Controversy at Internet Summit
Bug devices track officials at summit - The Washington Times: Nation/Politics
“Officials who attended a world Internet and technology summit in Switzerland last week were unknowingly bugged, said researchers who attended the forum. Badges assigned to attendees of the World Summit on the Information Society were affixed with radio-frequency identification chips (RFIDs), said Alberto Escudero-Pascual, Stephane Koch and George Danezis in a report issued after the conference ended Friday in Geneva. The badges were handed out to more than 50 prime ministers, presidents and other high-level officials from 174 countries, including the United States.”
A “bug” is a concealed microphone. The badges were used as an access control method by event security. Ironically the researches were able to gain entrace to the conference by using fake identification.
“The trio’s report said they were able to obtain the official badges with fraudulent identification only to be stunned when they found RFID chips — a contentious issue among privacy advocates in the United States and Europe — embedded in the tags.”
While it is unclear as to what information related to the RFID tagged badges would be recorded, the data seems benign. All information gathered by the badge system would have been available without an RFID system by watching where attendees went. ![[end]](/resources/bullet/contactlessnews-4.gif)
