- Katherine Albrecht
Katherine Albrecht is the founder of
CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), a national consumer organization created in 1999 to educate consumer-citizens about shopper surveillance. She is a consumer privacy advocate and anti-RFID spokesperson. Albrecht came up with the term "spy chips " to describeRFID microchip tags, which for example are embedded in some US Driver's Licenses. She holds aDoctor of Education degree fromHarvard University .Albrecht was interviewed about
RFID chips inAaron Russo 's 2006 documentary "".Publications
Books
Albrecht and
Liz McIntyre (CASPIAN's communications director) co-authored the book "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID", which won the November 2005 Lysander Spooner Award for advancing the literature of liberty. The book lays out the potential implications of RFID on privacy and civil liberties. RFID industry representatives have criticized it, claiming the authors exaggerate some RFID privacy threats. In a lengthy rebuttal, Albrecht asked why critics don't "mention sworn patent documents from IBM describing ways to secretly follow innocent people in libraries, theaters, and public restrooms through the RFID tags in their clothes and belongings? Where is […] outrage over BellSouth's patent-pending plans to pick through our garbage and skim the data contained in the RFID tags we discard?" [Albrecht, Katherine, " [http://www.spychips.com/book/roberti-rebuttal.html Dismantling the RFID Journal's critique of spychips] ", spychips.com, 14 November 2005, retrieved 21 January 2008]Articles and papers
Albrecht, Katherine."Supermarket Cards: The Tip of the RetailSurveillance Iceberg." "Denver University Law Review", Volume 79,Issue 4, Summer 2002. pp. 534–539 and 558–565. See: [http://www.spychips.com/documents/Albrecht-Denver-Law.pdf]
Position Paper on the Use of RFID in Consumer Products. Co-authored with Liz McIntyre and Beth Givens. November 14, 2003.Full text at: [http://www.spychips.com/jointrfid_position_paper.html]
RFID: The Doomsday Scenario. In "RFID: Applications, Security, and Privacy", eds. S. Garfinkel and B. Rosenberg. New Jersey: Addison Wesley. 2006. pp. 259–273.Amazon listing: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321290968/]
RFID: The Big Brother Bar Code (Co-authored with Liz McIntyre)"ALEC Policy Forum", Winter 2004, Volume 6, Number 3, pp. 49–54.Full text at: [http://www.spychips.com/alec-big-brother-barcode-article.html]
Current Activities
In addition to continuing her work with CASPIAN, Albrecht is also a radio talk show host. She hosted a two-hour daily program, "Uncovering the Truth with Katherine Albrecht," on the We The People Radio Network (
WTPRN ) [2] from April 2007 until the network ceased to operate in October 2008.References
reflistKatherine Albrecht on WTPRN http://www.wtprn.com/programs.html#Albrecht
External links
* [http://www.spychips.com/ Spy Chips Website]
* [http://www.spychips.com/book/roberti-rebuttal.html Albrecht's rebuttal to RFID industry criticism]
* [http://www.nocards.org/ Official CASPIAN Website]
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