Holding Court...

Should concerns about privacy be allowed to impede RFID's progress?

Submitted by: Auto-ID Center
February 28, 2002

User Controlled
At the Auto-ID Center, we take privacy very seriously. Knowledge and choice are two tools that we intend to provide to technology users. Armed with both tools, the user can exercise an informed choice on the matter.

First: knowledge. The species of radio-frequency tags we are developing are passive. In other words, they have no batteries, and cannot broadcast any information on their own. They must absorb energy from the reader to even power-up their internal circuitry. Tags can then modulate information back to the reader by reflecting the reader's own signal -- not by actually broadcasting their own signals. For both these reasons, the range that can be achieved in passive RFID tags is in the order of a meter. These signals do not travel through metal or water. It is certainly inconceivable that a truck might drive by your house and identify all the contents of your house. The signals from these tags are very weak and they are really intended to enhance bar-codes. They are most certainly not like cellular phones or cordless phones.

Second: choice. A consumer can have the tags destroyed electronically upon purchase. You may have noticed anti-theft devices being deactivated in a similar way when you borrow a library book or purchase an expensive item from a store. Furthermore, we are developing technologies that will permit the user to personalize the tags so that only they have access to them.

As for consumer or in-home applications of these technologies, it is difficult to predict when it will be ready for the open market. Today, and for the foreseeable future, our focus is on validating the technologies' supply-chain applications, involving only commercial enterprises (like manufacturers, distributors and retailers). First, we want to verify that these technologies work in a commercial context before deciding whether or not to apply them in other non-commercial contexts.

For more information about the Auto-ID Center, log onto http://auto-id.mit.edu.

Come on; don’t be shy, if you have the technology, or even just an opinion, let us know by March 4, 2002, when our part-time judge, part-time jester Nicki Hayes summarizes the debate and puts the issue to the vote. Send comments to HoldingCourt@wirelessdevnet.com

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