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Privacy advocates, including ACCESS, have been waiving a red flag over the use of RFID (radio frequency identification) in consumer goods ever since Wal-Mart announced that it would require its vendors to start using it. Companies that face supply chain management issues, inclusive of all major retailers, like the idea of being able to use RFID in products. This is because RFID has the potential to significantly reduce their supply chain costs. It eliminates the need to take manual inventories, and it can tell them where every item in their supply chain resides, at any given moment.
But just as with any other tool, RFID can be used for good or for bad. Privacy advocates are worried about the ?bad?. Theoretically, RFID can be used to give every product produced a unique identifier. This means that if Coca Cola were to implement RFID on its cans of Diet Coke, and they produced a billion cans per year, the potential exists to track a single can of Diet Coke from the time it leaves the warehouse, to the time that you throw it away and it is recycled. If purchased with a debit or credit card, or if a store loyalty card is used, there is a very good chance that Coke would be able to tie your name to the purchase.
It doesn?t require a lot of imagination to see how this kind of information could be abused.
Unfortunately, on Wednesday the FDA made the RFID privacy battle much worse when it approved a RFID tag that can be inserted under the skin of hospital patients. The chip, which is made by Applied Digital Solutions of Delray Beach, Florida, is being sold as a revolutionary way for doctors and hospitals to decrease problems arising from medical treatment. The chip makes the patients medical records immediately available to doctors. This availability may play a key roll in saving the lives of patients who are incapacitated.
While new to humans, this type of RFID use has been around for years in veterinary circles. Many pet owners have had similar tags, made by the same company, inserted in their dogs, cats and horses. These tags allow animal shelters to identify the pet?s owner if the animal ever gets lost.
Use in the human population raises a variety of concerns. There are currently no laws that would prevent companies from requiring such implants be used for identification purposes. And while it only takes a syringe to insert the chip, it requires an operation to take it out. In other words, losing your privacy is easy, getting it back will be difficult, painful and costly.
Insurance companies would certainly be interested in using RFID because these chips would make it nearly impossible for anyone with a preexisting condition, no matter how old, to get insurance. The federal government would also likely have an interest, as would law enforcement. Once a chip is inserted, the movements of its host can be easily monitored.
While all of this may sound Orwellian, if you are over 40 years old your Social Security Card probably has a line on it that reads ?For Social Security and Tax Purposes Only ? Not for Identification?. Now, everybody seems to want to use your Social Security Number to identify you. The reason for this is that Social Security Numbers are a unique identifier. Both the government and business started using them as such prior to the time that anyone was paying attention. Our laws have been playing catch-up now for years.
It is very easy to see how this sort of technology could be used to replace Social Security Numbers. And in so doing, every move you make could be monitored by anyone with an interest. This includes retailers, the government and yes, your insurance provider.
The abuse of Social Security Numbers should have taught us by now that you can?t put the genie back in the bottle after it is opened up. Congress needs to begin to pay attention to human RFID implants now, while there is something that can be done to regulate its use. If they don?t, ten years from now it may be too late for them to do anything about it.
by Jim Malmberg