Washington State Passes RFID Anti-Spying Law
April 2008
Washington’s governor this week signed a bill making it a Class C felony to use radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to spy on someone. The bill was signed about a week after the Washington State Senate unanimously passed Bill 1031, which makes it a crime to intentionally scan people’s IDs remotely, without their knowledge and consent, for the purpose of fraud, identity theft, or some other illegal purpose. The bill specifically cites RFID and facial recognition technology. Violators face a prison sentence of up to 10 years. In addition, if the illegally gathered data is used in a separate crime, up to 10 years could be added to whatever sentence violators receive for the second crime. “Our intent was to put some basic rules of the road in place,” said a state congressman. “As the technology is being deployed, it needs to be done in a way that the public won’t sense there’s a huge violation to their privacy rights. My fear is that state legislatures are good at being reactionary when something atrocious happens. We wanted to be ahead of this one.” The congressman, who sponsored the bill, noted that Washington state began using enhanced driver’s licenses this winter. The new licenses use RFID tags and can be used at the Canadian/U.S. border crossing instead of a passport. In light of these new ID cards and the growing number of RFID-based customer-loyalty cards and company ID cards, he said it was time for a law that protects people’s privacy. The law, which goes into in July, focuses on skimming or lifting information from RFID tags without the knowledge of the owner.
Washington’s governor this week signed a bill making it a Class C felony to use radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to spy on someone. The bill was signed about a week after the Washington State Senate unanimously passed Bill 1031, which makes it a crime to intentionally scan people’s IDs remotely, without their knowledge and consent, for the purpose of fraud, identity theft, or some other illegal purpose. The bill specifically cites RFID and facial recognition technology. Violators face a prison sentence of up to 10 years. In addition, if the illegally gathered data is used in a separate crime, up to 10 years could be added to whatever sentence violators receive for the second crime. “Our intent was to put some basic rules of the road in place,” said a state congressman. “As the technology is being deployed, it needs to be done in a way that the public won’t sense there’s a huge violation to their privacy rights. My fear is that state legislatures are good at being reactionary when something atrocious happens. We wanted to be ahead of this one.” The congressman, who sponsored the bill, noted that Washington state began using enhanced driver’s licenses this winter. The new licenses use RFID tags and can be used at the Canadian/U.S. border crossing instead of a passport. In light of these new ID cards and the growing number of RFID-based customer-loyalty cards and company ID cards, he said it was time for a law that protects people’s privacy. The law, which goes into in July, focuses on skimming or lifting information from RFID tags without the knowledge of the owner.
posted by arkietechs at 1:09 PM
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