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Utah Leads the Way Toward RFID Privacy Legislation
An anonymous reader writes "Wired News reports that Utah's House of Representatives passed the first-ever RFID privacy bill this week, 47-23. Utah state Rep. David Hogue said that without laws to ensure consumer privacy, retailers will be tempted to match the data gathered by RFID readers with consumers' personal information. 'The RFID industry will carry the technology as far as they can,' said Hogue, sponsor of the Radio Frequency Identification Right to Know Act. 'Marketing people especially are going to love this kind of stuff.'"
Complain all you want, but when voters care, issues happen.
My uninformed opinion of Utah is that there attitude is kinda like.
"We protect our own, you outsiders go away"
Note that there is interest from California, and Massachusetts.
They point out the Senator from Massachusetts sponsored an antispam bill. Even if the bill wasn't perfect, it did pass, and at least he is trying to do something. Perhaps with the right help he can do better with RFID?
Actually your HTTP Referrer is sent by your browser by its own choice, you can turn it off, and in some browsers even have it smartly decide when to send the referrer and when to keep quiet, it can also send a 'fake' address based on the current one to allow leeching etc.
An RFID tag on the other hand is more like a trojan condom/malware/spyware etc.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
For your particular example, why not just turn off sending referrer information in your browser? The prefbar has a nice check box that lets you turn off sending referrer whenever you like.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous...
mozilla and other browsers allow you to control the referrer sent to sites.
you can make it lie and say you were referred by h0t-chixx0r-sex.com
that will get them wondering 8)
or you can just enter the site manually into your location bar, in which case there is no referrer...
"None of the retail tests of RFID tags invaded the privacy of shoppers in the Wal-Mart stores, Roberti [editor of RFID Journal] said. He also said that RFID chips in building security passes and toll-booth tags have never been used to invade a citizen's privacy."
New Yorkers were conned into installing EZPass toll ID systems around our entire infrastructure by a lying Mayor Giuliani who promised that the logs would be tightly protected, available only by court order and subpoena after due process, evidence discovery, legal confidentiality, all the rights by which we protect ourselves from our governments. Once up and running, it turned out that $50 through any low-rent lawyer could buy the logs from the cops, at first used in divorce cases, and now surely used for whatever pretext is convenient to invade our privacy.
Now the industry continues the lies to propagate their bugs throughout our consumer society. The deployment of the tech is inevitable, their lies as well. But our privacy rights can win, if we maintain zero tolerance for these invasions, and the liars who would have us pay for our own illegal surveillance. Join or promote the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), or the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), or the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The freedom you save will be your own.
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make install -not war
If you like any of those things then you might like Utah. If you are not LDS and like those things then even better, because the Mormons aren't doing those things on Sunday. I don't ski on Sunday so I am relying on my friends who do for this info, but they insist that the slopes are nearly empty on Sundays.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Not to mention the best and insightful press coverage on SCO shenanings have come from Utah newspapers.
I am not mormon but have lived in southern Utah (actually close to Colorado City) and I must say Utah is one of the best states in the union (just bring your own beer)!
They're pushing for legislation to *protect* our privacy. At least, in the article linked to the story, they are.