Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of law, culture, technology, and politics. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.

This will be the last Politech post for a while. I'm at SFO about to 
leave for Tunisia...

Original RFID protester post:
http://www.politechbot.com/2005/11/09/jim-harper-on/
Jim Harper's reply:
http://www.politechbot.com/2005/11/09/rfid-protesters-target/

-Declan

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Politech] Jim Harper on how anti-RFID'ers harm immigrants, the 
poor (and public libraries) [priv]
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 09:42:26 -0800 (PST)
From: David Wagner <daw@cs.berkeley.edu>
To: declan@well.com


In article <43723425.90404@well.com> you write:
>I also received a message from a library director at a public library 
>that I've been asked not to post verbatim. To summarize it, they're 
>planning to replace bar code and security tags with RFID tags within the 
>next three years. That will let librarians check out a pile of books 
>without opening each one -- and also put a scanner in the book return 
>slot too.
>
>One huge benefit is to staff ergonomics (that's a lot of book handling 
>eliminated). The RFID tag does not contain any information about the 
>book or patron, just a unique ID like a barcode -- only numbers.

Libraries have been doing this for some time now.  For instance, my
local library has largely migrated to RFID-tagged books.  Here is an
analysis of the privacy issues with library RFID, written by David
Molnar and I over a year ago:
   http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/librfid-ccs04.pdf
There are some real benefits from RFID tagging library books -- but
also some possible risks to patron privacy, given current RFID technology.

Posted by Declan McCullagh on Nov 09, 2005 in category privacy

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