Consumers need to feel they have control over the RFID infrastructure before they routinely trust its services.

RFID introduction is a hotly debated public policy issue. The technology enables physical environments to become more interactive and supportive by tagging each item with a chip that wirelessly communicates with a service-enriched backend infrastructure. Based on a number of user studies at...

In times of ubiquitous electronic communication and increasing industry pressure for standard electronic authentication, the maintenance of privacy (the “right to be let alone”) becomes a subject of increasing concern. The possibility of a “transparent human” appears most obvious in...

In his seminal 1991 Scientific American article The Computer for the 21st Century, Mark Weiser, an early visionary of ubiquitous computing, wrote the social problem associated with ubiquitous computing, while often couched in terms of privacy, is really one of control. The ongoing public debate...