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2008 Beijing Olympic Games
RFID enabled tickets for Olympic opening and closingPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn on Wednesday, July 9, 2008 at 10:00 AM
 Now with your passport number and email This article was written for Danwei by Chinapat The Olympics in Beijing has become a platform for rapid technology development and deployment in China. One of the new technologies becoming more commonplace is RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). Beijing has been using RFID subway passes for a while, and nothing but the best for the 2008 Games means RFID tags in the tickets. A source at BOCOG Officials originally planned to embed RFID tags in all 6.8 million tickets issued for all Olympics events. These plans apparently went by the wayside, along with a plan to include place a photo of each ticket holder on their ticket. The RFID tags will only be in tickets for the opening and closing events, and photos of the tickets released to the press show no photos on them. The technology was developed by Tsinghua University's Beijing Tsinghua Tongfang Microelectronics Company. The RFID chip’s dimensions of 0.3 square millimeters and 50 microns in thickness means it won’t even be noticeable by ticket holders. The ticket holder's information is included in an attempt to thwart counterfeiting of the tickets, but the tickets have raised concern among security experts, who worry that the system may cause delays when entering the stadium or that the data on the RFID tags Chinese officials say the Games' security team will employ a team of at least 4,000 IT experts with 1,000 servers at their disposal. The system is currently being tested and readied for the Games. |
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Comments on RFID enabled tickets for Olympic opening and closing
I my dealings with BOCOG two years ago they were desperately seeking some RFID technology that could be used on ALL tickets.
Back then, in addition to being able to store the visitor's personal information on the card, they wanted to be able to track each visitor and see where he/she is at any given moment.
Some Israeli companies were able to help, but the Chinese decided to go for a local provider.
Is it 4,000 IT experts or 4,000 IT professionals? I have a hard time believing they could round up that many people worthy of the title "IT expert."
good luck for china people......
This was on GIZMODO about three months ago. They are putting them in ID cards in many countries now and together with closed-circuit TV determining who was where and when. Scary stuff.