Watch Your Thieving Steps

Well, first, a quick political summation before the main point:

Detroit's Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has been hit with 12 criminal counts by the Wayne County DA's office, charges to include perjury, obstruction of justice, misconduct in office and conspiracy. Kilpatrick physically looks like a refugee from a very bad grade B Hollywood rap movie rushed to DVD. What a loser. Detroit deserves what it gets.

New York's Governor David Paterson has now admitted to using cocaine and marijuana, as well as having 3-ways, 4-ways and likely unbidden trysts with small woodland creatures incorporating Wesson Oil and plastic sheets. Paterson has assuaged citizens by indicating he is not sleeping around on his wife this week.

Ah. I feel so much better, knowing that our politicians are only human. After all, what does the fashion in which a politician lives his or her personal life (or has a vivid imagination in re Hillary's "misremembered" Bosnia trip) have to do with his or her basic sense of ethics, morals, decision-making or sense of honor? Not much, if you would but ask the Demorats and the Left.

Meanwhile, back at the Technology Ranch:

March 20, 2008 (Computerworld) An employee looking to steal confidential information from his employer sneaks into what should be a secure back room after hours. He pulls charts and files from a top-level financial meeting and slides them into his briefcase before heading back out.

What the insider doesn't know is that his shoes picked up hundreds of tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) chips that had been scattered across the floor. As he passes by an RFID reader near the front door of his office building, security will be alerted that he had accessed a secure area. The evidence is all over the soles of his shoes.

Just when you thought it was safe to go into the Waters of Theft, there's more:

(President of Nox Defense, Carl) Brown explained that the RFID chips, or spy chips, are perfect for what he calls clandestine surveillance. The RFID readers can be hidden in an office building or warehouse, and the RFID tags can be placed on company products or property -- even on employee name tags or ID badges. Thieves, intruders and even personnel see nothing of the tracking system.

If an employee in the warehouse walks off with a plasma TV or loads seven instead of five computers into the delivery truck, it can be tracked with the RFID technology. And since the RFID chips will tell security what time the equipment was moved, the company can check the digital video archives for that time and that section of the warehouse.

And check this out:

The RFID Dust that Nox Defense also sells is actually made up of tiny RFID chips -- each about the size of a grain of sand, according to Brown. They can be scattered on a floor, so when someone walks through a room, entryway or warehouse, the tags will stick to their shoes or pants cuffs. When they walk past an RFID reader, it will be able to tell where they've been.

Better grab that new plasma TV or your handful of pencils from the work cabinet soon, before RFID Dust or tags throw a damper on your thieving life!

BZ