Two weeks ago I wrote about Hiawatha Bray’s article on Katherine Albrecht’s latest screed about RFID. Thankfully someone with significantly better credentials than me has read the book and debunks it. RFID Journal founder and editor Mark Roberti carefully dissects Spychips and points out that Albrecht and Co. shamelessly pander to the paranoid.
While it may reinforce the beliefs of those who think big business and big government are out to control their lives, the book fails to deliver on the publisher’s claim that it will show “how this seemingly innocuous commercial maneuver will inevitably turn our society into a Big Brother nightmare.” In fact, anyone drawing conclusions from the hard evidence presented in the book—as opposed to the theoretical propositions put forth by the authors—will conclude that RFID is not a threat to privacy.
Roberti, certainly no unbiased reporter, is far from gentle. (Nor should he be.)
There are three problems with the book. First, the authors either don’t understand how RFID and related technologies work, or they simply hide the reality from readers in order to scare them. Second, the book almost always fails to draw conclusions from history or the real world. And third, when it does look at history, it completely misreads it.
I’ve said before that there are a significant number of issues with RFID at their core, as there are with any new technology. Those issues, some of which are privacy-related, will be solved by smart people working on them. They will not be solved by reckless and baseless sermons delivered from a pulpit of paranoia.
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