advocacy

This page considers advocacy regarding RFID technologies and applications.

It covers -

• introduction - making sense of debate about RFIDs and RFID applications
• the media equation - evangelism for and against RFIDs
• advocacy - some advocacy organisations

Broader questions regarding the nature of advocacy, and of its regulation, are explored here.

     introduction

Consideration of radio frequency identification has followed a similar trajectory to that of the net, with

• conflicting claims by supporters and critics, particularly characterised in terms of revolutions, unprecedented breakthroughs or threats
• focus on the technologies at the expense of their economic, cultural and legal contexts
• technological determinism in forecasts by proponents and opponents, eg that tags are innately pernicious and must necessarily be prohibited from retail applications

Hyperbole assists constituency-building and for entertainment in the media but militates against understanding and building practical regimes that embrace legislation, standards and best practice.

The depth of consumer awareness and disquiet is unclear. It is likely that there is a substantial gap between stated attitudes and practice, consistent with

• the tendency of some consumers to express outrage about violations of their privacy but readily supply data in response to minimal rewards
• perceptions that "you can't fight WalMart" or that "privacy has already disappeared in the surveillance state, so get over it".

Responses by some anti-RFID advocates have included claims that consumers cannot be allowed to commoditise their privacy, as

chips are a gross intrusion into physical privacy. Clearly, insertion into the body is the worst example: but insertion into things that people habitually carry or wear is also seriously intrusive. Offering inducements doesn't change that. Voluntariness and consensuality are illusory. Corporations utilise the technological and marketing imperatives. The State uses the technological, the economic, the social control, and most recently the national security imperatives. You get choice during the trials. You don't after that. The use of chips also leads to intrusions into the privacy of personal behaviour, because of the increased observability and recordability of people's activities.

     the media equation

Those concerns - substantive or otherwise - have been reinforced by hyperbole from advocacy groups (ie both opponents and supporters of RFIDs) and media coverage that has often been more enthusiastic than enlightening.

We have thus encountered claims that

• passive tags can "see through concrete walls"
• each US banknote features a RFID tag that readily allows the 'invisible government' (apparently a curious mix of Jesuits, Zionists, Freemasons and members of Skull & Bones) to track individual notes
• tagging represents the greatest revolution since the domestication of livestock, allowing seamless identification of animals "from paddock to plate"
• "RFID tags inside driver's licenses will make it easy for government agents with readers to sweep large areas and identify protestors participating in a march"
• subdermal tags will allow people to carry thief-proof credit cards under their skin
• library tags will allow protesters "to be unwittingly and remotely identified at a political rally by the book in your backpack"
• "theft will be drastically reduced because items will report when they are stolen, their smart tags also serving as a homing device toward their exact location"
• criminals will target people for kidnappings and burglaries by reading their bodies or the contents of their homes and wallets
• the UK government is systematically implanting an RFID tag in every UK baby

and that

One day, not long from now, virtually any store, restaurant, or business may be able to identify you, note what clothing you're wearing - and possibly even detect how much money you have in your wallet - as you enter the establishment.

or that

Already we can imagine the likes of John Ashcroft, salivating noisily at the idea of inserting similar chips directly into the skin of every swarthy foreigner and every tofu-sucking liberal commie protester while they sleep so the government can track your movements and erase your Social Security number and stomp down your door the minute you buy a used copy of "How to Make Cool Thermonuclear Warheads in Your Bathtub." This much is a given.

October 2007 saw spam as part of the US presidential election, claiming that

Ron Paul is for the people, unless you want your children to have human implant RFID chips, a National ID card and create a North American Union and see an economic collapse far worse than the great depression.

The most successful April Fools Day spoof of 2004 - amusingly accepted as genuine by some pundits - was the claim that US streetpeople would be mandatorily chipped -

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Thursday that it was about to begin testing a new technology designed to help more closely monitor and assist the nation's homeless population.

Under the pilot program, which grew out of a series of policy academies held in the last two years, homeless people in participating cities will be implanted with mandatory Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags that social workers and police can use track their movements.

... "This is a rare opportunity to use advanced technology to meet society's dual objectives of better serving our homeless population while making our cities safer," HRSA Administrator Betty James Duke said.

The miniscule RFID tags are no larger than a matchstick and will be implanted subdermally, meaning under the skin. Data from RFID tracking stations mounted on telephone poles will be transmitted to police and social service workers, who will use custom Windows NT software to track movements of the homeless in real time.

In what has become a chronic social problem, people living in shelters and on the streets do not seek adequate medical care and frequently contribute to the rising crime rate in major cities. Supporters of subdermal RFID tracking say the technology will discourage implanted homeless men and women from committing crimes, while making it easier for government workers to provide social services such as delivering food and medicine.

The humour appears to have escaped the chiliasts at the Australian UPMART (ie United People Movement Against Representation Taboo) group - otherwise famous for claims regarding a supposed "Right of Redemption" (rip up your drivers' licence and tax liability) - which promotes claims that all UK babies born in the last couple of years are chipped.

Concerns have also been reinforced by inept implementation, with a furore in the UK, US and Germany for example over 'smart shelf' prototypes that covertly took photos of shoppers when a product was removed from the shelf - in the UK another covert photo was taken at the checkout for comparison, apparently to reduce shoplifting.

Nathaniel Mishler quipped in 2006 that

It is apparent to the casual observer that [anxiety] is not adequately addressed and even compromised by company names such as "Alien Technologies", "ThingMagic", "Checkpoint Systems, Inc.", and "Goliath Solutions". It is almost as if the companies making these technologies are trying to scare the public or are too busy revelling in their supposed cleverness that they do not realize they are doing a poor job of hiding in plain sight

Playing Tag: An RFID Primer (PDF), a slim 2007 paper from US right wing think tank Pacific Research Institute, commented in that

part of RFID's perception problem could stem from its early backers, Wal-Mart and the US Department of Defense. That both the world's largest corporation and its largest military served as leading proponents of adoption likely tainted RFID in the eyes of those that might harbor a reflexive distrust of highly influential institutions. Of course, this reflex is neither a rational nor a justified reaction, but it is a strong reaction, and one with which RFID end users, vendors, and government officials must contend.

Rob van Kranenburg's 2008 The Internet of Things. A critique of ambient technology and the all-seeing network of RFID (PDF) warned that RFIDs are the basis for "the City of Control".

     advocacy

Local industry bodies include -

• Automatic Data Capture Australia (ADCA) - seeking recognition as the peak industry body representing "Data Capture Technology" (inc RFID) in Australia
• RFID Action Australia (RAA) - a new industry association to "represent any interested parties in RFID"

At a global level key industry bodies include

• EPCglobal - responsible for the Electronic Product Code (EPC) standard marketed to wholesale and retail segments of the supply chain. It has assumed responsibility from the Auto-ID research centre
• Association for Automatic Identification & Mobility (AIM)
• EAN International and the Uniform Code Council (EAN-UCC), the identification standards consortium that has grown from the EU European Article Numbering (EAN) and US Uniform Product Code organisations

Public interest groups and sites with a particular profile regarding RFID practice include mainstream liberties groups

• Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) - the US-based privacy specialist
• the less nuanced Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
• the Australian Privacy Foundation (APF)
• Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC)

and specialists - with arguably less credibility - such as

• Stop RFID - "spychips pose a threat to your privacy" - a US offshoot of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion & Numbering), a body with strong links to Christian fundamentalists concerned about "the mark of the Beast" who warn that RFIDs usher in the 'end times'
• 'We the People will not be Chipped - No Verichip Inside Movement' [sic], which claims to be "based on the irrefutable fact, that we believe in mankind's inalienable human rights that are absolute and can not be debased, nor perverted. Human life can not be degraded to a 16 digit RFID chip number embedded under you skin under any circumstance." It appears to be smaller than CASPIAN

Lack of transparency in some advocacy groups means that it is difficult to tell the extent of participation (eg 20 members or 2,000), expertise and self-interest (eg with a spokesperson gaining financial or intangible rewards through appearances on the lecture circuit).

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