RFID, or radio frequency identification, was originally intended for stock control and for that purpose it is tremendously useful, but all of a sudden RFID has been seen as the answer to everything, and is being promoted across a range of solutions. Passports have always been seen as the definitive document of proof, and have undergone a number of changes to make them harder to forge.
The latest security implementations have included biometrics, along with the idea of RFID, which was due to go live in the US in October. There are other security considerations that come into play with this apparent breakdown in security. As passports are seen as the ultimate secure document, other security implementations often follow the lead set by the passport. So, access cards for secure sites were also following the RFID route, and they would no doubt be even easier to clone as they would not have the additional safeguards still contained within a passport.
There is another aspect of this RFID debacle (as it looks like becoming), which is also worrying from a personal point of view. Another aspect that was highlighted by the person demonstrating the cloning procedure was that the RFID tags could be read from a distance, which would mean that terrorists could target Americans by reading the RFID tags in their passports from some way away. We will be charitable and assume that this statement was made not just as an indication that only Americans might be the target of terrorism, but because they are ready to put RFID tags in passports.
Just how far is a distance? When RFID tags were introduced in supermarkets, there were concerns voiced that the tags might be used for purposes other than stock control; using them to track movements of individuals was one such concern. At the time, this idea was ridiculed because of the strength of the signal and the range from which it could be read. It would appear that this might possibly have changed due to technology improvements, and maybe it is time to revisit those concerns in light of privacy legislation.
It could be argued that, as with any technology, it is not the technology itself that is bad, it is the use to which it is put (guns don’t kill people, people kill people – one of the more inane sound bites of the past 50 years), but sometimes technology needs to be removed in order to protect people from themselves (or from governments). Perhaps it is time to consider dumbing down RFID back to its original proposition.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
