I submitted this to Slashdot, don’t know if they’ll pick it up though. I just finished reading this week’s NetworkWorld and saw Mark Gibbs’ column on RFID tracking. Looks like he’s really opening a can of worms here. I generally like what he writes, but either he’s either totally off with this one or he’s just looking to get a rise out of people.
–Slashdot Story as submitted–
A few weeks ago NetworkWorld columnist Mark Gibbs wrote about the California school district tracking children with RFID tags, this was also covered on Slashdot here and here. In his latest column Mr. Gibbs has suggested tracking cars with RFID, apparently Mr. Gibbs feels that “Roads, freeways and junctions [should] have RFID scanners and log all vehicles that passed.” He suggests using the data to ticket speeders and make it easier to track criminals. He openly admits such a system could easily be defeated by removing the tag and swapping plates but that only “serious criminals” would resort to that. Aside from the massive amounts of data a project like this would create does it really serve the public interest to have an easily defeatable and easily abused tracking system such as this in place? A plan has already been suggested in Texas that would put RFID on cars. While that plan doesn’t go as far as Mr. Gibbs has proposed it could set the stage for such tracking in the future.
Comments are closed.