in Brussels as part of a consultation over the technology.
The EU expects the use of RFID tags to grow rapidly in the next few years, and believes a public discussion is necessary now about how they might be used, and how the data the tags provide might be protected. In part, the EU is responding to pressure from consumer and privacy groups, which have expressed concern that RFID tags could be used to build up huge databases of individuals’ shopping, leisure and travel habits. These databases could be exploited by unscrupulous businesses and also become a target for cybercriminals.
2. “Most business cases for RFID involve nothing that touches the consumer, but are based around back-end systems and the logistics chain. Most RFID tags will never reach the consumer but are on the pallet level,” says Jeroen Terstegge, corporate privacy officer at Philips and a moderator in the EU’s consultation.
3. European Commission officials are likely to be looking for evidence that the IT industry is taking such privacy and security considerations into account. And companies that are actively involved in RFID, including Philips, IBM and Accenture, are already working on privacy and security enhancement measures for RFID. Such measures could include limiting the range of tags – so that the reader would need to be in close proximity to the product, for example – encrypting the data on the tag, and providing consumers with the option to wipe the RFID chip once they have bought an item.
4. “We are seeing some push back on RFID plans, but it is because of technical not privacy issues,” says Duncan Brown, consulting director at analysts IDC. “We are seeing other areas where businesses are generating more and more information in a digital form, and some of this is potentially far more sinister data than what clothes you are buying”.
9. Give English equivalents for the words and phrases given below:
база данных; беспринципный; быть в противоречии; возврат назад; вопросы технического характера; губительная информация; затрагивать потребителя; информация в цифровой форме; кибер-преступник; кодирование данных; меры по расширению; потребитель; провести ряд рабочих встреч; радиометка; система с внутренним интерфейсом; соображения секретности и безопасности; стирать чип радиочастотной идентификации; теории конспирации.