Network management Toolkit

Welcome to the world of RFID

John Carroll ZDNet.com

Published: 15 Jan 2004 15:30 GMT

One area of privacy that would be hard to resolve is the ability to determine from outside a house what a person owns (at least, the things which have RFID tags). Imagine a gym that drives around the neighbourhood detecting those families that have a few too many Twinkies in the pantry in order to send a salesperson to their door. I don't have a solution to this, short of the development of sheet rock that blocks radio signals (the housing craze of the future?). I don't think, however, that this mild loss of privacy outweighs the benefits generated from RFID technology.

Conclusion
People might want to ensure certain products are not identifiable in any way. For instance, Mr Tilburn might not want someone to detect that copy of "Debbie does Des Moines" that he keeps under the dresser so that Mrs Tilburn won't find it. In such cases, there are two options. One is a device that scrambles the signal so that it is no longer readable. The device to do such a thing could be cheap and available at local retail stores. Another is the decision simply not to use RFID tags on sensitive products. I would imagine the former option would be more appealing to retailers, as in a completely RFID world, it would be cheaper to use RFID in the supply chain than to fall back on older technology just to avoid creating an embarrassing moment for customers.

RFID is exciting technology that will enable new software and hardware opportunities. It need not become a serious privacy issue, however, provided people are intelligent about the places, and the manner, in which RFID technology is applied.

John Carroll is a software engineer now living in Geneva, Switzerland. He specialises in the design and development of distributed systems using Java and .Net. He is also the founder of Turtleneck Software.