A Texas legislator has filed a bill that would, in part, call for the state to replace vehicle inspection stickers with radio frequency identification tags, otherwise known as transponders.
But the idea does not sit well with some privacy experts.
The tags would be used by law enforcement to ensure compliance with the state’s insurance laws, according to Larry Phillips, the Republican state representative who proposed the bill.
“This is a system that would be used to reduce the number of uninsured drivers on the road. Right now it’s at 26%,” Phillips said.
The bill also calls for the transponders to be compatible with the automated vehicle registration and certificate of title system established by the Texas Department of Transportation. It would also require compatibility with the standards established by the Transportation Department and other agencies for use of toll roads and toll facilities, Phillips said.
Regarding privacy concerns, Phillips said it would be a felony to misuse the information stored in the transponders.
Beth Givens, director of the San Diego Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, isn’t keen on the idea.
“This is an appalling application of RFID technology,” Givens said. “The reason is that the use of RFID for this particular application will not stop there. As with any information technology, there will be many other uses found for the RFID tag located on the vehicle. And tracking could be one of them.”
Some people call RFID a “promiscuous” technology, Givens said, because anyone can obtain a reading device and read the tag, she said.
Givens said that whenever a new use for an information technology is proposed in legislation, there should be a privacy impact assessment of that technology to analyze the pros and cons and to study the unintended consequences of that application.
“This is a very good example of the need for a privacy impact assessment,” she said. “One of the questions that should come up in such an assessment is whether or not there are other technologies that are less intrusive that can do the same job.”
In this case, Givens said a two-dimensional bar code or a plain old bar code could be used, where at least the reader would have to have line of sight to obtain the data. With RFID, however, it can be read from a distance and without the knowledge of the vehicle owner.
“So it is a technology that could be used invisibly and secretly,” she said.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, agrees.
“We’re concerned about the unregulated use of RFIDs because they make it possible to obtain personal information without the person’s knowledge or consent,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that RFID applications are necessarily bad, but there has always been a concern about access to driver license information and states have tried to regulate that over the years.”
Phillips said a hearing will be scheduled on the bill.
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