RFID: Usefulness Outweighs Privacy Concerns

Filed in archive Privacy and Security on April 14, 2004

Hiawatha Bray of the Boston Globe opines that RFID technology has the potential to drive us batty:

"...the prospect of a world in which everything you buy--every single thing--can shout "here I am" to any passerby armed with the right kind of detection gear. Privacy advocates are understandably horrified, and their protests have already forced companies here and abroad to back away from using RFID tags in consumer products. But the technology won't go away. Like cellphones and WiFi, RFID is at least as useful as it is annoying."

Hiawatha goes on to conclude that RFID's usefulness outweighs the annoyances, advocating privacy laws to regulate the use of RFID instead of banning the technology altogether.