From: <djg2120@columbia.edu>
  To  : <CPC@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
  Date: Sun, 09 Apr 2006 02:33:18 -0400

[CPC] Alarm over shopping radio tags

Here's an interesting article regarding the privacy implications of
RFID tags. Enjoy.

Dan
_________

Alarm over shopping radio tags
BBC News, April 8, 2006

Supermarkets have already brought everything under the sun under one
roof, and along the way been accused of denuding the High Street of
butcher, baker and candlestick-maker.

Now they are introducing a new technology that some say threatens a
fundamental invasion of our privacy.

We are all familiar with barcodes, those product fingerprints that
save cashiers the bother of keying in the code number of everything
we buy.

Now, meet their replacement: the RFID tag, or radio frequency ID
tag.

These smart labels consist of a tiny chip surrounded by a coiled
antenna.

Good tracking

While barcodes need to be manually scanned, RFID simply broadcasts
its presence and data to electronic readers.

It means the computer networks of companies can track the position
and progress of billions of products on rail, road, sea and shelf.

 Albrecht Von Truchsess, from the German supermarket chain Metro
Group, which uses this technology, says: "RFID really brings a
revolution to everything that is transported from one point to the
other, and in the future you will have it really on everything.

"That means that we don't have to do anything while the goods are on
the way from the production site to our stores. It is just done
automatically."

For all the benefits the technology promises, the roll-out of RFID
is in danger of being derailed by the public's perception of it.

A Christian author in the US, for example, has just published a book
claiming RFID will evolve into the mark of the beast featured in
Revelations and presage the end of the world.

'Big Brother'?

The technology has also attracted criticism from more moderate
voices.

Among these is Vint Cerf. He is one of the inventors of the internet
and is now employed by Google as the company's internet evangelist.

He told Click: "What everybody worries about is that these
identifiers will be used not to keep track of the object, but of
the person associated with the object and then there's a Big
Brother scenario that everybody worries about.

"But when the economics get to the point where the readers are
inexpensive and the chips are inexpensive, then you start to ask
yourself who has the ability to read the chips and what do they do
with the information?"

Metro sees RFID working for it by having food traceable back to the
farm, queues cut to nothing, and shelves that shout when they are
empty.

But with remotely readable tags on everything from boots to beans,
is it the customers or what they buy that is being labelled?

Former Australian privacy commissioner Malcolm Crompton says: "If
done wrongly, it really is possible that I can buy things in one
shop and be tracked in another shop, that the data, once collected,
stays there for someone to come in and collect and use under
circumstances that I don't know about or that I don't approve of.

"I think that is when society is on a slippery slope."

The fear is that what we buy will be forever linked to us. In the
nightmare scenario, an innocently discarded soft drink can could
end up in what later becomes a crime scene.

RFID could open a whole new field of forensics where the tag on the
can removes any reasonable doubt.

Taking steps

Concerns about RFID have been taken up by Viviane Reding, the
European commissioner for information society and media.

She has recently launched a public consultation process with a view
to seeing whether RFID needs to be regulated.

She says: "A new technology that is bound to be multiplied by 10 to
15 times in the next coming years in numbers of sales will not fly,
and will not be of benefit to the community and to the economy if
the consumers are afraid that this technology might be a threat to
their privacy."

One solution being floated is the idea of killing the code on the
chip as customers leave the shop.

Whatever comes out of the European Commission's consultation, it
looks likely that your Saturday shop will never be the same again.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/4886598.stm

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