Tech industry attacks state anti-RFID laws
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No states have enacted such laws yet, but bills have been up fordebate in California, NewHampshire, Washington, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Illinois and Missouri,among others, during the past couple of years, panelists said Wednesdayat an industry conference here about smart card use by the government.
Those proposed laws have been introduced because of concerns raised by privacy advocates over the possibility that as radio-frequency identification, or RFID, chips, become more commonly used in government-issued IDs, they could be abused for secrettracking or unauthorized collection of information about the people whocarry the IDs.
State legislators have been far too quick to believe "misinformation"spread by "the tinfoil hat crowd," said Richard Varn, a consultant whocounts RFID technology manufacturer HID among his clients.
Varn, formerly Iowa's chief information officer, joined other industryadvocates in urging chipmakers to drown out what they deemed a campaignbased on fear, uncertainty and doubt. Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, for instance, started life as a way to oppose supermarket discount cards and has found a new cause in opposition to RFID. CASPIAN founder Katherine Albrecht has co-authored a book that's described as outlining how RFID fulfills "biblical prophesies" in a way that's "uncannily similar to the prophecies of Revelation."
The industry agrees with privacy advocates that skimming information offRFID-laced documents should be a crime bearing strong penalties. But thepanelists said they would urge state governments to make use of laws theyalready have. Many states, for instance, already prohibit theft ofinformation via magnetic stripes on credit cards and other documents, sothey could simply broaden and update those laws to make it clear thatRFID chips are also included in that category, Varn suggested.
"Consumers don't know what RFID does, so to them it's voodoo, it'smagic," said Marc Anthony Signorino, technology policy director for the American Electronics Association, which represents about 2,700companies. "Part of our job is to educate them about what it can do andwhat it cannot do."
Some of the proposed state laws, the bulk of which now lack adequatesupport or lie dormant, have contained such broad definitions ofconcepts like "personal information" and "tracking device" that theyrisked wiping out a sweeping list of technologies traditionally laudedby politicians, the panelists said. They said some of the sweepingmeasures would have outlawed everything from the enhanced 911 system, which can automaticallypinpoint a caller's location, to RFID-equipped hospital bracelets aimedat keeping tabs on newborn babies, to the toll-collecting transpondersaffixed to car windshields.
When alerted to such unintended consequences, many states backpedaled ontheir requirements, the panelists said. "The longer they start thinking,the more carve-outs they have to grant, so the legislation ends uplooking like Swiss cheese," Signorino said.
But the industry's fight continues, as not all states have shelved theidea yet. A bill introduced just last week in the California legislaturewould prohibit the issuance of state driver's licenses or identification cards that use "radio waves to either transmit personal information remotely or to enable personal information to be read from the license or card remotely."
It's most likely a response to upcoming regulations from the U.S.Department of Homeland Security prescribing standards for states to roll out a uniform
The new DHS regulations, expected later this year, likely won't require the cards to employ RFID because it's too volatile a political issue, said Robert Atkinson, a former analyst at a Democratic Party-affiliated group who recently founded a new think tank called the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Even so, he added, "I just can't stress enough the importance of really fighting this fight now....We're just lucky these bills didn't pass."
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