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Senator Leahy Calls for RFID Technology Hearings
securitas writes "Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy has called for congressional hearings into radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The comments were made Mar. 23 to the Georgetown University Law Center's conference on video surveillance technology during a speech titled 'The Dawn of Micro Monitoring: Its Promise, And Its Challenges To Privacy And Security'. Leahy suggested that RFIDs may require federal regulation to ensure the public's privacy rights. Leahy is quoted as saying that the combination of RFIDs, sophisticated databases, networks and the Internet means that, 'We are on the verge of a revolution in micro-monitoring - the capability for the highly detailed, largely automatic, widespread surveillance of our daily lives.' He goes on to say that, 'We need clear communication about the goals, plans, and uses of the technology, so that we can think in advance about the best ways to encourage innovation, while conserving the public's right to privacy.' (Leahy's RFID speech transcript)"
RFID is good technology, with a lot of potential and a number of legitimate uses. Unfortunately it can also put big brother in your pocket, shoes, shirt and pants. If they could do just three key elements in a law I think it could flourish without privacy fears and diminished abuse potential.
/will/ produce them) come about, they would become a neon broadcast flag to theives.
Only allow people to scan for RFID that match a white list of your own property or property in your care with your consent. Any reading not on a white list must be discarded. Once an item is sold it is no longer their property and must be removed from the white list - with todays pos tech this would be absurdly easy to implement. This would allow retailers and distribution centers to use it for their own logistical and loss prevention purposes. This would also keep people minding their own business - literaly.
IF an RFID tag is on an item it should be prominently labeled, and be removable without destruction, devaluation or vandalism to the item that is attached to. For example, someone here asked a bit back, why not just cot off the tag? Answer - some clothing is now comes tagless.
Make sure that warranties and returns do not require RFID tags in order to be upheld. Someone should not be required to keep an RFID tag on something valuable just because they may have to get warranty service on it someday. As more powerful readers (blackmarket
If everyone can look up *anything* at all about *anyone*, there would probably be a lot less abuse than there is now. It's hard to blackmail someone when the information is already publically available, and when the victim could probably find something that the blackmailer wouldn't want called to the public's attention.
As for identify theft, that's already a serious problem. We already need to find better ways to verify identity and authenticate authorization. Making all that personal data available to everyone probably won't cause an upswing in abuse; most of the people who would abuse having access to the data are already doing so.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Imagine when companies begin logging other stores RFID information, to monitor what types of things people are buying... Most stores will begin carrying similar items to what they see rolling in the door from competitors. I see that has the potential to limit choice, stores don't want to inventory anything that's not "popular" on a nation wide basis.
:D
Now the salesmen will have another tool to bother you with. There is the possibility that they could monitor competitors products rolling in the door so they can come up and say, "So, what are you looking for today. I notice you bought that shirt at Dillard's, we have a similar item over here that's even better..."
I'd prefer the shit be deactivated totally at the register when I pay for it.
It is nice to see that some people in the government are paying attention to what's going on. I wonder what consumer rights group contributes to his campain.
I'm intrigued by the discussion surround RFID and retail. Most of the discussions I've seen surround concerns about retailers gathering too much information about their customers' buying habits. The other major concern commonly noted deals with third party tracking of the rfid device once it leaves the store. However, neither of these seem like valid concerns to me.
The ability to track a customer's buying habits, most retailers have that ability now. Bar codes uniquely identify a product. Unless you pay with cash (or a gift card at some retailers), the retailer has access to your name and some corresponding number (checking account or credit/debit card number). Those can easily be stored, RFID is not needed to accomplish this type of information gathering. In fact, many retailers use loyalty programs so that they can track cash and gift card purchases as well as credit/check. All of this begs the question: Is this a bad thing? If more information about your buying habits brings you lower prices, are you willing for your retailer to have that information?
As for tracking the RFID signals once they leave the store, I do not expect this to be a valid concern for long. For a retailer to use rfid on its products for anything other than loss prevention, it needs to be on every product. That means small and cheap, which in turn will drive the manufactures to make them with as low of a signal and as little storage capacity as possible to meet the retailer's needs. And, much like the security tags today, it is a simple thing to disable the tag once it has been scanned/read at the Point of Sale. This would even be preferable, therefore making it easy to scan for tags that are still active trying to make it out of the store (ie, shoplifted items).
All this is not to say there are no privacy concerns here. However, I think too much attention is placed on the retail use of RFID and not enough the other potential uses. Can anyone imagine DL's with embedded RFID? How about the RFID tag in my employee badge? These are the areas that I see real potential for abuse. At a retail store, if you don't want to be tracked, just pay with cash and don't use loyalty. You're data falls into the "other" bucket. If you don't mind being tracked, use your credit card, get your airline miles, your loyalty discount, and save a bucks.
If you would like to be a leader with a large following...drive slowly down a windy two-lane road
Assuming that the item you have purchased is metallic, and will fit in a microwave oven, and you don't mind a bit of char where the rfid tag is, why not just stick the item in the microwave oven for a second or two? Won't that destroy the rfid tag?
-- SKYKING, SKYKING, DO NOT ANSWER.
"The RFID train is beginning to leave the station, and now is the right time to begin a national discussion about where, if at all, any lines will be drawn to protect privacy rights"
Personally, I don't care if RFID's track my every move. I'm looking forward to their ubiquitous existence which WILL happen no matter what anyone wants.
What does concern me is if RFID's are closed in their architecture. RFID's should be open so that any reader can read any RFID tag, which will probably happen anyway in order for them to become as prevalent as barcodes.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
The size issue you bring up is, I suppose (currently) valid.
However, tracking is a real problem. The obvious place to put an RFID reader is in a store doorway, just to act as a second check to avoid shoplifting.
More and more stores do this. Cheap and effective.
Now, every time you walk in or out of a door, you tell the people running the store of all the items you're walking around with. That goes into a database, perhaps forever.
Once you wear a couple of items, it becomes easy to "taint" new items. Wearing a tagged pair of jeans? Now folks know that you also own your tagged sweater. Now there's a log of where you go WRT commercial establishments anywhere, forever.
I gotta say that *I*'m not comfortable with it. I'd like to see (a) European-style privacy laws placing limits on what RFID data can be used for, and how long kept, and (b) laws made for retailers forcing them to destroy tags at the time of purchase. If it's so easy to destroy tags, it shouldn't cost them anything to blow 'em away at checkout. Normally, I really dislike government regulation of information handling -- however, the consequences of corprate data gathering using RFID is really disturbing.
May we never see th
I've always said I don't mind RFID tags as long as there are no laws mandating them.
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I would probably choose to buy the product without a tag. And when I buy products that have them, I remove them.
But what concerns me is a law (and I could see this happening) that forbids anyone to remove RFID tags. That would scare the crap out of me. But up until that point, I'll handle the tags myself.
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Is Karma really that easy?
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The problem is always there someone who's doesn't fully understand the issues will amend related riders that use specific examples - making the whole thing easy to work around.
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I wrote a paper last summer about environmental ethics and technology for a sociology graduate class. Environmental ethics and technology? What could be the connection? Our environment and how is becoming overrun with technology for technologies sake. RFID if a fine example of the slow building of a technological mountain that we will not notice until it is too late. The fact is that technology will enframe most people so that they do not notice it anymore -- MTV generation. For example, who remembers life with only 3-channels of UHF programming, or no condensation-trails from jets in the sky? Now there is a generation that knows only 100+ channels of programming. This will happen with RFID in the next 20-30 years and RFID will be everywhere. A new generation will be born that won't know, or care even if you tell them - generation gap.
Most likely congress will ban RFID readers as a criminal device because people will be worried about criminals reading their homes/cars and corporations will worry about bad data being introduced into there systems, so no personal RFID readers/scramblers/decoders/whatever... -- these will be made illegal due to PRIVACY/BUSINESS concerns.
Overall technology needs a gas tank to keep running: coal/gas to power the PC's; RFID and your stuff in a databse to fuel the MBA's !
Even if RFID is only used on money you will still be tracked. The granularity of tracking is increasing at a scary pace - maybe there is a "moore's law" somewhere in here - so where will it end? Most currency in the world will use RFID and some say that there is a U.S. 20 bill that will be cirulating shortly using RFID - so bill #434566 withdrawn at bank #12 by Joe Smith and bill #434566 used to buy CD ABC at music store XYZ.
Story on NPR today and it does seem that the people representing the privacy side are acting nervous and the business side is confident that they will have their way. And finally there is the relentless tide of consumers who don't give a crap and that is another possible way that RFID will become ubiquitous with a 10% discount coupon attached.
Just some random notes on RFID.
I swear. RFID tags can be one of the most enabling technologies in history, automating zillions of tasks that otherwise slow down economy and society.
I for one have no problem being on record for things I in fact did do and places I did go, and it's lot like that's a real threat anyway. I'd make the database myself and sell it if anybody would pay enough to make it worth it.
As I see it, there is NO SERIOUS DOWNSIDE to RFID, it's not GM foods, it's not guns, and it's just information. Nobody gets physically hurt by tiny radio tags. They're not even especially bad for the environment.
What we need for RFID is NO LAWS, not lots of them. The Internet will be the medium your big brother nightmares are shipped over, but I don't think anybody seriously thinks we needed to pass laws in the 80s slowing down the game because of that. Why do we suddenly need to do so now with another super enabling technology?
Oh this makes me feel really good...Leahy, a communist looking out for me, and even acting like if he will actually understand the technology if a hearing is held. What a bunch of BS! Just another lame reason for the federal government to interfere in the market where it doesn't belong!
I agree that well-targetted marketting is great for both the consumer and the company selling the product. The company gets a much higher return for their advertising dollar, and the consumer will be genuinely grateful for the deals they recieve. Everybody wins. Heck, in anything else, I'm waiting for the day when PVR boxes replace all the commercials with ones tailored to the products I buy.
What always amuses me is when I'm watching "Adult Swim" on Cartoon Network (which is definately not kiddie-stuff), and you'll see all kinds of ads for children's toys. It's like the advertisers think "cartoon network = children" even while I'm watching an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force where the food items rebuild Carl's body using medical waste eyeballs.
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