September 29, 2006
Why Promote RFID?
No doubt the above question has been asked many times by many people: why promote a technology that we've done without for so long, and that seems to scare a lot of people? Do we really need it? Is there a political agenda? Something else? Mark Roberti, founder and editor of RFID Journal weighs on why he promotes RFID, and highlights some of the abuse he takes because of it, mostly by email.
His main statement that seems to get a lot of not so delightful email is his belief that consumer concerns of a future Big Brother-like society based on RFID is overblown. His other statement that gets negative response is in saying that some people - namely Katherine Albrecht, founder of CASPIAN - are hyping the concerns for their own agendas, some of which may be religious. On the other hand, there are respected doctors, like Dr. John Halamka, CIO of Harvard Medical School, who willingly allowed himself to be implanted with an RFID chip to prove a point as well as to get a perspective for standards and privacy.
Roberti points out that he has often brought up legitimate privacy and security issues related to RFID, at the RFID Journal website, and thus feels he has not downplayed the concerns. But he believes that the industry would suffer greatly were any company, particularly retailers, were found to be abusing privacy rights. His own business, the magazine, would suffer as well.
While that may be true - and note that this is the first time I am disagreeing with him - that stance in itself is hardly proof that RFID is not being abused or that will not be abused. VeriChip Corp. wants to implant RFID chips into people and has even recommended it for US soliders, the terminally ill, migrant/ visiting workers, etc. I've been writing about privacy and technologies like RFID and smartcards since 1991. Rational, professional, well-respected - and somewhat powerful - people in the know have indicated to me that there has been agenda to tag humans for at least 20 years, emanating from a group in - of all places - California - a state that recently has had a lot of discussions in state Senate about RFID, and have decided to encrypt RFID data on smart id cards.
I like to live by the principle of Occam's Razor. It's something I've learned to do over time. But both my logic and intuition tell me that there really are people who want to tag all of us, though not necessarily for control purposes, just commerce. My science background says that it's possible, and my imagination unfortunately agrees. (There's a saying someone taught me a long time ago: If something is possible, it's probably, given enough time. If something is probably, it's likely, given enough time.)
Think of the fortune you would make if you were one of a handful of companies who could concoct "legitimate" ways of persuading, forcing or even scaring people - all of humanity - into being tagged. And while these people may not want to control you per se, there are others without the means of implementation who might just want to use the technology that way. These two groups are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but probably are. And of course there's the rest, who break down to into several other groups, non of which have negative intentions for RFID.
I'm a middle grounder. I think that RF technology is brilliant, with loads of incredible applications that improve efficiency and potentially reduce operating costs for businesses. But I also think that we have a Pandora's box here, and not because of any religious affiliation. I do not want that box opened, but I also don't want radio frequency technology to go away. Thus, my own purpose for promoting the technology is to make people aware of the parameters, to point out that if there is a conspiracy, there is likely more than one, with different, maybe even cross purposes. But mostly, I'm writing to promote all the good, positive, useful applications of RFID. And there really are a lot of them.
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