This is a follow up to my earlier post on consumer privacy and RFID.

Today best practice guidelines for RFID privacy will be released at a Las Vegas trade show. The guidelines were developed by a group of business and consumer advocates. Participants that are expected to endorse the guidelines include P&G, IBM, Microsoft, VISA, and the National Consumers League.

Among other things, the guidelines say that consumers should be
notified when goods have radio tags, which can be invisibly buried in
labels, packaging or the goods themselves. The guidelines also say that
it should be clear to consumers how to disable disposable forms of the
tags and that it should be easy to do so once items with such tags have
been purchased. Businesses are called on to notify consumers about how
information gathered from the tags will be used.

Only a small fraction of retailers (7% of 89 companies surveyed) and consumer product manufacturers (11% of 120) delayed or scaled back their RFID investments due to privacy concerns (Forrester Research).

The National Retail Federation is not planning to endorse the guidelines which do not address govenment use of RFID and employee privacy for business-to-business transactions.

Guidelines for Radio Tags Aim to Protect Buyer Privacy

The New York Times
By BARNABY J. FEDER
Published: May 1, 2006