Originally published April 6 2005
US government wants to call RFID-tagged employee id cards 'contactless chips'
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The US Department of Homeland Security will be issuing thousands of radio frequency identification tags to employees as part of efforts to speed up employees' access to secure areas. However, the department does not want them called RFID tags but 'contactless chips' or 'proximity chips'. This is to avoid the debate that RFID tags breach a person's privacy.
Conspiracy theorists and civil libertarians, fear not.
The U.S. government will not use radio-frequency identification tags in the passports it issues to millions of Americans in the coming years.
The distinction is part of an effort by the Department of Homeland Security and one of its RFID suppliers, Philips Semiconductors, to brand RFID tags in identification documents as "proximity chips," "contactless chips" or "contactless integrated circuits" -- anything but "RFID."
The Homeland Security Department is playing word games to dodge the privacy debate raging over RFID tags, which will eventually replace bar-code labels on consumer goods, said privacy rights advocates this week.
The technology, with its many names ("contactless chips" has been around for some time), is used in security access cards, E-ZPass automatic toll-paying devices and ski-lift tickets.
"We'd prefer," said Joseph Broghamer, Homeland Security's director of authentication technologies, "that the terms 'RFID,' or even 'RF,' not be used at all (when referring to the RFID-tagged smartcards).
The Homeland Security Department this spring will begin issuing RFID-tagged employee ID cards (which include fingerprint records) to tens of thousands of its employees.
The government's plan will earn billions of dollars for the RFID suppliers while helping security officials track individuals more effectively by detecting their ID documents' radio signals in airport terminals, or wherever reader devices are present.
Contactless chips, said Broghamer, are more sophisticated than retail RFID tags, because they can carry more information and can better protect sensitive personal information.
That is why Homeland Security is engaging in doublespeak, to dupe Americans into accepting RFID tags on their passports, said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program.
Government agents will use reader devices to track individuals wherever they use their RFID-tagged identification documents, Steinhardt and Tien said.
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