Cédric Laurant is Policy Counsel with the Electronic Privacy Information Center. He concentrates on international privacy issues, comparative policy, as well as the legal aspects of European and US privacy regimes.

What factors have contributed to the news media’s negative portrayal of RFID technology?

Various recent stories in the media have revealed that RFID users have generally not been transparent about how they intend to make use of RFID tags in consumer products and for consumer marketing and tracking purposes, despite consumer’s strong fears about the intrusive surveillance schemes that RFID tags could enable. Some stories even reported that a few consumer product manufacturers and retailers had secretly installed RFID tags on individual consumer products coupled with video surveillance devices, despite repeated assurances by those companies that they had not conducted such tests on consumers.