Howard Beales, chairman of the advisory committee and associate professor of strategic management and public policy at George Washington University, said the draft report has garnered significant public response since its release last month and needs to be updated.

Beales had predicted before last week's meeting that his committee would likely make a formal recommendation on the use of RFID to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff during a quarterly meeting in September or December.

Overall, Beales said, "I think RFID in general is a very interesting technology, [but] it can raise privacy concerns."

The report notes that some RFID advocates tout the technology as a way of rapidly authenticating individuals and their identification documents. But the risks to the privacy of those carrying RFID tags on documents are considerable, it said.

"Human identification using RFID has serious potential to deprive people of notice that potentially highly specific, detailed information about them is being collected," the draft report found.