RFID PROMOTER SHAMED INTO REMOVING MISLEADING CLAIM FROM WEBSITE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 26, 2005

RFID PROMOTER SHAMED INTO REMOVING MISLEADING CLAIM FROM WEBSITE
Medical Products Company PDC Slammed by Revelations in "Spychips"

In the first of what will likely be many reverberations from a new book
about RFID, a global RFID applications company has been shamed into
removing a misleading claim from its website. California-based Precision
Dynamics Corporation (PDC) advertised that its RFID-enabled hospital
wristband could help remedy the leading cause of medical errors, which
it claimed was "patient misidentification."

The PDC website featured a page titled "Why RFID is Critical" with a
bold heading purporting to explain "Why hospitals need to be on board
with RFID." There the company wrote, "The leading cause of death due to
medical errors is caused by patient misidentification, and specimen or
medication misidentification." The quote was attributed to a report by
noted medical researchers Dr. Mark Chassin and Dr. Lucian Leape.

There was only one problem: The claim was not true.

While researching their new book, "SPYCHIPS: How Major Corporations and
Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID," authors Katherine
Albrecht and Liz McIntyre contacted Dr. Leape to investigate PDC's
claims. In a scathing written response, Dr. Leape called PDC's statement
a "complete misrepresentation." Dr. Leape went on to say that "one might
even say [PDC's claim is] a lie, in that it clearly is intended to
deceive."

PDC's misleading claim was exposed when "Spychips" hit the bookstores
earlier this month. Ziff Davis Retail Center Editor Evan Schuman picked
up the story from there, launching a mini investigation of his own. He
reported his findings in a recent CIOInsight article where he wrote,
"When Ziff Davis contacted PDC, the claim was still on their Web site
and they promised to get back to us with an explanation. No one ever did
but the claim has magically vanished from their site."

The book has set off a firestorm in the RFID community. Not only is PDC
scrambling to cover its tracks, companies like NCR are attempting to
distance themselves from their own promotional materials exposed in
"Spychips." In a recent interview with Wired News, NCR executive Richard
Beaver downplayed the company's plans for price changing shelves that
discriminate against bargain shoppers, calling them "concept documents"
designed to merely provide "thought leadership" in the RFID sphere.

"This is just the start of the corporate distress," predicts McIntyre.
"PDC and NCR aren't the only privacy bad boys whose embarrassing
statements are brought to light in our book. Other companies like IBM,
Procter & Gamble, Bank of America, BellSouth, and Philips will also have
some explaining to do when people read about their patent pending ways
to use RFID to track people through the things they wear, carry and
throw away. Consumers will realize these companies have an RFID agenda
that should concern us all."

Ziff Davis' Schuman apparently concurs. He called Spychips "a stunningly
powerful argument against plans for RFID being mapped out by government
agencies, retail and manufacturing companies," since it "effectively
debunks many of the top arguments about why RFID is not a privacy
worry." He added, "The authors Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre use
vendors' own patent filings to show their thinking, such as an IBM
filing titled 'Identification and Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged
Items.'" He also chided Philips for a patent application that talks
about placing RFID tags in shoes so they can be detected by RFID
scanners embedded in floors.

Schuman gave this advice to companies caught red-handed by the authors:
"A little subtlety is probably not a bad idea when trying to patent
ideas that your PR people are denying you're thinking about."

It may be a bit too late for that.

Evan Schuman's complete review of Spychips can be read at CIOInsight:
http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,1875343,00.asp

To see the archived PDC web page with the medical misstatement visit:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041130083736/http://www.pdcorp.com/rfid/hc_why_rfid.html

To see the "page not found" message at the original location of the
misstatement visit:
http://www.pdcorp.com/rfid/hc_why_rfid.html

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ABOUT THE BOOK

Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every
Move with RFID is the winner of the Lysander Spooner Award for Advancing
the Literature of Liberty. Authored by Harvard doctoral researcher
Katherine Albrecht and former bank examiner Liz McIntyre, the book is
meticulously researched, drawing on patent documents, corporate source
materials, conference proceedings, and firsthand interviews to paint a
convincing -- and frightening -- picture of the threat posed by RFID.

Despite its hundreds of footnotes and academic-level accuracy, the book
remains lively and readable, according to critics, who have called it a
"techno-thriller" and "a masterpiece of technocriticism."

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FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Katherine Albrecht ([email protected]) 877-287-5854
or
Liz McIntyre ([email protected]) 877-287-5854

CASPIAN Consumer Privacy
www.spychips.com // www.nocards.org
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