RFID roundupU.S. Army considering use of RFID network partly owned by Hutchison

We can smell a storm brewing. The U.S. Army is considering using a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) network in Pakistan which is partly owned by a Chinese company. Government Executive’s Bob Berwin reports that the army is considering the system fo use in tracking shipments to American forces in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon is already using RFID tags with a range of 300 feet to track movements of containers and pallets to U.S. forces operating in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as other forces globally. The information these tags contain is passed to the Global Transportation Network operated by the U.S. Transportation Command, and that network in turn rides on the the Pentagon’s internal Non-Classified Internet Protocol Router Network. The system now consists of 2,700 tag sites which read more than 134,000 tags a week, according to the briefing issued by the Army Program Manager for Joint-Automatic Identification Technology and which was obtained by Berwin. The same briefing also notes that the Department of Defense (DoD) lacks the ability to read tags on shipments sent through Pakistani ports for onward movement by truck to Afghanistan. The reason: “nability to obtain country clearance to install DoD fixed RFID infrastructure.”

The briefing said the Army would resolve the problem by using a commercial RFID infrastructure installed in Pakistan by Mountain View, California-based Savi Networks. Savi is a joint venture between Savi Technology, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, and Hutchinson Port Holdings, a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa of Hong Kong, which is controlled by Chinese billionaire Li Ka Shing. Savi Technology owns 51 percent of Savi Networks and Hutchinson 49 per cent.

Now, five years ago the Bush administration blocked an effort by Hutchison to acquire the bankrupt telecom Global Crossing: The administration argued that Global Crossing’s network was an important element of the U.S. critical infrastructure system, and that Li Ka Shing’s intimate relationship with the government of China made his company unsuitable for owning such an important asset.

Mark Nelson, a spokesman for Savi Technology, told Berwin that DoD should not have any concerns about the security or integrity of data riding over the Pakistan infrastructure, since Hutchinson is only a passive investor in Savi Networks. Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a Washington-based foundation, charged that Hutchinson is “a front for the Chinese government,” citing a Central Intelligence Agency analysis from 1998 concluding that Li Ka Shing “is directly connected to Beijing and is willing to use his business influence to further the aims of the Chinese government.”

There is another twist here: The Washington, D.C.-based Center for Public Integrity estimates that the United States has provided Pakistan with about $5 billion in funding since 2001. The Center’s Philip Coyle said that considering this level of funding, “it does seem odd that Pakistan won’t allow a DoD network infrastructure, especially when what it is being used for is to track U.S. Army supplies.”