Must RFID-Legislation Be Technology Neutral?
By Christian Laux on April 12, 2007 at 1:02 pm
It is a common mantra both of industry’s and consumers’ advocates that legislation related to radio frequency identification ("RFID") should be technology-neutral.
I am not convinced although the mantra has some merits: A tech-specific act is likely to become useless once there is technological improvement. Also, technology specific regulation might lead to unequal treatment. Further, technology specific regulation can lead to a different perception of several categories of data. This might have the undesired effect that some data is looked at to be worthy of protection while other data starts to be overlooked and gets in fact less protection. And this would disregard the choice of the consumer: What can be cool for one, can be a concern for another one. Legislation should give the consumer the tools so he can determine whether he has a privacy concern or not. And technology specific legislation is less likely to operate on this general level.
However, to me it still looks all right to create and apply technology specific rules if one intends to regulate a pervasive technology. Read more about Must RFID-Legislation Be Technology Neutral?