Senate hearing threatens the future of RFID in US, fears NRF

In response, US retail trade body the National Retail Federation (NRF) publicly offered its services to the California Senate Subcommittee on new technology, chaired by Senator Debra Bowen.

The Senator has a reputation for championing privacy rights and there is a chance that the hearing could lead to legislation to control RFID tagging. Naturally, the retail community in the US was keen to state its case at the hearing.

‘The hearing will be looking at ways to set standards for RFID and our concern is that all angles get covered,’ said a spokesman for the NRF.

‘There are legitimate concerns over privacy, but so far this has been the sole concern of the media. There is much more too it and we would hate to see such potential thrown away,’ he added.

The NRF does not usually lobby below a national level, but because California is such a powerful state the trade association is concerned that if it legislates against RFID, other states will follow suit.

At the hearing, interim chief executive officer of the US branch of the Association for Automatic Identification and Data Capture Technologies, Dan Mullen, went before the subcommittee to explain the lengths to which RFID tags can and can not be used to track customers in-store.

Whatever the outcome of the hearing, retail representatives in the UK are confident it will have little impact on RFID tagging in this country.

A British Retail Consortium spokesman said: ‘The issue in the US is around post-point of sale. That is such a small part of RFID projects in the UK at the moment.’

The perception in the retail community is that the UK Government would be far less likely to legislate against RFID off its own back.

However, it would be more likely to wait until existing human rights laws at home and in Europe were tested by an individual case brought by anti-RFID lobbyists, before considering putting legislation through an already overburdened UK Parliament.