An Internet Of Things

The government wants to know where its stuff is. All the time.

Every now and then, a technology comes along that so dramatically changes the way we do things that it's considered "disruptive." This deliberately jarring term describes the fundamental leap from one way of life to another that occurs when an innovation becomes ubiquitous. Steam and internal combustion engines, for instance, made horse-drawn carriages and human-powered machines obsolete. Tiny micro-chips the size of your fingertip relegated acres-large mainframe computers to the scrapyard. These "disruptive" technologies wrought profound changes.

Disruptive technologies are rare. Not only must people create the technology, but society has to accept it and reject older ideas. So it is that online commerce, though wildly popular, is not disruptive since people still shop mostly in actual stores. But that doesn't stop technologists from looking for the next big thing. Given the excitement these days over one innovation, many think they've found it.

In the opinion of its strongest advocates, radio frequency identification (RFID) could fundamentally change the way we understand and manage things. Anything. Everything. From cat litter to cats, automobile parts to cars, troops to tanks. About a dozen federal agencies, most notably the Defense Department, already are using it to track a dizzying array of items as they circulate through the so-called global supply chain. In their eyes, the future looks something like this:

You go the dairy section of your favorite grocery store. The shelves are stocked with a variety of milk-1 percent, 2 percent, skim-a perfect amount of each kind. That's because all the cartons are "tagged" with RFID antennas, maybe on the outside of the carton, maybe built into it. Using radio waves, these transmitters tell the grocer how much milk is in stock, and tell the supplier how fast it's moving off the shelves-the best indication for when to restock. Precise information lets both know just how much to buy and sell, so very little goes to waste.

But RFID doesn't stop working there. You put the milk in your shopping cart, but you leave the store without so much as swiping a credit card. As you pass a reader at the checkout counter, the RFID tag tells another system how much the milk costs; that amount automatically is deducted from your checking account. You drive home, zipping through a tollbooth because you have an RFID-equipped E-ZPass affixed to your windshield. You put the milk in your refrigerator, which is outfitted to sense tagged items and read expiration dates. When, two weeks later, your son reaches for the milk to pour on his cereal, your "smart" fridge alerts him not to drink it because its expiration date has passed.

At NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California, RFID is used in combination with a variety of sensors to alert employees when they're moving hazardous chemicals into places they shouldn't. An RFID checkout system at the supply station also tells managers who has checked out certain chemicals and for how long. Tagging those chemicals with RFID lets managers monitor them, for example, during the trip to and from Dryden across the Mojave Desert, when they are vulnerable to theft.

Military logisticians also like to know the precise location of everything they buy and use-and the military buys and uses just about everything. Did the Apache heli-copters make it to the forward operating base in Afghanistan? Did the toilet paper arrive as well? RFID tags can track shipments en route and tell planners when supplies are low. When look-alike crates and pallets arrive at a base, a quartermaster can wave a hand-held RFID reader past them, sometimes from hundreds of yards away, and know instantly what's inside.

It didn't used to be this way. During the Gulf War, the Pentagon sent about 40,000 large containers of items to the field, 25,000 of which had to be opened to ascertain their contents, says Alan Estevez, the assistant deputy undersecretary of Defense for supply chain integration, who is leading one of the biggest RFID implementations in the world. Beginning in 2007, Defense will require its suppliers to tag all their crates and pallets. The military already uses RFID to track supplies in the war zone and benefits are accruing, Estevez says.

For example, the Marines who run the primary logistics hub in Iraq have reduced their supply inventory dramatically because they know what they have on hand and where the replacements are in the chain, Estevez says. There's less chance that needed supplies can be misrouted or overordered. The Marines no longer pre-emptively file double or triple orders for replacements, the usual practice for ensuring supplies don't run short. Before RFID was implemented, in 2005, the Marines at the hub had filed 92,000 replacement orders, Estevez says. Now, the number of orders in the pipeline stands at 11,000.

But RFID offers more than the ability to track and trace supplies, proponents say. Hospitals could tag pharmaceutical bottles which, when placed near a patient wearing an RFID-equipped bracelet, could alert hospital personnel about the patient's allergies or negative reactions to that medication. This presumes the patient's medical history has been stored in a database connected to the RFID-enabled system. If the drug were recalled by its manufacturer, the RFID network could tell suppliers exactly which hospitals or stores stocked the medication. And, if the manufacturer wanted to recall just one batch of the drug but leave the others in circulation, RFID could isolate the affected stock.

Items, like information, are everywhere. But unlike information, which we obtain easily online, we can't see all our stuff there. Having that ability would add visibility to the supply chain. That's what RFID can provide, says Dan Caprio, deputy assistant secretary for technology policy at the Commerce Department's Technology Administration. He and Estevez chair an intergovernmental council where agencies coordinate RFID projects so they can share ideas and perhaps adopt the same technology. Caprio says that RFID, used in a system of sensors, databases and other information managing devices, changes not only the way we collect data, but how we use it and the insights we glean from it. "It has the ability to shape society," he says. "It's kind of the Internet of things."

The Power to Name

RFID could disrupt the way we think about things by doing much of the thinking for us. The technology is helping create a "sense-and-response supply chain," says Paul

Strzelec, the senior director for intelligence supply chain services at VeriSign Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., which operates information networks for government agencies and corporations. Machines sense what's happening in the chain, where items are moving, when their stock is low, Strzelec says. "When that information is delivered to the right party, a response can be taken." That party need not always be a human being. For some, it ideally wouldn't be.

Strzelec's company likely will be pivotal in this brave new sensing world. VeriSign manages the primary directory in the Internet of things, a system known as the object naming service (ONS). It was developed by researchers at the Auto-ID Center, a consortium of research universities founded in 1999 to "develop an open standard architecture for creating a seamless global network of physical objects," in the center's words.

Researchers recognized that in the virtual world, locations on the Internet have unique identifiers, a set of numbers known as an Internet Protocol address. These numbers tell computers where to find Web pages. But humans find it much easier to locate information using a domain name-www.dod.mil, for instance. So, a domain name system (DNS) lets people find information or send e-mails using names, not numbers. The Auto-ID researchers developed a similar system for locating things, and borrowed the name from the DNS.

The ONS is an indispensable piece of the Internet of things, which actually has a formal name-the Electronic Product Code Global Network. The network is being established and run by EPCglobal Inc., a worldwide, not-for-profit organization with U.S. headquarters in Lawrence-ville, N.J. EPCglobal was given the Auto-ID Center's technology after the center closed in 2003 and was instructed to push adoption of RFID and related technology. Within the EPC Global Network, all RFID tags will be equipped with an electronic product code, a unique identifier not unlike an Internet Protocol address. That number will be registered in the ONS the same way IP addresses are logged in the domain name system. As a product moves, its RFID tag constantly updates its position and sends other information to the global network. Someone only has to query the ONS to find out where the product is and obtain its encoded information. "The result," according to a description of the network on VeriSign's Web site, "is real-time full visibility of the supply chain."

The ONS would be available only to parties in the supply chain, Strzelec says, as a directory built into whatever network they use. For the military, that might be the Global Information Grid, a seamless space where the services intend to move, store and process information about troop movements, intelligence and, of course, things and where they are.

Why Build It?

If RFID and the EPC Global Network take off, they will constitute a true technological disruption. But is that reason enough to build the Internet of things, particularly considering how difficult it would be to protect it from intrusion or abuse? What's the benefit of being able to locate a box of razor blades on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?

The return on investment for RFID remains elusive. With RFID, some agencies hope to save money and time and avoid frustration. Others are more interested in the public safety benefits. Estevez says Defense hasn't nailed down exactly how much money it could save by infusing the technology into its supply system. It could be as much as $1.2 billion, he says. That's the value of the items the Government Accountability Office says the Army lost track of during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

But the truth is, Estevez doesn't know how much money the department could save by using RFID. No one knows that yet, partly because the cost of RFID technologies hasn't settled. So-called active tags, which transmit data under their own power, can cost from $80 to $100 or more. But passive tags, which require a reader, have been hovering around 20 cents apiece. Many RFID watchers believe the price will have to drop to 5 cents or less for the technology to become widely used. As it is now, outside the government, large retailers with deep pockets are the primary users.

In addition to cost concerns, there are privacy questions. Critics already have fingered RFID as an Orwellian device, able to monitor what groceries people buy and where they drive their cars, and to give parents the power to tag and track their children. Some pet owners already do this.

The Commerce Department, which wants to foster RFID development, has identified public resistance as one of the biggest possible hurdles. According to an overview on a department Web site, "If ignored, privacy concerns about the capabilities and use of RFID products could become a significant factor adversely affecting whether the technology becomes widely deployed and achieves its full potential."

People aren't so much afraid of the tagging itself as of how data might be used, Caprio believes. This is particularly true when they can't "opt out" of RFID, such as when obtaining a passport. The State Department plans to tag all U.S. passports with RFID antennae, so they can be scanned at ports of entry. Critics contend this would make it easy for the government to track citizens' movements and for others with readers to filch personal data off the passports. "Emotion and fear are beginning to drive the debate," Caprio says, noting disapprovingly that California lawmakers introduced legislation last year to ban the use of RFID in the state unless citizens authorized it in a specific case, such as when buying items in a store.

But for Caprio and other RFID supporters, the benefits of the technology are limitless, so policies should be established to protect the use of personal information. And those policies, Caprio says, should be established by the private sector, not the government.