The good Charlie Cooper of CNET asks this question today about a California bill that bans the forced implant of RFID chips on humans...
From my vantage point in the peanut gallery, it's oh so tempting to hold our elected officials up to ridicule. But truth be told, it's sometimes impossible to resist. And when it comes to that increasingly busy intersection between the worlds of politics and technology, it seems the hits just keep on coming.
So it is that California State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) introduced a bill that would "prohibit any person from forcing any other person to undergo an implant in their body of a radio frequency identification device."
1 - Renew fundamental reforms of communications regulations.
2 - Leave network neutrality concerns to the market and antitrust.
3 - Leave content business models and fair use to the market.
4 - When addressing patents, take a first-principles approach to property and innovation.
5 - Enact meaningful reform of archaic media ownerships laws and regulations that hinder media marketplace experimentation.
6- Pursue greater First Amendment parity among modern media providers by leveling the playing field in the direction of greater freedom for all operators / platforms.
7 - Subject data security and privacy proposals to careful benefit-cost analysis, including full examination of consumer benefits from services and technologies affected by these proposals.
8 - Promote pro-competitive, non-regulatory internet governance.
9 - Avoid open-ended, intrusive data retention mandates.
10 - Promote more efficient taxation of telecom services and Internet sales.
The full study with further descriptions of the positions can be downloaded here. After the jump are two of the full recommendations....
What does electronic car security, a new postage stamp, smart medicine cabinets, and argument free soccer balls have in common? All are enabled by RFID technology.
The RFID Lowdown lists these four examples and 47 others that may or may not see the light of day. Some are meant to scare and rile up the privacy advocates. Most are really cool examples of how a emerging technology can be used to solve problems big and small.
"Thank god! There has been so much unauthorized surgical implantation
going on in the United States, someone finally put their foot down
regarding RFID chips."
Personally, we're just happy it's still okay to force Junior Mints into someone's body during an operation. But, really, why did Wisconsin feel the urgency to pass this law when there's never ever been an incident of "forced-chipping" in Wisconsin (let alone, anywhere)? Could it be politics? (The answer after the jump)...
New Hampshire is debating RFID legislation that would put parameters on how the technology can be used says the Union Leader. Most of the rules have to do with mandating labeling of products that utilize RFID technology (like a credit card, for example) and restrictions on the state using the chips to track individuals.
It all seems rather benign until you consider a few things. First, the legislation is calling for "universally accepted symbols" to designate RFID usage. Yet, it seemingly would take some time before a symbol is universally accepted and credit card issuers, for one, are eager to implement the technology to speed payments and provide safer transactions. Would this mean that everyone but New Hampshire residents could use a card with a RFID chip on it before the universe coalesced on a symbol to put on packaging?
Secondly, beyond electronic payments, RFID is still a far ways away from moving from the pallet to the product level. One wonders what the rush is. Or where the fear is derived from.
Sometimes we're wrong (see: "Missing: All That Post-Grokster Legislation"). But, sometimes we're lucky enough to be right. Unfortunately, in this case, this isn't a good thing for the tech industry. See "Is That a Microchip in Your Pants?". Here we provide perspective and a short history of RFID and the technology's seemingly intractable collisions with privacy advocates. After the very dumb use of RFID chips to track children at a Northern California school, we feared that if the industry didn't manage the political and perception processes well, bad things could happen. They are. As Tom Foremski notes at SiliconValleyWatcher today: "The biggest danger to Silicon Valley is that it could become illegal to innovate here."
Indeed. In what should be a wake-up slap, a normally reasonable California state senator from Palo Alto (yes, you read right) has introduced legislation that would place a moratorium on the use of RFID chips in numerous government applications. Originally, the proposed law called for a ban, but the bill has been watered down a bit since it's original introduction (and after easily passing the state senate 29-7). Still, many in the tech industry feel that the bill will impede innovation and wrongly punishes a technology instead of bad user behavior.
"The European Commission this week adopted an opinion on the ethical aspects of ICT implants in the human body, declaring they should only be given to those in need rather than those who wish to enhance their faculties."
The 463 will be closely watching the policy issues around the deployment of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. Here, we'll recap the technnology and touch upon some of the controversies that it's meeting on it's way to a wholesale roll-out....
Last week two groups of Washington policymakers both essentially said
that, for now, the promise of RFID far exceeds any need for government
regulation of the technology's applications.
Neither pronouncement made much news. It's likely because most even in
the tech industry are still trying to get their arms around what RFID
really is now and what it could potentially be. Plus, neither had
inferences of wireless panties or kindergartners with chips in their
head.
More on that later.... First a quick step back....
VeriSign CEO, Stratton Sclavos dove deep with both San Francisco Chronicle and CNET editors recently in an outreach effort to underline how the company's intelligent infrastructure services bring together disparate elements like RFID, VOIP, Internet commerce, security and the .com and .net registries. Today's Chronicle article is here and the CNET Q&A here. In the Chronicle interview, Sclavos says this about ICANN...
"I think a strong ICANN, well run, would be a good thing. I think that
if you can create self-regulation, that is always the best model, versus
legislation or country-by-country mandates. But ICANN was created in a time
when the Internet was booming, domain names were growing fivefold a year,
there was just total chaos. And so the reasons for which it was created no
longer exist.
"At the same time, they have been, in our opinion, interfering with our
business, against what our contractual terms are, and so we're in a legal
dispute with them to get some clarity around what we can and can't do."
The Caveat
The opinions on postings are of individual 463 Communications partners and employees. They do not necessarily represent the opinions of 463 Communications, the firm, or our clients. Comments will remain posted at the sole discretion of 463.
