April 1, 2005—March was not a good month for privacy advocates in the United States looking to the federal government to limit the use of RFID technologies. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission released a report entitled “RFID: Applications and Implications for Consumers,” which says that for now, the agency will allow companies that make and use RFID technology to regulate themselves regarding consumer privacy.

Around the same time, a group of Republican U.S. senators said they would work to ensure that RFID deployments stay free of regulation. The 14-member Senate Republican High Tech Task Force published a policy platform that said: “RFID holds tremendous promise for our economy, including military logistics and commercial inventory efficiencies, and should not be saddled prematurely with regulation.”


The European Union has taken a tougher line on privacy. In late January, the European Commission’s advisory body on data protection and privacy released RFID guidelines that say retailers should obtain consent from individuals where RFID is used and provide information to those on whom data is collected, including the presence and location of RFID tags and readers, what sort of data is being collected and how it is being used. The E.U. also wants retailers to let customers know that they have the right to complete access to any personal data being collected and stored on them as well as the right to check on the accuracy of the data.

Up to now, retailers had felt little pressure to deal with privacy issues, because most expected they would not move to item-level tracking for several years. But tagged items are appearing in stores—Wal-Mart is receiving tagged printers and scanners from Hewlett-Packard, and Tesco is tagging DVDs—and some retailers say it is important to address the issue now.