The European Commission is to investigate whether or not people have the right to disappear from the ever-more pervasive digital networks that surround them. The Commission has expressed concern about the privacy implications of personally-identifying technologies such as radio frequency identification (RFID) chips. It said …

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Wednesday 24th June 2009 10:11 GMT Steve Davies 3

RFID=Latest Incarnation of Big Brother?

What is missing is :-

- How to detect that you and your belongings are infected by these pesky devices

- How to Zap them into Oblivion (not all will fit into the venerable microwave)

- And how to stop yourself from being sued for disabling these tracking devices but agressive litigants.

Grenade - the ultimate RFID disabling device. Pity they are illegal here.

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Wednesday 24th June 2009 10:57 GMT Anonymous Coward

Some thoughts

Is it society that defines the citizen or the citizens that define the society?

Many RFID tags, and indeed other traceable devices, are put their for the convenience and benefit of the manufacturer (temperature on Yoghurt is to help with supply chain management in case there is litigation later from a customer claiming food poisoning (Not our product M.Lord.. or You stored it badly...) but can be of benefit in tracking down to individual purchasing tastes. Neither of these cause me concern but the data in the wrong hands can be of immense "value" from which I derive no tangible return - indeed it costs me 'cos RFID is not without cost!

Only the customer pays - in the end - but we have no input to the process as legislators and manufacturers will decide. If mandated we can't withdraw.

Every product is required to carry a CE mark(?) and may be this is were the RFID ID tags and the like should be located so that a user - like me - can just snip it off if we don't want to be part of the system.

The only change to the law would then be the requirement to locate RFID tags in a removable position. Game over?

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Wednesday 24th June 2009 10:57 GMT Grease Monkey

Silencing them isn't the problem

The real problem is not "silencing" these connected devices, but knowing they are connected in the first place. Legislation in required preventing the sale of any item which features such a device without a clear indication that such a device is fitted and what it can and will do.

For example the car that talks to traffic lights is presumably only intended for use as a congestion reducing measure, however if each car uniquely identifies itself then it could be used as a tracking device if the authorities wanted to do so. What would be your legal position if you bought the car on the understanding that it would help reduce congestion and then the tracking device was used to prosecute you for running a red light, speeding or some other traffic offence?

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Wednesday 24th June 2009 11:57 GMT Flocke Kroes

XP phone home

This should be fun for proprietary software vendors with excessive DRM.

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Wednesday 24th June 2009 17:37 GMT Law

Well I for one...

... welcome our privacy watching overlords.

I think the first step would be banning ISP's from being able to packet sniff or profile any of your information without a court order, especially selling "sniffing spots" on their networks for rackets like Phorm - they are meant to be a gateway, if it isn't profitable being one then maybe we should nationalise our network properly and run it as an essential public service, not a luxury.

The second would be like somebody said above, making it the law to make it completely obvious what the devices are and are not doing, and not being allowed to add the catch all "these terms may be changed at any time without prior notification" to eula's etc.

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