RFID Tags Not Good for your Security

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Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate, has written an article in September's Scientific American, which is devoted to "Privacy,"detailing how the RFID chip in your clothes (or credit card, or passport) can be detrimental to your privacy.

This is a theme currentbuzz has touched on for many years. From cute "dog-tags" and bracelets in elementary school in Celebration, Fl, that let kids move from room to room without logging onto school computers each time, to casinos that watch for pilferage by money-counting employees, to the retailer who just might use the ubiquitous RFID tag to target sales to you, instead of simply using the tag for inventory control, each use of the tag without consideration of the power of these chips and the ease with which information can be read from them, puts us, the public, at risk.

"the risk: anyone with a readily available reader device—unscrupulous marketers, government agents, stalkers, thieves and just plain snoops—can also access the data on the licenses to remotely track people without their knowledge or consent. What is more, once the tag’s ID number is associated with an individual’s identity—for example, when the person carrying the license makes a credit-card transaction—the radio tag becomes a proxy for that individual. And the driver’s licenses are just the latest addition to a growing array of “tagged” items that consumers might be wearing or carrying around, such as transit and toll passes, office key cards, school IDs, “contactless” credit cards, clothing, phones and even groceries."

clipped from www.sciam.com Radio-frequency identi­fication (RFID) tags are embedded in a growing number of personal items and identity documents. Because the tags were designed to be powerful tracking devices and they typically incorporate little security, people wearing or carrying them are vulnerable to surreptitious surveillance and profiling.