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March 18, 2007
EU to let RFID industry regulate itself
This is European Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding. She just announced that the EU will not protect consumers from hidden RFID tags by requiring business to say when and where they're using RFID. Instead, the EU will allow businesses to regulate themselves.
Sounds like they're taking a page straight from the U.S. playbook. (And we all know how well industry self-regulation works here.)
Here are a few news excerpts to give you indigestion:
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From the International Herald Tribune:
"I know that most of you are wondering what new regulation I am going to propose today," said Viviane Reding, the European commissioner responsible for Internet and communications, at a news conference at the Cebit technology convention in Hannover. "Well, today I am here to tell you that on RFIDs, there is not going to be a regulation," she said, referring to radio frequency identification tags.
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From New Europe:
Speaking on the opening day of the Cebit trade fair in Germany, [EU Commissioner Viviane Reding] said Brussels believed there should be as little regulation as possible, and had no plans for laws to limit RFID (radio frequency identification) tags...Reding said the EU could wait till next year to review whether regulation was needed and would consider consumer concerns. “My view is that we should under-regulate rather than over-regulate so that this sector can take off,” she said.
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At least one American official is "relieved," according to theInternational Herald Tribune (also cited above):
Robert Cresanti, a U.S. under secretary of commerce for technology who met with Reding at Cebit, said he was relieved that the European Commission was not going to regulate RFIDs, which he said would have slowed their diffusion and added costs.
"No regulation, in my point of view, is a victory," he said.
In the United States, RFID use is largely unencumbered by national and state law, and the chips must only respect restrictions on dissemination of health and financial data, Cresanti said. "In the EU, there is a broader privacy protection, and our concern was that existing laws could have been used to the detriment of RFID technology," he said.
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But they won't be.
I don't think the public won this round, Europe.
- Katherine Albrecht
Posted by Katherine Albrecht at March 18, 2007 2:59 AM