Privacy implications of RFID: An assessment of threats and opportunites

Abstract

European citizens consider Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to be the most intrusive technology of the past two decades. Safeguarding privacy requires specific action that needs attention of all parties involved. European citizens consider legal instruments to offer insufficient guarantees for safeguarding privacy. 'Privacy by design' offers interesting opportunities to build in privacy guarantees in the technology, not as an end-of-pipe solution but as an integral design parameter. Notwithstanding the commercial focus on RFID in logistic processes and - eventually - in the retail sector, the first grand scale uses of RFID will be in public domain applications. These application domains are perfect 'niches' to stimulate a 'privacy by design' approach, both to academic researchers and application engineers. © 2008 International Federation for Information Processing.