Big Brother Bugs Books! Libraries and RFID

Public libraries  have thin budgets, so are easily tempted by cost saving promises.  As a child, I concluded that automation could improve mankind, and I became a gadget guy.   Here comes RFID for libraries.  I think the amount of improvement gained over barcodes is minimal, and not worth the cost.  One promise is that automatic checkin  can save labor costs.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a safety guideline on how close workers can be to a RFID reader for a period of hours.   I used to work around kilowatt radio transmitters, and know there can be hazzards.  Also, a RFID reader doesn’t inspect the condition of the library material being checked in.  The best way to do that is to have a human to look for damage.  See my old blog:

 https://thedonofpages.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/automatic-checkin/

Librarians talk about the importance of privacy, but talk is cheap and people’s privacy is a commodity worth money.  Industry and Commerce will increasingly use RFID to track people (“to help with consumer preferences”), and Readers will become widespread.  Readers are placed at access points such as building entrances, mass transit, retail stores, parking lots, even floor tiles and shelving.   Woodward Labs has a Reader hidden in a liquid soap dispenser.   Thus, if you are carrying a library book at any of those locations, you could be scanned and identified.  The book will say what you are reading.  The travels of the book itself from scanner to scanner can reveal your path to Big Brother.  Your employee badge identifies you, or perhaps your customer loyalty card will.  If you aren’t wearing your employee badge, maybe those Levi jeans you are wearing or other RFID tagged clothing you purchased will identify you.  See:

http://www.nonaiswa.org/?p=1222

 See patent 6,348,640 granted 2002 Febr 19.

A Patron checked a book out of a Library.  The self-checkout machine showed the book had the wrong title and subject, presumably because the RFID contained the wrong info.  The Patron showed the error to Library staff before leaving.  Some time after the book was returned to the Library, the Patron received an automatically generated overdue notice for the book.  The Patron had to go to the Library to pull the returned book off the Library shelf and hand it to them.  If you want to see less of a particular patron, try changing the RFID encoded subject of their book being checked out to “blowing up airplanes’ or “hostage taking”.   Sorry, Homeland Security, the library can’t talk about that particular patron and the book they had.  At a library, maybe you can get the book “Spychips” by Albrecht & McIntyre, published by Nelson Current, ISBN 1-5955-5020-8.  But better hurry before the library replaces the barcode with RFID, or Big Brother will know.