Welcome to the world of RFID

• Tags:
• Chips,
• Barcode,
• Retail,
• Privacy

John Carroll ZDNet.com

Published: 15 Jan 2004 15:30 GMT

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Another interesting area of innovation would be in the home. I've heard people talk about Internet connections for a refrigerator, but had a hard time imagining why that would be useful (though you would finally be able to confirm whether the light actually went out in the fridge after you closed it). RFID technology makes such a thing very useful.

Imagine running by a supermarket on the way home from work and not having any idea what you needed to buy (heck, that's the way I always shop). You can pull out your handheld or one of the new smartphones and ask your refrigerator exactly what it contains. It will know, assuming every product in the fridge has an RFID tag on it. Something similar might exist for the pantry, or even in the bathroom and kitchen cabinets, provided an RFID reader is placed near enough to all these places.

Such an arrangement enables a level of inventory management in the home which simply does not exist at present. I can think of a number of interesting software applications that might find a market in such an environment, but I'm not going to tell you what they are (ha ha).

Privacy Issues
I am not overly concerned about privacy when we're talking about RFID tagging of products. RFID tagging merely declares what the product is in a better way than was possible with barcodes. Stores already can link a particular customer to the products they buy using barcoding. RFID tags, from a consumer standpoint, merely streamline the process whereby stores process their customers.

Theoretically, someone could stand around outside a store with an RFID reader detecting everything you have in your shopping cart. However, unless they ask you who you are, they'll have no way to link you to the products you buy.

Privacy issues only become a problem when RFID tags are used to broadcast personally identifying information, such as credit-card details. I don't think it's a good idea for credit cards to be capable of any sort of broadcast, given that the capability opens a Pandora's box of security issues. There are few things as sensitive as your credit card information, making RFID tags in credit cards a potentially large lump of sugar for the cockroaches to come after. Even if someone claimed bulletproof security for this information, it would be a target of computer crackers, and that simply isn't worth the risk.

Other areas I want to keep clear of RFID technology are my driver's licence or identity documents (such as a passport). Companies would have a large incentive to send people to stand outside of stores with RFID readers if everyone was walking around with RFID-enabled driver's licences that enabled them to link products to a particular person.

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