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Help make rfid useless to big brother

Item posted by Loïc Dachary <loic> on Tue 01 Jul 2003 03:46:07 PM UTC.

The RFID technology is an essential component to implement a world of total control. Unless citizens and scientists require safeguards, it can be used by corporations or governments to track and record about everything. At present (May 2003), this issue is not addressed at all: corporations are allowed to include RFID tags in any objects they like and citizens have no way to get rid of them. The standard used to dialog with a RFID tags (ISO-15693) does not even provide a way to permanently shut down a RFID tag.

We strongly encourage every citizen, company or government to require that industry standards are modified to implement safeguards designed to protect the privacy of every citizen. Statements should be sent to the standardization group (http://www.wg8.de/) but there is no open mailing list for this group. The editor of ISO-15693-3 is Alain Berthon (a-berthon@ti.com). The webmaster of wg8.de and the editor of ISO-14443-2 is Michael Hegenbarth (michael@hegenbarth.com). The statements sent should be friendly : the editors of the standards are our allies, not our enemies. The editors could use well written statements to push for functionalities protecting privacy but aggressive letters would be useless to them. Please cc: every statement to the rfid-privacy@nongnu.org public mailing list for archive (http://mail.nongnu.org/archive/html/rfid-privacy/)

The "RFID tags: Big Brother in small packages" article by Declan McCullagh (http://news.com.com/2010-1069-980325.html) is good introduction to the problem. The conclusion is as follows: "First, consumers should be notified--a notice on a checkout receipt would work--when RFID tags are present in what they're buying. Second, RFID tags should be disabled by default at the checkout counter. Third, RFID tags should be placed on the product's packaging instead of on the product when possible. Fourth, RFID tags should be readily visible and easily removable."