Gadget Hacking – RFID

For those who think that consumers will be powerless in the face of the “worldwide RFID infrastructure” ™, I submit: DCist.

Wait. Isn’t DCist that local newsy ‘blog with plenty o’ nightlife information for D.C.-area residents? How could such an airy, lightweight site have anything to do with the privacy onslaught posed by RFID?

RFID is a highly technical challenge that furrows the brows of smart and serious technology analysts and privacy activists. It takes privacy expertise, public policymaking experience, and tech savvy to handle RFID. These things are in short supply among the – sorry to say it – great unwashed . . .

Balderdash.

DCist has posted a brief, entertaining recipe for hacking your Metro SmartTrip card. For entertainment, people are learning about technology. My favorite comment so far: “Big next winter: Smart trip mittens.”

Here’s the significance: Ordinary people are getting access to relevant information about where RFID is and how it works. Ordinary people are fully capable of understanding RFID. Ordinary people will use it to their advantage when they want and decline to use it when they want.

The premise of experts (a premise that serves the expert class quite well) is that people can’t figure this stuff out so they have to be protected from it by law and regulation, after thousands of hearings, meetings, forums, and conferences.

Repeat: balderdash.

This is evidence of what I wrote about some time ago: a variety of social forces will constrain and contain RFID.

SHARE: 4 comments