Position statement in RFID S&P panel: From relative security to perceived secure

RFID is now in fashion. Exactly 20 years ago it was pointed out that identification based on electronic tokens suffer from the middleman attack. So, obviously RFIDs do too. Worse, the middleman attack is even easier to set up. Privacy advocates have expressed concerns about the use of RFIDs. Two implementations are compared: the use of RFID cards in the underground in Shanghai (similarly for Singapore) and the use in the London system. We conclude that privacy concerns can sometimes be addressed succesfully. We also address reliabilty concerns since RFID cards are easy to break. Finally we address the psychological issue that RFIDs are believed to be secure.