This will be the last Politech post for a while. I'm at SFO about to leave for Tunisia... Original RFID protester post: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/11/09/jim-harper-on/ Jim Harper's reply: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/11/09/rfid-protesters-target/ -Declan -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Politech] Jim Harper on how anti-RFID'ers harm immigrants, the poor (and public libraries) [priv] Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 09:42:26 -0800 (PST) From: David Wagner <daw@private> To: declan@private In article <43723425.90404@private> you write: >I also received a message from a library director at a public library >that I've been asked not to post verbatim. To summarize it, they're >planning to replace bar code and security tags with RFID tags within the >next three years. That will let librarians check out a pile of books >without opening each one -- and also put a scanner in the book return >slot too. > >One huge benefit is to staff ergonomics (that's a lot of book handling >eliminated). The RFID tag does not contain any information about the >book or patron, just a unique ID like a barcode -- only numbers. Libraries have been doing this for some time now. For instance, my local library has largely migrated to RFID-tagged books. Here is an analysis of the privacy issues with library RFID, written by David Molnar and I over a year ago: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/librfid-ccs04.pdf There are some real benefits from RFID tagging library books -- but also some possible risks to patron privacy, given current RFID technology. _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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