An article on Wired says a school district in Philadelphia was caught spying students by using LANrev, a MAC-based asset management software on MacBooks for high school students, which was preinstalled on each of the computer and was supposedly used to track the device and recover the equipment in the event of theft.
The laptop usage policy explicitly stated the users could not modify the loaded software in any way, nor could they use another laptop while in school or leave it at home. So even if the students found out the presence of the software, they coul not remove it anyway.
Needless to say, a public outrage burst out, the IT staff were blamed for the whole scandal, and the lawsuit is seeking a class action against the school district.
Moral lesson? Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window. (Ironically the quote is attributed to Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple...)
In addition to an article stating a Facebook employee claims that Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn't believe in privacy, Electronic Frontier Foundation has posted a timeline that shows how Facebook's privacy policy has evolved, from good to bad, from bad to worse:
Ca. 2005:
No personal information that you submit to Thefacebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.Ca. 2006:
We understand you may not want everyone in the world to have the information you share on Facebook; that is why we give you control of your information. Our default privacy settings limit the information displayed in your profile to your school, your specified local area, and other reasonable community limitations that we tell you about.
Ca. 2007:
Profile information you submit to Facebook will be available to users of Facebook who belong to at least one of the networks you allow to access the information through your privacy settings (e.g., school, geography, friends of friends). Your name, school name, and profile picture thumbnail will be available in search results across the Facebook network unless you alter your privacy settings.
Ca. Nov. 2009:
Facebook is designed to make it easy for you to share your information with anyone you want. You decide how much information you feel comfortable sharing on Facebook and you control how it is distributed through your privacy settings. You should review the default privacy settings and change them if necessary to reflect your preferences. You should also consider your settings whenever you share information. ...
Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, may be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), is subject to indexing by third party search engines, may be associated with you outside of Facebook (such as when you visit other sites on the internet), and may be imported and exported by us and others without privacy limitations. The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings.
Ca. Dec. 2009:
Certain categories of information such as your name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region, and networks you belong to are considered publicly available to everyone, including Facebook-enhanced applications, and therefore do not have privacy settings. You can, however, limit the ability of others to find this information through search using your search privacy settings.
Ca. Apr. 2010:
When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. ... The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” ... Because it takes two to connect, your privacy settings only control who can see the connection on your profile page. If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection.
Any and all original material on the EFF website may be freely distributed at will under the Creative Commons Attribution License, unless otherwise noted.
OK, the way it evolves is really disturbing. For the time being, configuring my privacy setting to not let anyone else to see my profile should do, but if things really get out of hand, then maybe account removal is the only way out.
It's been several days since I submitted the drafts to the panels. Doing all the corrections and additions were no fun, but at least I've done with them.Now that the presentation has been moved back for another week, it's time to clear out all the final projects of the subjects.
In the meantime, just stumbled on this piece of news: a Tokyo Uni has developed a paint that claims to absorb frequencies of up to 100GHz. While it's mostly to prevent your neighbours from leeching your WiFi, it might come handy for my project as well, since I've yet to figure out how to prevent an RFID reader from picking up signal from the tags levels above or below the reader is mean to read should it is implemented for real.
Currently staying aboard the bus somewhere in Terengganu (presumably Besut), just a couple hours away from KB.
Once home gonna do some corrections on the draft especially the formatting...
Am doing further studies on SSRs and found some interesting items:
- as I said before, AirAsia, being low-cost carrier, does not do much SSR. They have explicitly said they do not handle UMs. For them, "Children under 12 years old on the day of travel requiring supervision will not be regarded as able to travel independently on the basis that they may endanger themselves or others if travelling unaccompanied." <- O RLY? I've seen more damages being done by adults...
-AK now does handle wheelchair-bound passengers, but only after they got a lot of flak for not providing the service...And they have further TnC attached...
"AirAsia can carry only a maximum of 8 guests per flight who have reduced mobility* provided that quadraplegic guests are limited to not more than 4 per flight. Under certain circumstances we may require the guest to travel with a companion.
* 'reduced mobility' refers to paraplegic or quadriplegic guests."
-Lactose-intolerant and gluten-allergic are covered with special meals, but peanut-allergic are NOT among them. Not really surprising though, given how much peanuts are on board the aircraft. On a side note I like those salty peanuts MAS serves and I WON'T be happy if they are gone...
This upcoming 2 weeks are going to be fun... 3 tests, Ch 4 & 5, assignments...
At least I no longer have to deal with Industrial Training any further... Confirmed my placement at JPN Kel.
(Note that proper literature reviews have yet to be done)
(Pics removed to limit size)
Malaysia Airlines (IATA code: MH) is Malaysia’s national carrier that is among the few airlines that serves all 6 continents on Earth. In June 2009, it carried 1.027 million passengers to and from Malaysia and within the country as well.
Among the passengers MH carries some have further requests to be catered, and MH, with its “MH for Malaysian Hospitability”, need to make sure that their requests are fulfilled. But given such a number of passengers that MH carries, management of certain groups of passenger can be difficult.
SSR codes are used to denote required service for someone, e.g. UNMR for unaccompanied minors, WCHR for wheelchairs and MOML for Halal meal request (not in the scope of the project) and are displayed in the Passenger Name Record (PNR). As excerpted from Indian Jet Airways’ Unaccompanied Minors page:
The following are the formalities/procedures for the UMNR travel - Domestic:
(…)
The child is handed over to our ground staff at the origin.
The child is escorted by our ground staff and handed over to the In- Flight Executive.
(…)
http://www.jetairways.com/, retrieved 10 August 2009
When passengers check in at check-in counters (e.g. at KUL), a ground personnel, either employed by the airlines (flying with MH) or by other airlines (MH handles EgyptAir’s ground service at KUL) or special ground service entity (Emirates’ flights at KUL are handled by KLAS), will be dispatched to escort the passenger to the gate s/he is expected to depart from. The agent is typically expected to be with the passenger at all times until s/he boards the plane, by when the role of taking care to the passenger is handed over to cabin crew.
Cabin crew has access to a manifest known as passenger information sheet which contains all passengers’ information, including name, seat number, transit point (where the passenger has previously boarded a flight before, or will take another flight after, or both) and SSRs.
Upon arrival, the ground agents also have access to the manifest and know who needs what assistance. The passenger normally will wait until everyone disembarks before an agent escorts the passenger to clear immigration (normally with priority) and retrieve checked luggage until the passenger is reunited with his/her family or gets into a taxi.
Currently there are no means of tracking the passengers with SSRs (hereafter called ‘passengers’) centrally. If for some reasons the passenger is dispatched to the wrong gate, or is lost in the process and fail to relocate the passenger in time (e.g. a child that gets too excited and runs around the airport, hiding in somewhere), it can result in failure to send the passenger to the right destination, as demonstrated in Continental Airlines’ PR fiasco when they failed to put two Unaccompanied Minors on the right plane.
Hurricane seasons, normally during August and September each year, often bring destructive forces to American coastal cities and displacing many residents, and breaking families up in the process. It is even more traumatic for those who require special attentions, namely those due to disabilities, age, or sickness – if they are lost to medical personnel their medical records may not be able to be retrieved easily.
Such situation became apparent during 2005 hurricane season, when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, arguably among the worst hurricanes ever hit Americans. When Hurricane Rita hit Louisiana’s neighboring states, Hurricane Katrina’s victims, who had yet to return to the devastated homeland such as New Orleans to rebuild, were forced to evacuate to another place once more, causing emergency personnel to lose track of them. It took some time for the personnel to locate them.
Radiant RFID, established in 2004 and is located in Austin, Texas, USA, has developed a tracking system using RFID and GPS to track the evacuees due to any disasters, shown in Figure 2.1. The wristband, as shown in Figure 2.2 with its reader, consists of an Alien Technology Higgs 2 EPC Gen 2, passive, preprogrammed, read-only chip and a custom antenna co-developed by Radiant and RCD Technology, is designed to be tear-proof and boasts a range of over a meter on almost every body size. A special portal is custom-designed by Radiant containing Motorola interrogators to capture data from the tag when an evacuee passes through. (http://www.radiantrfid.com, retrieved 10 August 2009)
The wristbands are issued to evacuees when they meet at an embarkation center and then board buses with GPS to track the buses. When the evacuees disembark the buses they pass through another portal with RFID reader, which then updates the evacuee’s current location. Meanwhile, the evacuees’ locations can be identified in a central control center. Alternatively, instead of RFID, evacuees can be read with barcodes as well, although as stated by Kenneth Ratton, cofounder of Radiant RFID, the usage of RFID not only lessens human errors, but also speeds up evacuation process.
The system was successfully tested in real-life situations during 2008 hurricane season, when Hurricane Gustav and Ike struck American Mainland. 34,800 people were evacuated and tracked using the system. It took just minutes or seconds to track an evacuee in Hurricane Gustav with this system, compared to weeks to find one during Hurricane Rita.
(http://www.rfidjournal.com, retrieved 10 August 2009)
Aside passenger handling, luggage handling is one of the key element to determine how efficient the airport is. Currently the tags are 1D barcodes that, contrary to popular belief, do not contain destination airport code; they contain 10-digit numeric code, assigned by check-in agents. The tags are affixed to the luggage prior being sent to sorting system, where they will be sorted to their ultimate destination with their tags.
The usage of barcodes mean that, in order the tag to be read, it has to be in direct sight, and the tags’ barcodes are not smudged or otherwise made unreadable. Luggage can frequently gone AWOL, bringing inconveniences to the passenger, who have to live without their supplies, be it temporarily or otherwise, in a foreign place, as well as to the airlines, who have to locate the luggage and pay compensation to the passengers.
After 2 years of adoption of RFID-based luggage handling system in HKIA, the system went online in 2005. As shown in Figure 2.3, the luggage that arrive at the airport, either via check-in counters or transfer passengers, are tagged with an RFID-enabled luggage label. Both barcode readers and RFID readers are present before primary sorter, then passing through X-ray scanner and secondary sorter before being tracked with RFID at Lateral. Throughout luggage sorting area there are more than 200 readers, at least 500 antennas, as shown in Figure 2.4, and more than 200 handheld terminals, shown in Figure 2.5, operated with 4W of power level per Hong Kong regulations. The RFID tags are class-0 tags with 96 bits of pre-encoded UID (unique identifier) adopting UHF band of 920-925MHz.
Since the adoption of RFID-based luggage handling system, the airport can identify a particular piece of luggage more accurately, with up to 97% of read rate, compared to 80% of accurate read rate using conventional barcode tags. Using RFID luggage tags also enhances security for the airport management and airlines, as well as reducing cost associated with lost luggage.
| HKIA | Radiant RFID | SSRPTS |
Tracking System | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Real-time information | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Privacy with perforated antenna | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
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Radio-frequency identification, or more widely known as RFID, is a system where a reader reads tag(s) via radio frequency waves and interprets the content with a predefined format. The technologies that RFID system uses have been here for a while, but only recently the usage has become widespread that now many are not aware that they are using items that contain RFID tags in it.
Various RFID systems are in the market for different purposes and the cost for each system vary greatly, but their functionality, as well the technology employed, are essentially the same.
Each RFID tag has the following essential components:
Two major classifications of RFID tags, active tags and passive tags are in the market today. An active tag has its own power source, typically battery. Such tags have greater ranges compared to passive counterparts and also can be read through impenetrable materials, but they are larger and more expensive, mostly due to batteries, and the batteries limits its lifespan, depending on its beacon rate, which is the interval of the signal being sent. At up to 8MB, active tags also have larger amount of memory
Passive tags, on the other hand, are cheap to manufacture, much smaller, and therefore, more common on the market. Passive tags collect energy through its antenna. They, however, have comparatively limited range, and may not be read through impenetrable materials. Furthermore, passive tags are notably lower in memory, often not exceeding 64KB.
In order to read and understand the content of RFID tags, appropriate readers are needed for the purpose. Essentially there are at least two components needed for any reader:
Java programming language is an object-oriented programming language that executes its programs in a virtual machine, known as Java Virtual Machine, making the programs written in Java platform-independent. This makes Java a more versatile option when making a program.
In addition there are several Java library packages that are made available for users to use on their program, known as Advanced Programming Interface or API. The library is ever-expanding with efforts from programmers throughout the world.
An RFID API has been made available at sun-http://rfid.dev.java.net that should be able to provide RFID functions to the programmers.
As existing system does not offer any tracking system for passengers with SSRs, it is apparent that one should be built to better locate those passengers in near real-time situations. This project’s technological implementations have been studied for best effectiveness and efficiency. RFID set-ups will be used as a measure to track the passengers, while Java is chosen to implement the project and program.
Methodology is a systematic and structural procedure that is used as a general guideline for developing a system. It is important that an appropriate methodology flow is adapted to develop a system to meet the requirements as specified.
To indicate time allocated to a development phase, Gantt Chart is used to plot the timeline in accordance to the methodology used.
The system development process utilizes Rational Unified Process (RUP), as shown in Figure 3.1, which was created by Rational Software Corporation, a division of IBM. RUP is an iterative software development process derived from the work on the UML and associated process.
Figure 3.1 RUP flowchart (Rational Software)
Four Major phases of the process are:
RUP is used to develop the project due to the methodology’s characteristic:
Waterfall model is not suitable because the model requires its requirements to be fully understood, and is not suitable for real-time data processing. Prototype model is more suitable for online systems and not server-client systems.
Several phases in RUP-based approach in designing the system:
There is no known existing system that can track passengers real-time within an airport, and passengers may accidentally get lost in the terminal building. Therefore existing system is examined to determine how a tracking system will it in the existing system without incurring major modification to the system which risks introducing more hidden bugs to the system. Similar, existing RFID-based systems are studied to determine which setup is more appropriate to the system
Detailed user requirements about the system are gathered from clients and use-cases are defined.
Use case diagrams, conceptual diagrams and package diagrams for the system are designed in this phase, and a large part of the system’s requirements are defined more thoroughly.
UML diagrams are used in this phase to build and code the project along with the information on developed user requirements, use cases and system architectures. The system will be built as a model basis, since it is impossible to build full-scale tracking systems in a real environment.
The system is tested on other students to test its full functionality and retrieve feedback from the testers in order to improve the system as well as to rectify any issues.
The system utilizes RFID readers and tags apart from the usual computers and servers.
In real-life implementations, the system will consist of an array of UHF RFID readers, each with a range of up to 5 meters in radius, while the tags will be class-0 passive tags, embedded into the boarding passes with pre-encoded 96-bit UID with perforated antennas for added privacy and security once the desirability of being able to be read from a distance is no longer wanted.
In simulated environment, however, rewritable RFID tags are used to demonstrate the functionality of the system; as the readers only have very limited range of around 5cm, the functionalities will be demonstrated small-scale.
Several software are used to develop the project, to document all related documentations, and to run the system.
Developed by Sun Microsystems, Java is among the most widely used object-oriented language JDK is used to implement compilations of the language.
Rational Rose is used to create system models, use case diagrams, sequence diagrams, etc.
MySQL is an open-source, multi-platform database system that will be used to store passengers’ records as well as UID for passengers with SSRs.
System requirement analysis is critical to system development as it determines if existing hardware/software is capable of the system. The system consists of a central tracking PC, a server for database, and RFID readers. All these are linked up. All PCs and servers in the system run Windows operating systems.
Appropriate methodology need to be chosen to facilitate project development; in this case, RUP is identified as the most appropriate methodology to be used for the system. A Gantt chart is used to record tasks in each corresponding phase for future references. Tools and software needed to build the system are identified.
If you haven't heard, our government is mulling a filtering software like that Chinese Green Dam that was withdrawn at the very last minute to be installed on every PCs.
That definitely won't go well among netizens, especially those who believe this is yet another attempt to tighten censorship. While Najib tries to calm netizens down by assuring that the software is intended to filter pr0n sites and nothing more, this image sums their confidence up:
While we are at it, it appears that NSW's anti-pornographic filtering system installed by the state education dept. filters education sites...and leaves those pr0n entries intact...
Just called both MH station at JHB as well as the airport. MH said that I should refer to station manager at the airport, while Senai said the HR dept. should be the one I refer to, both during weekdays office hours.
That proves rather problematic as I have no transportation ( That Proton Wira back in KB that is earmarked for my usage here is being fixed after someone decided it would be a good idea to crash onto it...) and taxi fare to and fro JHB would be like RM60, not to mention I only have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday free after 12pm... Probably it would be easier if I could just do the interview via the phone instead of going to Senai.
Regardless it seems I won't be able to complete Chapter 2 before 13th...
Still having discussions with Cik Hazinah about the PSM meeting. Due next week at 13th :
1. Gantt Chart for PSM1 & 2
2. Chapter 3
3. Chapter 2 - that's gonna be tricky...
Oh and a presentation at 0930 that day.
It can't be denied that RFID is great for tracking items, but due to this attribute it is frequently debated that RFID creates one Orwellian society.
With these tags, some conspiracy theorists (which I always regard them as lunatics) say that manufacturers will have more access to consumers' information, such as shpping habits, usage patterns, and preferences. They also suggest that government also use it to monitor the citizens.
Regardless of the presence of such conspiracy theorists and their fairy tales, the fact that abuse of this otherwise convenient technology can cause privacy invasion is too hard to ignore. Therefore, IBM came up with one possible solution: Clipped Tag. It behaves exactly like the conventional tags, except the consumers can tear up the antennas along a perforated line so its range can be dramatically reduced from several meters to just a few centimeters. It should be noted the RFID chip is still intact and still contains its data, as long as the reader is close enough to read it.
This is what I plan to implement on the boarding pass - since a portion of the pass is going to be separated, it might as well put antennas on that portion to automatically cut off the antennas when the pass is fed into a reader, leaving the stub with its chip intact to the passenger. This is a crude visualization of the RFID-enabled pass will be:
