RFID privacy sleeve-maker Identity Stronghold this week learned from NASA that the metal claps holding workers’ IDs in place can pop-out, damaging eyeballs, potentially, or delicate, space-bound computer hardware.
At least, that is NASA’s story.
Identity Stronghold founder Walt Augustinowicz tells Parallelnormal that “a NASA safety worker forcefully and incorrectly pried our badgeholder apart so he could remove the clips and then installed them backwards.”
(Sounds like NASA’s safety worker is a regular Homer J. Simpson.)
The space agency, Augustinowicz says, has only barred the shield on badges worn in a flight area clean room, where such bans are common. It might instead use another product from Identity Stronghold, which has no moving parts.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CmLsWav6-8]
NASA Security Badges are a Health and Safety Risk | Universe Today
Use of the badge holder, made by the Florida-based company Identity Stronghold, has now been suspended and a temporary clear plastic holder is being used in its place. The Stronghold design was chosen as it has an “electromagnetically opaque sleeve to prevent the card from being read at a distance and to give the user some control over when and where the card is exposed for reading,” according to the source Information Week article.
Also: See my Boston Globe writeup re: Identity Stronghold