EU launches spy chip study
p2p news / p2pnet: “Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID), which will soon replace bar codes in your supermarket, offer tremendous opportunities for business and society. But their power to report their location, identity and history also raises serious concerns about personal privacy and security, as well as technical interoperability and international compatibility. To address these concerns – some of which may well require legislative responses -, the European Commission launched on 9 March a comprehensive public consultation with a high-level Conference on RFID at the CeBit 2006 trade fair in Hannover, Germany.”
The above is a clip from EU commissioner Viviane Reding’s web site.
RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) tags are offered up on one hand as relatively innocuous inventory checking and data control systems for industry, the military, law enforcement agencies and governments, and on the other, as spy chips the same sectors will use, and are using, to monitor citizens, as well as personal and private information relating to them and their activities.
Can governments, industry and their various above- and below-board information collection agencies be trusted to use RFID chips in a responsible and honest manner?
Of course not. But Vint Cerf, coyly dubbed Google’s chief internet evangelist, attempted to cast a rosy glow over RFID as something that’ll make a positive difference to our lives.
He was a panelist on a debate on the promise and pitfalls of the smart labelling technology at Cebit and he saw a day when RFID tags were, “so ubiquitous that everything, including our socks, would be studded with them,” says the BBC.
“By interrogating our sock drawer with an RFID reader we could find out if any single sock of a pair was missing. A check around the house with the reader would reveal the sock no matter if it was beneath the sofa or trapped in the washing machine. RFID could solve the mystery of missing socks and that’s a very important contribution to society,” said Cerf.
It could also give watchers the exact location of the sock’s wearer, together with a lot of other personal information he or she might prefer to keep private.
Meanwhile, “Zygmunt Mierdorf, board member of German retailer Metro AG, said it was also important for businesses to ensure they treated the data generated by RFID tags properly,” says the story, adding that the EU report based on responses to the EC consultation on RFID tags should be ready by the end of 2006, according to Reding.
“We will not accept that the fundamental liberties of our citizens will be compromised,” she promised.
Also See:
BBC – Radio tag study revealed at Cebit, March 10, 2006
