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BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Privacy and security need to be built into radio frequency identification tags before they become widespread, the European Commission said, announcing it would publish guidelines later this year.
RFID chips can be used to automatically identify and verify passports, luggage, livestock or pharmaceuticals and have a wide range of potential uses — from telling doctors what medicines patients have been given to instantly pointing out expired food.
Advocates of the technology — which for now is used mainly on cases of items in warehouses, not individual products — laud its ability to speed inventory and checkout. But opponents say that because wireless chips can be read from afar, people and their purchases could be surreptitiously tracked.
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