The concern is just how much personal information can be stored in an RFID environment. Hailed by some as the replacement for the Universal Product Code, or UPC, the newer Electronic Product Code, or EPC, is what?s causing all the heartburn among privacy enthusiasts. Greg Pottie, Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) and electrical engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Those testifying at the first hearing included Dan Mullen, Association for Automatic Identification and Data Capture Technologies (AIM) Kevin Ashton, Auto-ID Center Beth Givens, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse Katherine Albrecht, Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) and Dr. “Is RFID technology simply a sophisticated way to track inventory and store data, or can it be used to invade people?s privacy and be used to compile data on people?s movements and shopping behaviors?” “Businesses are looking at putting RFID tags in everything from razor blades to cell phones to track them from the factory to the warehouse to the store shelf to your shopping cart,” she said. “New technologies can make businesses more efficient and shopping more convenient, but they?re going to have an effect on people?s personal privacy that we need to explore and understand before they become embedded in our everyday lives,” said Senator Bowen prior to the first hearing. The first RFID hearing, last August, was entitled: “Who?s Watching What You?re Buying? RFID Technology and Privacy Issues.” A second hearing two months later was designed to elicit more input from industry.
She currently chairs the Senate Subcommittee on New Technologies of the Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee. 20 filed SB 1834 seeking to establish the first-in-the-nation privacy standards involving RFID use. Debra Bowen, an attorney from Redondo Beach, Calif., who on Feb. Although the hearings were aimed at regulating how retailers use RFID sensors for inventory control or at points of sale, any future regulations could end up impacting all uses of RFID.
Citing privacy concerns, hearings held in California late last year could lead to regulations that would slow the development of contactless technology in the U.S.
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