Giving Consumers Power Over RFID

Filed in archive Privacy and Security on April 4, 2005

Here's an intriguing idea: instead of RFID tag data being in the control of the manufacturer or retailer after the tagged item is sold to the end consumer, why not have ownership of the RFID tag travel with the item? And give the end consumer the right to give or withhold permission as to who can see the data after he or she becomes the new owner of the item?

This interesting concept was presented by Richard Percival of Interactive Technology Solutions to both the Federal Trade Commision in the U.S. and to the EU Commision in the E.U.

Richard kindly sent me this link to the outline of his proposal:

"Public fear about misuse of RFID by the state, or a retailer to track the Citizen, or by the criminal to scan the citizen's home for items worth stealing, should be laid to rest if the Identity Numbers in the RFID tags, even if they could be read at long range, were unequivocally covered by the existing law and rights of Property. It would then become the privilege of the owner of each unique number to grant any rights to see the data to which the number only serves as a key, and without this permission the number is meaningless.

Looking into the near future, when there will be a large number of unique tagged items in any inhabited space, a reading device without rights to perform a look-up in a secure data repository would see nothing but a mass of useless information.

On the other hand, if the owner of the number chooses on a case-by-case basis to grant rights to read and resolve the number, he grants access to some or all of the data associated with his unique key and will do so if he gains a benefit. But the choice of whether this data is shared lies with the property owner, and enhances rather than diminishes property and privacy rights. "

I'd like to hear more from Richard about this concept, including more details about how it would work. Sounds interesting.