In a project on the future of RFID that the Institute did last year, one of the big conclusions we came to was that users were far more likely to trust RFID tags if they had more control over tag properties and content. This boiled down to designing two capabilities.
First, the ideal trustworthy tag would be rewritable. Giving buyers the ability to put their own information on tags would turn RFID tags into devices that, once they were out of the store, were clearly of benefit only to end-users (the ID numbers I use for tagging and tracking all my stuff won't make sense to retailers or marketers unless they have a copy of my personal inventory database).
Second, for users who want to disable them, RFID tags should be removable, or at the very least, be designed so that users could unambiguously render them inoperative-- by tearing off part of the antenna, for example. This seemed especially important, given that it would otherwise be impossible to tell easily if a tag was alive or not (especially given that, as Bruce Schneier points out, "all sorts of interests [are] vying for control of your computer" or designing functionalities that benefit them and their partners).
So the recent announcement that IBM has created a tag that users can modify is heartening.
IBM is introducing a new kind of wireless identification tag this week that it hopes will quell privacy unrest over plans to use RFID technology in retail stores.
The so-called Clipped Tag has a notched antenna that consumers can tear off, much like the end of a ketchup packet. Removing this panel drastically reduces the readable range of the device, from about 30 feet to less than 2 inches, according to IBM.
"It effectively changes a long-range tag into a proximity tag," said Paul Moskowitz, a research staff member in IBM's research division.
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