A Major Sporting Event
As much as I try to change the content on this blog site with regards to Biometrics, I do have to admit, no matter how much it changes, it all comes down to just a few themes: Applications, the Federal Government, and Privacy Rights. Well, today, I am going to talk about another area of Biometrics which does not get a whole of attention, but yes, it is another type of application (woops!). In fact, it has to do with a sporting event, and the venue is the “Formula 1 Grand Prix”, which is taking place in Francorchamps, Belgium. It also has to do with a topic I don’t talk about too much, and that is the RFID chip.
So here we go, get strapped in, and here are the details: “All admission tickets for the Belgian F1 Grand Prix have a built-in RFID chip. Admission officers, equipped with mobile RFID readers and spread out throughout the circuit, receive the data stored in the ticket chips, which helps them manage access to the different zones. Because the chip in the tickets can be read much more quickly than a barcode at the checkpoints, waiting lines are minimised. By storing the entry and exit point information in the RFID chip itself, the counterfeiting and wrongful exchange of tickets - a veritable threat at many events of such magnitude - can be nearly eliminated through the use of this technology . . . "A total of 80 RFID readers will be used to control access to 20 zones," explains David Dalla Vecchia, CEO of the Liège-based company RFIDea, which has been a part of the EMEA-wide ZETES Group since May 2011. “Our software and infrastructure offer an undisputable added value for an event of such economic and logistical magnitude. Via a central server, Spa-Grand Prix is able to continuously control the traffic to and within the different circuit zones. Along with the additional safety and efficiency advantages, the organisation can analyse and report on the status of attendance at all times.” (SOURCE: http://www.findbiometrics.com/industry-news/i/9185/).
My Take
So as you can see from the above quote, the primary thrust of using RFID is for crowd control at this racing event. And really, it makes only sense to use this kind of technology here. After all, some 15,000+ people will be dealt with, and trying to manage them using the usual and manual methods (such as the bar code, as described above) would be prove to be an utter nightmare. Kind of reminds of those soccer tournament venues, where the crowd just stampeded over everything??? Well, hopefully it won’t happen here. Although not too many technical details were specified, to the best of my understanding, it looks like that this Security solution will use a client server approach.
Meaning, there is a central server, and the Security officers who will be using the hand held devices can be considered as the client. Meaning, all information and data about the individual attending this event and their respective will be communicated wirelessly into this central server. Obviously, this has a number of huge benefits, such as the counterfeiting of the tickets, bartering, and even the wrongful exchange of them. Also, the attendees to this event don’t have to wait too much in line because of this technology (which is obviously a good thing, you don’t want tempers to flare up at this kind of venue). In all some, 80+ hand held RFID readers will be used, across 20 zones. So, yes, this is large scale. Will Biometrics be used here??? I really can’t say for sure, because it was not specifically mentioned.
But, it can be used in RFID solutions, and in fact, has been. Although the advantages are great, upon first glance, my biggest concern is that of the use of wireless communications. While there is nothing wrong with this directly, with so many people and so many data packets flying across the air, there is always that great chance somebody could intercept these communications simply with just a network sniffer. And if that happens, all hel* could simply break loose much later in time, especially with regards to Identity Theft. So hopefully, Security has been thought up of in this regard, and yep, you got it, Cryptography is a great thing to use here. Here is another point on a completely unrelated issue.
Here, we see all of these technologies being used every where around the world (heck, even in the poorest of the poor countries), except here in our very own United States. Why is that so??? Well, it is not that the technology is hard to implement, it all comes to one of the other themes of Biometrics just described above: Privacy Rights. People for some reason or another, are afraid of RFID technology. A perfect example of this is in the retail setting.
For the longest time, retail owners have wanted to use RFID chips into their products in order to get a much better gauge on their customer’s buying patterns. But when the respective customers found out about this, a big brew ha ha ensued. So, unless people accept the use of RFID chips at a micro level like this, there is no way in heck we will see it used at a much more macro level like the setting described in this Posting.
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