http://news.com.com/2010-1039-5327719.html Don't regulate RFID--yet August 30, 2004, 4:00 AM PT By Declan McCullagh Not many people may remember this, but Phil Donahue was one of the digital age's first technophobes. In 1974, the TV talk show host denounced the Universal Product Code, better known as the bar code, as a dastardly plot that would let grocery stores trick consumers. Grocers would replace price tags with bar codes and confuse shoppers, Donahue informed his viewers repeatedly. Donahue's predictions turned out to be nonsense, of course, and today, the humble bar code saves Americans more than $17 billion a year in grocery stores alone. But the technophobe mentality just won't quit. Now a clutch of privacy fundamentalists is calling for new laws to target radio frequency identification (RFID) technology... There are legitimate privacy concerns about RFID tags, which I outlined in a column more than a year ago. But RFID companies already are proposing solutions, indicating that legislators should be extremely cautious before stepping in with one-size-fits-all solutions.... _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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