RFID Ethical Implications A Warning About Potential Problems

RFID Ethical Implications A Warning About Potential Problems and Benefits of RFID by Brian Williams

Benefits • In the future, RFID will be used for more than just efficiently managing the stores we shop in. • There already thousands of people that are listed in the “highrisk” category medically that are tagged with RFID. • If RFID range improves, there are going to be more options, such as placing several receivers around town and to track all the numerous RFID’s in existence. • Since they know can determine distance from readers, personal inventory systems will become a handy way to prevent personal theft and to find misplaced items. • RFID could be placed on vehicles so that stolen cars could be easily indentified • It gives an easy way to categorize and store information on citizens if a system is developed that give everybody a national key.

Problems • • • In the future if there is a database with entries for every person in our country, an unscrupulous person could use this information to at the very least price target interest groups At the worst, it would be possible to discriminate among customers based on personal products that they have purchased The problem isn’t so much with anyone company, but that in a national database the capability to gain access to personal data would be high, and companies might inevitably gain access to files that would allow them to better cooperate against customer interests in order to benefit themselves. Currently, RFID tags are very irritating and the chance of migration is possible, albeit low. The capability to track everywhere you went in a day if pooled into a global database seems wholly intrusive. Consent for what is ethical concerning RFID usage is largely derived from what the masses want. However, this doesn’t mean that the decision is ethical.