RFID Privacy Discussion Points

From The Committee on Energy and Commerce ...

... "New risks for privacy: The debate over RFID technology touches upon many controversial policy issues. At its most fundamental, widespread use of RFID tags could enable corporations to track every move consumers make. Corporations which compile the data transmitted by the tags could determine which products a consumer purchases, how often products are used, and even where the product -- and by extension the consumer -- travels. By aggregating data to form consumer profiles, corporations could make inferential assumptions about a consumer's income, health, lifestyle, buying habits, and travels. This information could be sold to governments to create dossiers of individual citizens, or simply sold to other corporations for marketing purposes. While the ability of RFID readers to collect data from tags once a consumer has left a store or moved beyond the readers' range is currently limited, many consumer groups and privacy advocates note that RFID technology is quickly advancing, while measures to protect individual privacy by limiting the amount and type of information corporations can collect about consumers is lacking. There have been several cases in the past year where the technology of RFID has been used without informing consumers. In the retail industry, for example, some retailers have collected information on their customers unbeknownst to them without providing them with the most basic notice. " ...