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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.'"
Has RFID users formed their own lobby yet? Retailers have their own. Notice how powerful Walmart is in that respect. They will just lobby the US Congress to create an over-riding law allowing RFIDs to be used as the retailers see fit. Vote smarter next time around and everyone vote!
A tech law in advance of the tech.
That's the way it should be, rather than trying to throw together a hack job after the tech has been around for a while.
Nice for them... Now if they can control what thier senator wants to do on a national level then we can talk...
Is there such a thing as an RFID tag locator? Could someone electronically-savvy pitch in on this? Can I have a little device that beeps louder as it gets closer to a tag?
Why come out with a new law each time there is a new form of technology? Just make it illegal to use ANY electronic database to surreptitiously track people. This can include facial recognition, RFID, gait recognition, electronic nose systems, cell phone triangulation, licence plate OCR, or any possible unforseen technological advances.
Yeah the retailer should never know when you buy condoms, so when you go up to the counter to pay for them rip off the bar code and assure the clerk it's the right one while keeping the condoms in your pocket.
This is really dumb, the store knows when you buy personal items if they have a RFID tag or not. When you go to the counter and pay for the items, hey someone's gonna know! And it kind of tips people off when you carry them in your cart or basket. Also, if you use a CVS card or anything like that they keep track of what you buy and send you flyers and ads home based on that information.
We're not too far from the thought police at all? Where the hell did that come from? RFID tags can't read your mind, if you have one on your body no one's gonna be able to track you from a satellite, it doesn't transmit brain waves. You'd need a reader really close to the device anyway. Not like the CIA is gonna follow you around with a RFID tag reader, that'll defeat the purpose of having the tag installed secretly in the first place.
I agree with you up until you say
In some ways this is the ultamate offshoring of a service job
This is not offshoring jobs, it's technology making certain jobs redundent. Since this technology will be cheaper than labour it will win. Jobs are great and all, but people need to be "net productive", at least in theory
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
This might keep the marketing dogs at bay but politicians must be having wet dreams at what this could acheave - imaging linking all this data, you basically have a distributed array of people sensors and an extensive log of where any one person has been on tap 24/7. How about installing RFID readers _everywhere_ - put them in airport check-ins, public transport, traffic lights, libraries, schools, the pavement, and you have amazing coverage. You could see what people were buying, reading, eating, wearing, even what underwear they had on and the best thing is it would happen automatically - the computer would build up profiles of people based on what tags were moving around, it would be able to fill in blanks from other databases - eg get on a plane and that set of RFID takes belongs to the name on your passport. Shops would be only too happy to give their database to the government in return for a few favours.
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You have to understand... companies do not want business from nutjobs like you because you take more time than you're worth. A http_referrer? Are you nuts? Oh wait. You are. That's not your history... it's just the site that you came from. Virtually every single website does this so they can see where their advertising money is spent the best. I don't think that an http_referrer qualifies as doing "anything" to gather info. It's equivalent to walking into a small store and the owner asking where you heard about them. But, like I said, people like you are very few and far between, so anybody with an online business really would be smart to tell you to take a flying leap. Satisfing a handful of paranoid nutjobs at the expense of knowing where their customers come from is a very bad tradeoff. BTW, have you ever thought of defeating their evil schemes by opening a browser and typing "newegg.com"??
he said technologivally, were not far from the thought police.
Perhaps you have some condoms in your pocket. then every where there is a rfid rader, there is someone who knows what is in you pocket.
You go to the story to buy a couple of things, then suddenly the cart announces there is a sale on condoms. now everyone know you have condoms.
Or perhaps you hacve some mdication you would rather someone didn't know about?
Walk into an interview, and the company know you take diabetis medication. well, better hire someone else because of the insurance risk.
Your in a town that is run by a religeon, and you have some material on you that would be 'against the rules'. suddenly your life just got a lot harder.
the CIA won't have to follow us if the readers are every where, would they?
no they can't read you mind, but they tell the world what you own, and people will infer there own reasons why you would own them. And believe me, nobody is going to infer anything positive.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There's a difference between "Tee-hee, then this one guy came in today and he bought
I expect that the biggest discernable change RFID is going to cause is the deliberate modification of personal behavior to prevent this kind of information from being PRESENT so that it cannot be collected.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
It says "G.W. Bush" on my RFID tag, and they're never wrong.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.