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DHS RFID RFC Q&A TBD ASAP
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-05-22
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
The Department of Homeland Security's Privacy Office issued a request for comments on a highly critical report it completed on the use of RFID for human identification, ahead of a public meeting about the use of that technology.
Its request for comments ended May 22nd, so the Department of Homeland Security's Privacy Office will be in the process of determining just what to do next with a potential single RFID standard for border documents, GCN.com reported. Both DHS and the State Department have been considering RFID as an option for new travel documents.
The Privacy Office plans to hold a public Advisory Committee meeting June 7th in San Francisco about the report. Although the Committee that reviewed the potential of RFID found some "specific, narrowly defined situations" where RFID would be appropriate for identifying people, they found it lacking for general purposes:
RFID appears to offer little benefit when compared to the consequences it brings for privacy and data integrity. Instead, it increases risks to personal privacy and security, with no commensurate benefit for performance or national security. Most difficult and troubling is the situation in which RFID is ostensibly used for tracking objects (medicine containers, for example), but can be in fact used for monitoring human behavior. These types of uses are still being explored and remain difficult to predict.
For these reasons, we recommend that RFID be disfavored for identifying and tracking human beings.
The committee also noted that there is no legal requirement for DHS to use RFID technology. Should it be used, the data collected via RFID may likely fall under the purview of the Privacy Act of 1974.
"People should have at least the rights accorded them by that law when they are identified using RFID," the report said.
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Tags: Department of Homeland Security, RFID
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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