“A revised version of legislation intended to protect the privacy of individuals using RFID tags with “unique personal identifier numbers” passed the Washington State House of Representatives on Wednesday. House Bill (HB) 1031—intended to limit collection of personal information from an RFID tag without the tag holder’s knowledge or consent—passed with 69 to 27 votes. The bill is now headed for the State Senate and, if approved, to the office of Governor Christine Gregoire.

[…] The revised bill would make it a Class C felony to intentionally read the data encoded to an RFID tag in possession of a person without that individual’s knowledge and consent, for the purpose of fraud, identity theft or some other illegal or unapproved purpose—a process known as “skimming.” With this bill, skimming refers to capturing personal data about a tag’s holder, such as the details on a loyalty card, driver’s license or other identity card. It does not refer to capturing data from EPC RFID tags attached to products that do not hold the consumer’s data. Class C felony in Washington State has a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. If the bill is signed into law, it would be the first legislation on the state level to make skimming a felony, says Morris.”

(via RFID Journal)

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The three judges who heard the arguments in October in the appeal of his decision seemed persuaded that a computer is just a container and deserves no special protection from searches at the border. The same information in hard-copy form, their questions suggested, would doubtless be subject to search.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., took that position in a 2005 decision. It upheld the conviction of John W. Ickes Jr., who crossed the Canadian border with a computer containing child pornography. A customs agent’s suspicions were raised, the court’s decision said, “after discovering a video camera containing a tape of a tennis match which focused excessively on a young ball boy.”

It is true that the government should have great leeway in searching physical objects at the border. But the law requires a little more — a “reasonable suspicion” — when the search is especially invasive, as when the human body is involved.

Searching a computer, said Jennifer M. Chacón, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, “is fairly intrusive.” Like searches of the body, she said, such “an invasive search should require reasonable suspicion.”

Full Story: New York Times.

(via The Agitator).

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