Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

The approach sounds quite simple. But is IBM’s Watson Research Center’s clipped-tag RFID strategy more simple or more simplistic? The clipped tag approach allows for a good chunk of the tag’s radio antenna to be snapped off, sharply reducing how close it has to be to a reader before it can be read.

This is intended to address privacy and fraud concerns. But even if retailers and/or consumers snap off the antennaadult bounce house, will it’s read-range be short enough to be secure? IBM’s position that it would have to be right next to a reader sounds far too familiar, given how much of the industry said the same things about regular RFID tags until researchers continually proved that to not be the case. When it comes to RFID and privacy, the industry has a very severe credibility problem.