Bills threaten burgeoning RFID business.

Manufacturers of radio frequency identification products are banding together to keep lawmakers from prohibiting use of the technology.

Legislation is pending before lawmakers in at least five states, including California, to regulate or outright ban the use of RFID on state-issued documentation such as driver's licenses, school identification cards or library cards.

Eleven other states have made attempts at such legislation and have failed.

"Our mantra has been don't ban the technology, ban the bad behavior," said Roxanne Gould, the lead lobbyist in Sacramento for the American Electronics Association. "This is technology that can benefit consumers and could stop identity theft."

Some uses for radio frequency identification chips or tags are access control devices to enter secure buildings or settings; in transponders to pass through toll booths; and on hospital wristbands containing medical information.

Legislation is driven by concerns that personal information contained on the chips could be accessed without the user knowing.

The AeA, whose Los Angeles area office is located in Woodland Hills, is throwing its support behind a bill sponsored by Assemblyman Alberto Torrico calling for a report from the California Research Bureau on uses of RFID in government issued identification. The bill is still at the committee level in the Assembly.

Gould called the bill a response to a set of pending bills proposed by Sen. Joe Simitian that would place a three-year hold on the use of the technology in driver's licenses and identification cards issued to students through high school age.

Bill Newill, vice president for sales and marketing with Secura Key in Chatsworth, said the control access systems company was not aware of Simitian's legislation until several months after it had been introduced in the spring of 2005.

The bills were re-introduced for the current legislative session and the industry is working to have the language amended so that it is technology neutral and addresses the issues lawmakers want to address, Newill said, adding, "It's not the technology they are concerned about."

The concerns of RFID opponents can be summed up in one word: privacy.

There are fears that the expanding use of RFID personal information would be susceptible to being read by strangers.

"Neither government nor private industry has given the public much reason to trust their ability to safeguard sensitive personal information," read a Los Angeles Times editorial from August 2005 backing Simitian's bills.

But those who back the technology say those fears are unfounded.

Precision Dynamics Corp. manager Irwin Thall summed it by stating that the alarm bells have rung too early.

"An RFID wristband is much more secure than a barcode wristband because you can encrypt the data," added Thall, manager for RFID technology used in the health care field made at the San Fernando-based company.

Mark Roberti, founder and editor of RFID Journal, conceded that it was "scary" if one thinks it is true that personal information contained in an RF1D chip can be scanned from a long distance.

Proposed legislation, however, is outlawing only theoretical abuses, Roberti said.

"There are 50 million people who carry an RFID transponder or have a card they carry and in five years there has not been one incident I am aware of where somebody's privacy was infringed," Roberti said.

Secura Key's Newill admits that the industry as a whole hasn't done a good enough job to counter the misinformation. Education of the public, lawmakers and the media is one of the goals of the recently founded International Association for Identification Technology of which Newill is a member.

The technology behind the use of radio frequency identification has been around for decades but had been cost-prohibitive to use on a wide scale. But today RFID is used whenever a card is waved before a reader to enter a parking garage or a secure building; or in a transponder to go through a toll booth.

Precision Dynamics has introduced wristbands employing RFID technology to allow for cashless purchases at water parks in Pennsylvania and Colorado.

Those uses employ a low radio frequency that requires the chip to be 2 to 6 inches away from a reader to work.

Ultra high frequency tags can be read at a greater distance, say up to 30 feet, but are used for different applications other than containing personal information, Newill said. Warehouses and logistics operations will benefit the most from UHF chips because goods being delivered can be scanned when on a pallet rather than individually through use of a bar code.

"They want to replace the bar code and can scan with a chip so they don't require lines of sight," said Paul Chandler, marketing director for Secura Key.

In monitoring legislative efforts to restrict how RFID is used, Roberti theorized that once lawmakers take a closer look they realize they are creating a solution for a non-existent problem. Roberti also thinks that the marketplace will make sure there are no abuses of how the products are used.

"Business people are not stupid," Roberti said. "They are not going to implement a system that will cause a loss of customers."

By MARK R. MADLER

Staff Reporter