Issues with RFID - 3

Implementation Issue

Security/Privacy Issues

Many people are weary of RFID technology as they believe it is an attempt at invading the privacy of every individual on the Earth.

This new technology has raised privacy concerns by many. In examining the privacy impact of RFID tags, it is helpful to review privacy rights origins and history in our society. First, though, in order to address and analyze threats to personal privacy it is desirable to categorize personal privacy. DeGeorge (2003) suggests six different classes of personal privacy which can be categorized as privacy classes.

•          Space - physical space such as home, desk, locker etc.
•          Body/mental - free speech, no self-incrimination
•          Personal information - information about yourself
•          Communication privacy - interchange between individuals such as phone or email
•          Personal privacy - right to be left alone, freedom to do what we want on our own time
•          Cyber privacy - free speech in the electronic world

There are significant privacy issues involved in the use of RFID tags:

•          Tags are hidden and unknown to shoppers and purchasers.
•          Tags provide an identification of every item purchased, thus allowing a universal product registration system.
•          Tags allow the potential for aggregation of massive amounts of personal data based on purchases and ownership, making personal profiling possible.
•          Embedded tags (such as in clothing or currency) can be read by active readers and can allow tracking of individuals.

One fear is that someone in the manufacturing or sales chain will use information gleaned from RFID systems to learn information about or track a consumer contrary to his or her interests and desires. While linking the serial number on an RFID tag back to the purchaser can have many substantial benefits, misuse of that same linkage may constitute a privacy invasion.

Questions about direct monitoring parallel longstanding debates about what retailers and marketers may do with consumer information they gather through transactions. This is not a new issue, but an extension of an old one.

The second way RFID systems may be used to compromise privacy is when an outsider to an RFID network uses the existence of RFID tags to read and collect personally identifiable information contrary to the interests of those monitored. Someone may scan an RFID tag and use further reading of the tag elsewhere as a proxy for the presence of the same individual in the second location. Collecting that information, or subsequently using it in various ways, may compromise privacy and threaten other interests.

The RFID privacy threats may be summarized under:

•       System security

o   Outside attacker gains access to database

o   Inside attacker with RFID hardware

•          Malicious peers

o   Other users query to track me

o   User data could be mined

o   Peers collude to learn even more

•          Institutional surveillance

o   System owner tracks users

o   Other institutions can gain access

o   User is unaware of what is being stored and for how long

Below is shown a privacy v/s utility graph:

Future areas of study which may lead to improvement in this area are:

•          Add a set of administrator-defined system-wide database queries
•          Study explicit user privacy controls
•          Investigate provable database privacy techniques
•          Creation of an economic model for “pricing” queries based on privacy
•          Study privacy models in-situ with real applications and users