Texas Instruments is using only 40-bit cryptography on the RFID chips it sells for car locks, RFID tags, and things like toll booth passes.

What this means, according to students at Johns Hopkins, profiled this week in The New York Times, is that the codes aren't hard to break.

There are caveats. You have to get a few inches from the car you want to steal to get the code. Then you have to spend time breaking the code and making your own key, which only lets you hotwire the vehicle. But the whole thing can be done in an hour, the students said, and the required technology could easily be put into a device the size of an iPod.

What does this mean?

It is really foolish of any company to put weak encryption on a device that can't be updated in the field.

TI may learn, soon, that it has a problem very similar in and impact to the one drug companies get after someone dies after taking one of their pills.

It's the potential liability that's scary.