24C3 photos

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CCCamp07

: CCC Sputnik tag v0.2

As we have promised at the 23C3, the CCC Sputnik project will be continued at the Chaos Communication Camp site, which takes place from August 8th to 12th 2007 in Finowfurt near Berlin.

You are cordially invited to join our project and become part of the Sputnik tracking.

Please bring your Sputnik tags from last year's congress and flash them with the new firmware at our Sputnik meeting table in the Art & Beauty area. You can also buy a brand new Sputnik: there will be 500 new Sputnik v0.2 available at the camp.

Our aim is to test and play around with 2.4GHz RFID technology and to demonstrate the actual threats, problems and benefits of tracking and data mining. This time we want to concentrate on implementing a new meshing protocol in the data backbone of our reader system. With this technique we only need to use very few wired reader stations --placed in and on top of the lecture halls-- and can use a lot of small, wireless, battery powered reader stations all across the camping ground (mainly in trees).

Base station hardware

The reader device for receiving the tag signals and implementing the meshing will be the OpenBeacon USB stick. This is a very small variation of the 2.4GHz OpenBeacon reader which contains a freely programmable 32 bit ARM controller. It can be reprogrammed without special tools over USB and we released the firmware under the GNU General Public License.

Beacon tag hardware and functions

The Sputnik tags also improved: we manufactured them with gold plated pads to improve their lifetime, added a hardware push button (instead of the former touch sensor field), an optional buzzer interface and adapted the circuit board to fit into a small, round, plastic case, that can be purchased additionally.

We want to enable the use of the push button as a kind of camp mood measurement: each time you feel good or you enjoy the actual lecture, music, food, view or company you can press the button on your Sputnik tag one to four times in a row, indicating the level of enjoyment (1 -> fair ... 4 -> time of my life). When processing the data online during the camp time or later, a map of joy bubbles on the camp ground can be displayed.

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23C3

: CCC Sputnik tag v0.1 with badge holder

Active 2.4Ghz RFID tracking system

The CCC Sputnik RFID device will be used as a visitor tracking system at the 23rd Chaos Communication Congress. The 23nd Chaos Communication Congress (23C3) is a four-day conference on technology, society and utopia. As usual, 23C3 will take place at Berliner Congress Center in the time from December 27th to December 30th 2006.

This use case is intended to demonstrate the actual threats of tracking and data mining with the RFID technology.

There will be 1000 devices available for the expected 3000 guests at the conference. Each device will transmit its unique id which can be connected to further information the user is willing to publish. The transmitted signals will be collected by up to 25 RFID base stations within the congress building and transfered to a data server via Ethernet.

A server based software is evaluating and estimating the positions of each visitor with an active device based on its signal strength, occurrence and position of the receiving base station. There will be different transmission power levels to increase the accuracy of the position calculation.

Members of the CCC Berlin with the help of ART+COM are strongly participating in this project to build up the necessary environment for data evaluation and visualization. The aim is to provide a 3D visualization of the whole interior of the congress building and to display every active Sputnik device in motion with additional user informations. The name CCC-Sputnik and the corresponding logo is also developed by members of the CCC Berlin. Sputnik is the Russian word for companion and will accompany the 23C3 visitors if they want to be part in this use case.