Who’s Going to Police the New RFID Tattoos…or Do We Even Need Policing?

The founders of Somark Innovations Inc. are likely so enamored of their new technique for creating tattoos with RFID (radio frequency identification device) capability to appreciate the fact that affixing tattoos with numbers to people has a terrible history—it was the way the Germans marked concentration camp inmates during the Holocaust.

So I find myself wondering, in light of my latest BusinessWeek.com column on this next generation of RFID tags: What is the responsibility of entrepreneurs who contrive these fancy new technologies that threaten to make a shambles out of our privacy? Or maybe another way to express it is this: Do these entrepreneurs have any responsibility for policing themselves?

I’ve met enough entrepreneurs to know that most don’t want to be reminded about such questions, and the two founders of Somark appear to be no different. From their viewpoints, they’re under enough pressure simply to build their businesses—to obtain financing, hire employees, focus on the right markets—all in the face of unbelievably tough competition that would like nothing better than see them stumble. Besides, their primary focus is on “cashing out” in a few years as multimillionaires. So they concentrate on good news, and hope the criticism fades away.

I should say before going on that I don’t see any way of stopping these kinds of advances—and I’m not sure we should want to. They tend to have beneficial spinoffs as well. So given that these entrepreneurs are part and parcel of the capitalist system we live under, I think we have a right to expect some self policing, and also have a right to expect our government to establish guidelines that protect us from the inevitable abuses of the technology that will follow on.

I suggested in my column that these entrepreneurs consider taking a stand against certain applications of their technology. I also suggested they open up their web site to ongoing discussion of people’s concerns.

I offered my suggestions as part and parcel of a marketing strategy—in other words, as a matter of self interest, to stand out favorably in the marketplace and thus “brand” themselves positively. But do these entrepreneurs have a societal obligation as well? I believe they do.

I feel as if our government has an obligation to step in—ideally sooner rather than in response to some crisis—to establish guidelines. The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) fiasco justifiably has many people cynical about government help. But we don’t have a lot of other options. In the meantime, I suspect the blogosphere’s concerns about these entrepreneurs will intensify as they get closer to finalizing their product, and that that concern will spread and snowball.