I was originally going to entitle this post "use common sense with RFID passports" but I like it better to say "use common sense with RFID."

Recently I have given a few interviews about RFID to the press -- some have been reported on and others are still in the works. Read one of the interviews here.

One of the angles to RFID that the press often reports on -- because the public seems to be interested in this subject -- is that of privacy concerns.

My point is always the same: to be balanced in how we look at RFID and use common sense when deciding what to be worried about -- or not be worried about.

My premise is this:

(1) There are legitimate concerns about RFID and privacy. Nobody should automatically assume that someone concerned about privacy is some kind of crackpot. Not true.

Oh, you can find an endless supply of conspiracy theorists out there. But a lot of average citizens know just enough about RFID to feel a sense of unease about privacy issues. I am convinced that much of their unease comes from knowing a little -- but not enough -- about RFID. Rather than making fun of people who are concerned about RFID, we need to bring concerns out into the public debate.

(2) By talking about those concerns, not only is education of the public achieved. Rather, feedback from the public can and has had an impact on curbing some of the over-enthusiastic uses of RFID at the retail level, and it has forced more attention to be placed on security and privacy technologies to overlay on RFID. If you really look at what has evolved over the past 2 years, I would say that business and government are both much more attuned to what will fly with the public and what will not. More care today is being given to privacy and security issues than in 2003.

(3) When we are open enough to talk about the privacy issues, we also have to be honest and point out when concerns have reached the level of being ridiculous.

It's like when lawyers get caught up in writing contracts. A kind of drafting madness can come into play if you are not careful and check yourself. I used to be an attorney -- actually a General Counsel -- and I have written or collaborated with outside counsel on literally hundreds maybe even a thousand or more contracts. And sometimes, we lawyers could get overly caught up in drafting provisions to try to protect against anything that could possibly go wrong, regardless of how incredibly unlikely it was to occur -- and regardless of how minuscule the harm. Hours were spent on something that had a 1 in one million chance of occurring (if all the planets lined up perfectly). And the more focused you became on it, the more you started thinking up all sorts of doomsday scenarios. The best thing to do was just not let yourself get caught up in that kind of madness.

And that's the advice I have for people concerned about privacy: use your common sense. Be concerned where it counts, but stop. Check yourself for a minute or two. Think. Think about the likelihood of some of these scenarios happening.