Business Technology: Don't Let Protesters Scare You About RFID

摘要

The subject: RFID. The question: Will privacy hysteria render RFID DOA? Or will CHP (cooler heads prevail)? First let's take a quick look at some efforts centered on radio-frequency identification by some companies that do not take privacy lightly. "Agents from the Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Customs Service intercepted international shipments of medicine this summer and found that 88% of those drugs weren't approved for use in this country." So wrote my colleague Larry Greenemeier last week on the efforts by pharmaceutical companies and law-enforcement officials to use new technologies to crack down on the spread of counterfeit drugs (informationweek.com/958/drugs.htm). Eli Lilly is among many pharmaceutical companies eagerly exploring sweeping new applications of this technology, according to Greenemeier's story. "RFID is probably the hottest area of discussion for tracking distribution and preventing counterfeiting," says Dillard How-ell, the company's director of global product protection.