Summit group confirms use of ID chip

Organizers of the World Summit on the Information Society yesterday confirmed that badges worn by high-level attendees were affixed with identification chips some say were unknown to the forum’s participants.

However, a spokesman for the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which was the host of the three-day event in Geneva last week, scoffed at concerns by privacy advocates that the technology could monitor an individual’s movement or that the data it collects could be misused.

Three European researchers who discovered the chips in their badges, first reported by The Washington Times on Sunday, said participants were not told about the chips.

ITU spokesman Gary Fowlie confirmed during an interview from Geneva that radio frequency identification chips (RFIDs) were embedded in the passes and that data readers were in place to record information transmitted by the chip.

Mr. Fowlie disputed that RFIDs have long-range tracking capability, and called The Times story “really off base.”

“Transmission distance is 1 to 2 centimeters. You have to put your badge right up to the screen,” he said.

But U.S. and European privacy advocates and critics of RFID technology said the story was on target, and that the use of the chips at the summit has caused an uproar in the United States and Europe.

“It sent off a shot heard round the world,” said Katherine Albrecht, director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), a leading opponent of RFID technology.

“We’re rolling in e-mails on this thing. It’s confirmation this is real, it is here, and it’s being abused already.”

Last week’s summit, which was partly organized by the United Nations, focused on Internet governance and access, security, intellectual-property rights and privacy. The badges were worn by more than 50 prime ministers, presidents and other high-level officials from 174 countries, including a representative from the United States, John Marburger, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

In a lengthy statement to The Times yesterday, summit officials said participants were notified some personal information would appear on the Internet, but declined to say whether participants were told of the embedded technology.

The passes were intended “to facilitate identification by security at entry checkpoints,” and participants had to swipe the badges across the readers to gain access to the summit and meeting rooms, the statement said.

“Readers were quite prominently displayed and were only placed at entry checkpoints,” WSIS spokeswoman Francine Lambert said. “The data stored on our servers do not and cannot monitor movement.”

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