Daniel, I take your point about the hide-the-ball nature of focusing on RFID rather than on other technologies which essentially raise the same privacy concerns. But I do wonder whether you may be a bit off base when you say: "I worry that many peoples worries about RFID privacy are subtracting respectability from a movement that's already vulnerable to accusations of paranoia rather than adding significant resources." It seems to me, as a bit of a newcomer to this arena, to be the opposite--- that is, that the focus on RFID makes sense because its less immediate nature may make arguments around it seem more plausible and thus respectable.

This may be only my own experience, but I suspect someone naïve to the problem of technology and privacy may be more willing to hear about technologies that are less familiar to them, like RFID. A person unsophisticated to your arguments still has a cellphone, which they probably like, and Facebook, which they probably don’t want to give up, and credit cards which they can’t imagine living without. I wonder if focusing on RFID (which undoubtedly runs a bit into the tin-foil hat problem you write about) at least has the effect of allowing listeners who might turn off a more mainstream argument, precisely because it was mainstream, and thus reached them in ways they’d rather not think about, to get some grounding in the idea that technology can and does impinge on our privacy in all sorts of devious and subterranean ways. Of course, it’s also quite possible the same people who would hear “cellphone privacy invasion” and immediately switch off because, hey, who’s going to give up their cell phone, are the same people who hear “RFID” and immediately begin looking for the roll of Reynolds. Either way, it’s just something to think about as a possible (small) counterpoint to your argument.

-- DanaDelger - 08 Apr 2009