RFID Traceability: A Multilayer Problem

RFID tags have very promising applications in many domains (retail, rental, surveillance, medicine to name a few). Unfortunately the use of these tags can have serious implications on the privacy of people carrying tagged items. Serious opposition from consumers has already thwarted several trials of this technology. The main fears associated with the tags is that they may allow other parties to covertly collect information about people or to trace them wherever they go. As long as these privacy issues remain unresolved, it will be impossible to reap the benefits of these new applications. Current solutions to privacy problems are typically limited to the application layer. RFID system have three layers, application, communication and physical. We demonstrate that privacy issues cannot be solved without looking at each layer separately. We also show that current solutions fail to address the multilayer aspect of privacy and as a result fail to protect it. For each layer we describe the main threats and give tentative solutions.