Out of Control

The New Hampshire bill would require retailers to label any products, such as food, apparel, or appliances, that contain RFID chips. It would exempt devices that incorporate RFID and other radio tracking technology as part of their essential mechanisms, such as cell phones, WiFi cards, and global positioning system (GPS) receivers.

The bill, introduced in February, revives but clarifies a 2005 bill that many felt was overly broad in its definitions, especially of radio tracking devices.

The bill would also prohibit forced implantation of an RFID chip in a person. Police would have to obtain a court order to use RFID to track an individual electronically.

The bill itself, like at least 17 others that have been introduced in state houses around the country, reflects the two sides of the RFID coin, commercial and government.

Concerns in the latter case have led to resolutions rejecting the U.S. government’s Real ID Act of 2005, which aims to standardize the information on state driver’s licenses and require them to contain RFID chips. Maine legislators approved such a resolution in January. Similar bills are pending in Georgia, Massachusetts, Montana, and Washington. New Hampshire has also introduced a bill, separate from the RFID proposal, that would prohibit the state from participating in any national ID card system.

Industry groups such as the Smart Card Alliance say RFID labeling laws raise costs for business and hit small retailers especially hard. The Smart Card Alliance also the privacy threat has been overhyped and misportrayed in the media. In reality, supporters of the technology say, RFID helps reduce manufacturing costs and protects consumers by keeping counterfeit products out of the supply chain. The Smart Card Alliance advocates a series of policy steps for both retail and government applications that include deactivation of any RFID chips embedded in a package or product upon purchase and the use of encryption in documents.

The implantation of RFID chips in individuals remains a hotly debated topic. Even so, some of the anti-RFID literature comes off as a bit paranoid at first blush. Then you come across companies like VeriChip Corp., of Del Rey Beach, Fla., which sells FDA-approved RFID chips, about the size of a grain of rice, designed for human implantation. The chief application right now is health care. Some 500 hospitals nationwide use VeriChip’s RFID-based patient information technology, so we are talking about technology that is used here and now.

Some of the applications are hard to argue with. Implanted RFID tags can provide doctors with life-saving information in event the patient is unconscious or incapacitated. In Florida, VeriChip and the Alzheimer’s Community Care Association of Palm Beach and Martin Counties Inc. have begun a two-year study to determine whether it’s practical to implant tiny computer chips containing medical records in dementia patients.

“People with Alzheimer’s and dementia are our most vulnerable population, particularly during hurricane season. We’re hoping this kind of technology creates a safer environment for them and creates higher efficiency in the emergency room,” Mary Barnes, president and chief executive of Alzheimer’s Community Care told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

But I’m a little leery of getting Americans getting too comfortable too quickly about RFID implantation in humans. A visit to VeriChip’s Web site finds rather breathless copy that tries too hard to paint a smiley face on the idea of human chip implants while barely masking a corporate vision that all but shouts, “If they move, tag ‘em!” And these days I think it’s fair to be worried about anything that involves the U.S. health care system, where government bureaucrats seem more than happy to legislate what they think is good for us, not what we would choose. They’ve already started banning trans fats and mandating, in New York City’s case, registration of diabetes cases with local health agencies (a process once required only for highly contagious diseases). In this environment, voluntary RFID implantation can easily become required RFID implantation.