'MythBusters' co-host backpedals on RFID kerfuffle

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () computerbytesman com>]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10031601-52.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.
0

MythBusters co-host Adam Savage is stepping back from public
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10030509-52.html>  comments suggesting
that legal counsel from several credit card companies led the Discovery
Channel to pull the plug on an episode dedicated to security holes in RFID. 

At the Last HOPE <http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-9995518-83.html>
conference in New York in July, Savage told a crowd of several thousand
people that his theory on why MythBusters had not gone forward with a
planned episode on RFID (radio frequency identification) hackability was
that on a conference call to discuss the matter with technicians from Texas
Instruments, the lawyers for the credit cards companies had put the hammer
down on the show. 

"Texas Instruments comes on along with chief legal counsel for American
Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else (co-host Tory Belleci and a
MythBusters producer) were way, way out-gunned," Savage told the crowd, "and
(the lawyers) absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were
not going to air this episode talking about how hackable this stuff was, and
Discovery backed way down, being a large corporation that depends upon the
revenue of the advertisers. Now it's on Discovery's radar and they won't let
us go near it." 

.

And now, even Savage is saying that he got his facts wrong. 

 

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