Mind Being Tracked by a Tiny Chip?

“RFID technology has certainly benefited from people raising privacy concerns, which has driven the industry to solve some of the problems by providing products that are more secure,” said Soumilya Banerjee at Frost & Sullivan.

Few advances in recent years have had the tech industry buzzing like the tiny silicon devices called radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, which enable wireless tracking of just about anything — or anyone. But RFID also has rekindled a debate about whether a new technology’s potential for utility outweighs concerns over privacy.
The benefits are easy to see. Researchers at Microsoft, for example, believe that RFID eventually could be used to keep track of the location and status of many items typically found in American homes. Other high-tech companies, such as VeriChip Corp., hope to make it possible one day for an individual’s medical records to be stored on a chip that could be embedded inside a person’s body — giving medical personnel instant access to potentially life-saving information. The so-called “chipping” of an individual might even become an effective way to thwart kidnappings or locate lost children, some people have suggested.

Sounds good so far. But others have gone out of their way to ID the downside to RFID.

Critics are claiming that the technology could be misused in ways that would violate a person’s right to privacy. RFID potentially could allow unscrupulous individuals to wirelessly “read” the contents of a household’s medicine chest, for example, or to track an individual’s location without first obtaining his or her consent.

Opening a Dialogue

For now, the use of RFID tags is expected to remain the exclusive preserve of some government agencies and a few large retailers that use the technology to keep track of products as they wind their way through mammoth and increasingly complex supply chains.

Forrester Research analyst Christine Overby said that there are other wireless technologies that could be used far less expensively than RFID to enhance our personal lives. “All of these [technologies] are more near-term than having a refrigerator or closet full of RFID tagged products,” she said.

Nevertheless, few are dismissing the concerns of privacy advocates out of hand. “RFID technology has certainly benefited from people raising privacy concerns, which has driven the industry to solve some of the problems by providing products that are more secure,” said Soumilya Banerjee, senior research analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

Talking about privacy keeps open an important dialogue in which the RFID industry needs to participate, Overby said. “Most consumers are currently OK about RFID, provided that companies using the technology create a code of conduct governing their use that respects consumer privacy.”

Monitoring In-Store Behavior?

According to one study conducted by Forrester Research, 21 percent of the U.S. consumers who know about RFID fear the prospect of companies tracking their purchases.

However, that fear is tempered somewhat. Of those concerned shoppers, 81 percent indicated they were willing to accept the idea of retailers disabling the tag once the item leaves the store.

Despite people’s concerns, Overby sees little danger of any RFID-driven Big Brother scenarios unfolding in the nation’s retail industry any time soon.

“No consumer-oriented information is currently being stored on RFID tags, and little if any information is being captured beyond what is also contained in a product’s bar code,” she said.

“All that stuff about the Microsoft home having RFID tags on items in the kitchen refrigerator or on the clothes hanging in the bedroom closet is very prototypical, and I would be surprised to see any of this hit the consumer space in next 15 years, if at all.”

Electronic Passports

Nevertheless, the chipping of Americans may not be as far away as some people think. For one thing, RFID tags are likely to play a pivotal role in securing the next generation of American identity documents, said Bob McCullough, an analyst at The Yankee Group.

“Probably from a security standpoint the U.S. government is going to invest in this, but initially the chips will merely be taking the place of bar codes,” he said.

The U.S. Department of State is currently testing a new type of electronic passport that will use an RFID chip to hold a person’s information: name, birthday, gender, place of birth, dates of passport issuance and expiration, passport number, and even a photo image of the bearer. Moreover, the same chip is also expected to host a digital signature that will protect the stored passport data from being altered.

“The big concern is that any RFID tag may have a read range that would allow it to be read unbeknownst to the person holding the passport,” said Overby. “One possible solution is to encrypt the data, but even this does not necessarily mean that unauthorized use of the RFID signal cannot be made.”

For example, if the U.S. becomes the first country to tag its citizens electronically, then the mere detection of an RFID signal would denote the presence of an American. And that, said Overby, is information that terrorists might try to exploit.

To mitigate that risk, the State Department says it is considering technology that could prevent the embedded chip from being accessed unless the passport is opened.

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