Monday, August 30, 2004 10:27 PM
Don't regulate RFID--yet. A counterpoint to yesterday's post on RFID. Declan McCullagh argues that industry should have the opportunity to implement RFID responsibly before protesters urge the Feds to pile on with legislation designed to regulate their use.
Even if the behavior of industry is somewhat suspect after the debacles of the late '90's, this makes some sense. If nothing else, regulating too early may not only retard any positive outcomes from the implementation of RFID technology, it may completely miss some egregious means of violating citizen's privacy that wasn't anticipated when the technology was in its infancy.
It strikes me that seeking to heavily regulated RFID technology at this stage is largely analogous to legislation aimed at regulating P2P nets - just because a technology has the potential for abuse doesn't mean that all uses are bad.
