RFIDTags.com

A few years a go, the United States government required nearly all passports to have a computer chip with the passport holder’s personal information. This contains the name, nationality, gender, date of birth and place and a digitized photo of the passport holder. Allowing this to protect the cardholder and makes it more difficult for criminals to get away with tampering passports.

Like everything else, this brings up privacy issues.

With these passports, this exposes people’s identity to strangers. The State Department made security precautions to prevent this from happening. The RFID tags will use digital signatures to prevent tampering, and only when it is within inches of an RFID reader will the information be accessible.

These passports have a “multilayered approach” which protects privacy to reduce people from stealing data. This metallic “anitskimming material” is located in the front cover and spine of the book and prevents it from being read in the distance. However, because the digitized picture is required it helps to make it impossible for posers to make copies and forge someone’s identity.

The biggest downfall here with the RFID tags in the passports, is that the government, once again, has access to tracking your every move. Essentially with the passport being closed it supposedly cannot be read unless it is near a RFID reader, but once you come near a reader your information is handed over and you are being tracked.

Is this just another technology where the government is trying to track people? Or do you this is a necessity and not an invasion of privacy?

Recently, I came across a news article on the online Wall Street Journal that announced that Wal-Mart will soon track their clothing using RFID tags.

First, they plan to use RFID tags to track individual jeans and underwear to better control their inventory. Sometime this month they plan to place “removable smart tags” on each individual item and a hand-held scanner will be able to read it.

According to the report, if successful, the RFID tags will be placed on other products at more than 3,700 Wal-Mart stores. Wal-Mart being a leader in retail, some predict that other retail companies will follow in their footsteps.

Even though this seems to be a great technology and a way to save money, few bring up privacy questions. According to the WSJ article,

“While the tags can be removed from clothing and packages, they can’t be turned off, and they are traceable. Some privacy advocates hypothesize that unscrupulous marketers or criminals will be able to drive by consumers’ homes and scan their garbage to discover what they have recently bought.”

Another issue from the WSJ article,

“They also worry that retailers will be able to scan customers who carry new types of personal ID cards as they walk through a store, without their knowledge. Several states, including Washington and New York, have begun issuing enhanced driver’s licenses that contain radio- frequency tags with unique ID numbers, to make border crossings easier for frequent travelers.”

Will this give the store the ability to know a person’s identity when they enter the store?

However, Wal-Mart is requiring suppliers to add the tags to removable labels and NOT embedding them on to clothes. This will allow for those scares to be minimized, and they will also have signs, warning the people who are purchasing clothing, about the RFID tags.

Do you think this is beneficial to Wal-Mart

Meridian Health operates five New Jersey hospitals, and has helped develop an active RFID tag that logs a patient’s pain at home and records the effectiveness of pain medications he or she takes, according to a recent article on RFIDJournal..

com How convenient would it be to have something that logs your pain and is able to tell which medications are more effective for your pain and which one’s are not?

This product is known as, Impak Health Journal for Pain, and is being tested by 22 patients. They’re using an “RFID-enabled cardboard foldout”; patients answer the questions that are then placed on an RFID reader.

This is an excellent way to reach out to patients while they are at home instead of actually coming to the hospital, daily. I think this is an excellent way to improve medications and better a patients needs.

Their plan for the future is to offer the journal to test blood for sugar or cholesterol levels and then make it available to hospital’s servers through an NFC reader.

In today’s society, everyone seems to be “busy”. With this advance technology, this device makes it capable for patients to be at home, and doctors to be at the hospital, but they can still monitor their patients.