theft is taking place at alarming rates RFID could cause this crime to evolve in ways yet to be considered. The use of surgically implanted RFIDs in humans invokes many different feelings in many people most of which are negative.

Is RFID a safe and secure technology to entrust our health and private identities to? Is the implementation of RFID into passports and IDs a threat to one’s privacy? Will implanting RFIDs in animals and humans pose a health hazard?

# questions written in that busted-ass MS word 2007

1- lead in statement

Is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) a valid threat to citizens privacy? Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is a technology where a small device a RFID uses radio frequency to identify an object. "RFID chips" are usually composed of small circuit and an antenna that collects the radio waves, which in turn power the circuit. RFID is used to track inventory, to control access to sensitive areas and identify personnel in many commercial and government agencies. RFID “chips” have been successfully implanted in animals and humans. The U.S. government has started embedding RFID into the U.S. passports issued to its citizens and is considering embedding “RFID chips” into convicted criminals.

2- Why this topic is "a problem or issue, that is, a conflict or something unsettled, perplexing, vexing, distressful, and in the need of investigation"

1. RFID is a threat to citizen’s privacy because it broadcasts a unique identifier that can be used to identify the carrier of the RFID this unique identifier can be used to compile additional information.

2. RFID chips in identification documents broadcast the owner’s personal information for anyone willing to invest a couple hundred dollars to retrieve it.

3. The reliance on RFID technology is a crutch that when relied on completely will cause tremendous lose when it fails.

4. The information on an RFID chip can be duplicated with ease without being in close proximity to the original chip.

3- Justifications for further inquisition (if you have the answers to (#2), answer “so what?”).

1. By carrying a device that broadcasts a unique identifier at all time the carrier of the RFID chip is supplying anyone who wishes to build a database of the carrier’s movements or activities with the primary key to the database.

2. Placing an RFID chip in personal identification documents such as driver’s licenses or passports to store the identifying characteristics of the holder; places this personal information at risk of being collected and used by people with malicious intent.

3. If our government decides to use RFID in passports or to identify government employees performing sensitive duties because, this new technology is harder to forge, places a high reliance on the infallibility of RFID and less on scrutinizing the passport and the person presenting the passport.

   One scenario is the possibility of a terrorist cloning the RFID in another persons passport to gain access to a plane or enter the U.S. Another scenario is terrorists using RFID to track the movements of the RFID carrier to facilitate the officials kidnapping. Worst case scenario is the ability for terrorists to use the RFID enabled document to identify a specific group individuals to remotely activate devices like improvised munitions-bombs.

So here are my initial questions I am thinking of asking the expert on digitization.

What is the largest obstacle for the digitization movement?

Who are the key players in the digitization movement?

How much money is involved in digitization?

What happens to the original document? Is it damaged?

How are rare documents and manuscripts digitized?

study on impact of rfid

Some sources to remember

http://www.eweek.com/category2/0,1738,1568291,00.asp
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2161003,00.asp
http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/privacy/privacy_advcom_12-2006_rpt_RFID.pdf
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2159666,00.asp
http://www.epcglobalinc.org/home
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/08/71521
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http://site.ebrary.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/lib/uncch/Top?channelName=uncch&cpage=1&f00=text&frm=smp.x&hitsPerPage=10&id=10120306&layout=document&p00=rfid&sch=%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0Search%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0&sortBy=score&sortOrder=desc http://site.ebrary.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/lib/uncch/Top?channelName=uncch&cpage=2&docID=10084484&f00=text&frm=smp.x&hitsPerPage=10&layout=document&p00=rfid&sch=%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0Search%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0&sortBy=score&sortOrder=desc http://site.ebrary.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/lib/uncch/Top?layout=search&nosr=1&sch.x=0&sch.y=0&sch=sch&p00=rfid&f00=text&p01=security&f01=subject&d=all&l=all&frm=adv.x http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1607561
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-scan31aug31,0,2715647.story
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/08/AR2007090800997_pf.html
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/xpls/abs_all.jsp?tp=&isnumber=33490&arnumber=1589116
RFID security and privacy: a research survey -pdf

Juels, A., "RFID security and privacy: a research survey," Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Journal on , vol.24, no.2, pp. 381-394, Feb. 2006
URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/iel5/49/33490/01589116.pdf?isnumber=33490∏=JNL&arnumber=1589116&arnumber=1589116&arSt=+381&ared=+394&arAuthor=Juels%2C+A.


TECHNICAL ADVISORY GROUP ON MACHINE READABLE TRAVEL DOCUMENTS (TAG-MRTD
www.icao.int/icao/en/atb/sgm/mrtd/TAG_MRTD17/TagMrtd17_WP016.pdf -

http://eprint.iacr.org/2005/052

SILS 75th wrap up

I felt under-dressed for the occasion but I was glad to be attending.

Complaining aside the event did make me feel like I am a part of something that matters and is going places. The president of UNC was there, Governor Hunt was there, and some one else who I'll look up later. The un-named guy had some very interesting points and really made me feel even more interested in what I am studying so much so that I feel like a chump for not making more notes while I do my readings.

Dinner and I'll come back to this

One of the things remarked on during one of the speeches was a notion of 'the information' becoming fragmented. So consider all the contents of recored history or every printed document for sake of comparison lets say 1000 units represents everything ever printed. Now we move into the technology age where 1000 books can fit on a cd and there are new books and other formats of recorder history now the history is represented by 1,000,000,000 units.
At this point with the quantity and variety of information on any particular topic available the ability to retrieve all relevent information becomes difficult. If you say give me everything on 1950's gas pumps you might get listings for holdings of patent applications, books of photo collections or some newspaper article detailing some accident, etc. Knowing how to catalog pictures, written documents, scale models, and 3D models of gas pumps is hard to do. Worse is the problem of knowing when to show what pieces of information to the user since no one is going to go beyond the first 3 or 4 pages of results. This is where the fragmentation comes into play.