Washington State Representative Introduces RFID Legislation

The consumer protections listed in the bill closely match those noted in EPCglobal's own guidelines for consumer products. However, EPCglobal's Allison Fleming, manager of the public policy steering committee, says her organization's opposition to the bill stems from its concern that the legislation would engrave in stone the current guidelines for how companies should deploy RFID. "We do not want to codify our guidelines [with respect to consumer notice and privacy protections], because as RFID technology evolves, our guidelines are going to evolve," she says.

According to Fleming, EPCglobal has suggested that Rep. Morris focus his legislation not on restricting RFID technology, but rather on outlawing abuses of consumer privacy, such as skimming data from tags. She says the state of Washington currently has several pieces of legislation, including an anti-skimming statute originally written to prevent stealing credit card data from magnetic-stripe transactions, and that Rep. Morris should work to add RFID-specific language to those laws.

Morris, on the other hand, notes that the bill he has drafted would be added to existing state laws on protecting privacy. The bill is needed, he says, because courts would otherwise dismiss suits filed over RFID-specific privacy invasion under existing laws, citing the fact that such applications of the technology didn't exist when the original laws were passed.

Morris says companies selling RFID products and services oppose his bill because, if passed, it might require them to enact separate sales and production practices for products sold in the state of Washington. "They would rather have to address this on a national level, and I can understand that," he says, "but national law is not likely to be passed on an issue like this until the states begin legislating."

Rep. Morris notes that his state has been a leader in terms of enacting laws aimed at protecting consumer rights with respect to emerging technologies. By way of example, he points to Washington's passage of laws against spyware and spam. "We want to offer a way for companies to develop [RFID] technology in a way that won't lead to public outcry—and, that, in the end, will save those companies money."

The scope of technologies named in the suit was initially quite broad, says Morris, and included data transmitted through Bluetooth and other types of devices. Mobile telecommunications companies have opposed the bill because it would impact their plans for offering products and services utilizing near-field communication (NFC), a short-range, high-frequency RFID protocol. He and his staff, he adds, are researching how they might exempt cellular phones and PDA phones from the bill to make sure their use of NFC technology would not be impacted.