Chip technology causes concern

Computer tags that contain data have many uses, but provoke ‘big brother’ fears.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has become a standard tool in recent years. RFID chips help retailers manage their inventories, governments to insert biometric data in passports, and public transport networks to replace paper tickets with smartcards. Some US hospitals even insert them into patients to prevent any misidentification. Now mobile-phone manufacturers plan to include them in handsets so that people can make payments in shops.

The European Commission has identified RFID technology as the building block of the internet of the future – a so-called ‘internet of things’ in which electrical appliances and other goods could be remotely connected and controlled in a network.

But the nature of the technology – tiny information-bearing chips that can be read from a distance – has sparked privacy concerns. Consumer groups have warned, for example, that the movements of shoppers could, unbeknown to them, be tracked after they leave a store. And personal data on passports could also be intercepted illicitly, they caution.

Safeguards

The Commission in May 2009 published non-binding data privacy safeguards that RFID users should follow. Peter Hustinx, the European data protection supervisor, said in March that the Commission should be ready to propose legislation if self-regulation by industry “does not deliver”. He urged controls such as legal obligations on retailers to obtain ‘opt-in consent’ from shoppers for active RFID tags.

Giovanni Buttarelli, Hustinx’s assistant, said last week that the EU’s existing approach of self-regulation “has been good so far but is probably not enough”.

March 30, 2020 Mittie B Brack News