Ultra Wide Band RFID is a very powerful type of active Radio Frequency Identification. It is called active because it has a battery as a power source and so does not require a separate reader to contact it before it will transmit its data like a passive RFID. Instead, it transmits its data in a series of pulses fired on a regular timed basis. Some of the UWB RFID can be located within about a one foot accuracy by a receiver several hundred yards away. This location data can then be automatically logged.
A school in the UK called West Cheshire College was using this technology until February of 2013 to track the movements of its students and staff. They were able to see how individuals moved throughout the campus. They could log such items as where they were, when they were there and who they were with.
UWB RFID is very powerful technology with interesting characteristics. According to the attached article from the Guardian:
Read this article from the Guardian . It has a lot of good information and raises a lot of legitimate concerns about privacy."UWB is a weird technology," says Rupert Goodwins, the former editor of ZDNet UK, who remembers seeing early versions of it under the name "pulse radio" at Sheffield in the 1980s and Georgia Tech in the late 1990s."It's been used as through-the-wall radar in the past." Twenty years ago, "Georgia Tech had things that could monitor respiration, tell your gender over 500 metres through walls – without a tag, just using UWB as a radar system. They said they reckoned soon they would be able to get the resolution up to tell what people were saying by the scatter off their vocal cords." He adds, "I was expecting it to be much more commercially significant than it turned out to be."
Is UK college's RFID chip tracking of pupils an invasion of privacy?
When is a biometric not a biometric?
When it's an ultra-wideband RFID (radio frequency ID) tag which
provides such detailed and continuous information about your
movements that it makes logging your movements by fingerprints or
card check-ins redundant – because it knows where you are to within
centimetres.
It might sound useful or intrusive –
or both, depending on your point of view. And one of its biggest
users in the UK (outside of factories that want to trace where
potentially dangerous machines are being used) has been a vocational
college in West Cheshire that offers training and apprenticeships for
14 to 17-year-olds in fields such as hairdressing, forensics, and
accounting.
In a trial of up to three years, ending
in February 2013, pupils at West Cheshire College wore tags that
allowed them to be tracked in detail throughout the college's three
campuses. The tags used a new type of ultra-wideband active RFID
(Radio Frequency ID) that provides a far more detailed picture of
student and staff movements than anything available before.
When first asked about the trial in
October, the college's PR spokesperson, Louise Lewis, would say only:
"An RFID trial was conducted by the build contractors BAM and
their subcontractors, however the technology was only accepted by the
college for the purpose of physical asset tracking."
More recently, the college has expanded
on this, saying: "The technology was introduced with the aim of
assessing how it could be used for self-marking class attendance
registers, safeguarding purposes, and to improve the physical
management of the buildings."
Lewis says the trial began in May 2012,
when the building work was completed, and was discontinued in
February 2013, when a review showed that "the technology did not
enhance current systems or business operations" and the college
became concerned about rising costs to maintain the system in the
future.
The trial came to light owing to the
efforts of Pippa King, a Hull-based campaigner who, along with others
such as David Clouter, led the charge against the use of biometrics
in schools for such things as registration, checking out library
books, and paying for meals.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/19/college-rfid-chip-tracking-pupils-invasion-privacy
For you who like the tech, take a look at this document comparing two types of active RFID.
