[OT] NH protest against HP printers with RFID chips Nov. 5th

[Brian]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: gnhlug-discuss-admin at mail.gnhlug.org 
> [mailto:gnhlug-discuss-admin at mail.gnhlug.org] On Behalf Of John Abreau
> Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2005 2:18 PM
> To: gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> Subject: Re: [OT] NH protest against HP printers with RFID 
> chips Nov. 5th
> 
> Brian wrote:
> >  Plausible, yes.  But with ntp, GPS clock-syncing, etc, this is 
> > getting a little bit tinfoilhat-ish.
> 
> I suppose it would make more sense to say nothing, not worry 
> about it, and just assume that whoever implements it will get 
> all the details  right.

No, but it *would* make more sense to be concerned about a problem/threat
that actually exists, vs. a made-up exploited use of RFID on top of a
possible, but unlikely, problem.  How many levels of paranoia deep do you
want to take this thread?  

> "Tinfoilhat-ish" is an odd way to describe the question, 
> though. That term suggests a clock that's been deliberately 
> pushed back,

No, it suggests an unwarranted paranoia.

> I've had clock syncing problems in a bunch of desktops I 
> support, and every one of them had been configured to use the 
> Windows network time sync. In the end I discovered that they 
> were syncing against several different time servers, and most 
> of them were doing it weekly. I can only assume this was the 
> default that Microsoft defined for the initial install.

Well then, I hope you don't some day get a job building a speed-monitoring
setup for the EZ Pass folks.  If we want to base our concern for possible
problems on simple preventable human error, maybe you should worry that
they'll mistype the algorithm also, and give EVERYONE a speeding ticket.