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IBM is currently running a TV commercial where two guys are driving a delivery truck full of cargo to Fresno, Calif. The problem is, they’re lost. They’re actually on the road to Albuquerque, N.M.. They don’t know that, but the boxes they’re transporting do, because they’re equipped with RFID tags. The tags notified IBM’s help desk that they’re headed in the wrong direction. “Maybe the boxes should drive,” says one driver to the other.

In this case, RFID was used to improve supply chain efficiency, but a technology that can not only tell you what goods you’re carrying but also where you’re headed has some people worried. If it can be used to scan cargo, can it not also be used to scan an individual? To determine his whereabouts, his blood type, his bank account number or what he had for breakfast?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has spent several years investigating the potentially damaging impact a technology like RFID could have on society. Because RFID tags do not require line-of-site scanning technology, as barcodes do, they can be read from a distance. Tags also contain a great deal more information than barcodes.

The worry may not immediately be identity theft, says Seth Schoen, staff technologist for the EFF, but could be a problem in the future if RFID is used to store personal data as part of a passport or other form of ID.

RFID tags can be copied, claims Schoen, and cost pressures may cause businesses to cut corners when they’re rolling out RFID for various business applications.

“You might say that these threats derive from the fact that the RFID industry wants things to be as cheap as possible,” says Schoen. “And people haven’t necessarily thought through the implications of deploying a lot of tags without any security measures for a particular application.”

Several libraries are rolling out RFID as a means to track books, he says, but they haven’t considered the possibility that the people carrying the books could also be tracked.

Bartek Muszynski, the president of Vancouver-based RFID consulting firm NJE Consulting Inc., says that most of the concerns about the technology are “significantly overblown.” But that isn’t to say that they don’t exist.

The level of detail that can be applied to an RFID chip is far beyond conventional barcoding means.

“When you buy a can of Coke with a barcode on there, all that will tell is that it’s a can of Coke. With an RFID tag, if you bought a sweater, it would not just tell that it’s a certain kind of sweater, it will tell you it’s sweater No. 2,000,456,” he says.

GS1, the international standards body that governs RFID requirements, has considered the potential for abuse and built in safeguards to prevent such abuse, according to GS1 Canada CEO Arthur Smith.

There is a “kill switch” built right into an RFID tag that would render it virtually useless after it leaves a store, for example. Data on the tag is also encrypted. A more pressing concern for Smith right now is how different businesses will exchange data as they use RFID to track goods through a supply chain.

“People who are interested in the supply chain are worried about information ownership, information rights, access rights – part of the benefit that people talk about is transparency along the supply chain,” says Smith.

“‘Where are the goods? Where are my goods? Are they sitting in the manufacturing warehouse? Are they sitting on a truck?’ Right now we’re just going through some of those issues with the industry. Who has what access rights and how are we going to protect it?”

Manufacturers may be more concerned if Wal-Mart, or anyone else along the supply chain, has the ability to view their inventory levels rather than RFID hacks from the outside, he says. “Some of those issues are now just coming into place.”

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