RFID Privacy Happenings

A few years ago, during the UK's BSE crisis, I did ask (using Data Subject Access requests under the Data Protection Act) a couple of supermarkets from whom I had bought beef, using a Loyalty Card, if they had any record of me doing so, but they then claimed no such records existed. Perhaps they do now, given the bigger datawarehouse infrastructure that supermarket chains employ.

Given that there are no quick and simple tests for say, new variant Creuzfeld-Jackob Disease (CJD) or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) prion contamination, there is every chance that there is "infected" meat in the food chain right now, which is not subject to a product recall.

Will the Loyalty Card or RFID EPC "internet of things" be used as evidence in future civil damages claims by victims who only develop long incubation disieases like CJD or perhaps cancer or heart disease, several years into the future ?

Or will the database records proving that you bought individual food products from a particular supermarket magically disappear once the litigation lawyers scent money ?

There are various attempts to jump on to the food safety recall bandwagon and, in the USA, to secure "Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act" anti-terrorism exemptions and funding, especially with RFID Biosensors.

http://www.spy.org.uk/cgi-bin/rfid.pl#recalls

Sorry, but given some of the disgusting practices in the worst parts of the food distribution chain, I do not want attempts at *selective* product recalls - if US Beef or Thai chicken or whatever is thought to be contaminated, it *all* needs to be removed from the shelves, regardless.