For this month’s rant, I present to you RFID: Radio Frequency Identification.
RFID is a new technology that enables a store to identify an article or item by beaming a radio signal at it, and having a tiny, very cheap electronic device respond with a numeric code. This code can be a unique serial number. So when the store associates your identity with this serial number, at the time of purchase, it can be used to track your whereabouts without you knowing it.
RFIDs have become very inexpensive. Originally used to track pallets and shipments in a warehouse, they are so small that they can easily be woven into the fabric of clothing, in places you will never find them. Even if you try, you can never be sure that you have found them all.
In theory, a thief can determine the contents of your purse or pockets, by reading the response to an invisible signal beamed at your person.
An organization named CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), http://www.nocards.org/, lists extensive opportunities for abuse at their site dedicated to RFID: www.spychips.com/.
WalMart and Gillette did a test where hidden equipment detected when a consumer picked up a package of razor blades. Photographs of the shoppers were later correlated to photos of people as they went through the cash register. Presumably, a shopper photographed taking a package of blades, but with no corresponding record of purchase, would be suspect.
The MIT The Auto-ID Center is the organization entrusted with developing a global Internet infrastructure for radio frequency identification (RFID). Their plans are to tag all the objects manufactured on the planet with RFID chips and track them via the Internet.
A Public Relations firm, Fleischman-Hillard, prepared a confidential "Managing External Communications". They suggest a variety of strategies to help the Auto-ID Center "drive adoption" and "neutralize opposition," including the possibility of renaming the tracking devices "green tags." It also lists by name several key lawmakers, privacy advocates, and others whom it hopes to "bring into the Center's 'inner circle.'"
The potential evils boggle the mind. Follow the links in the above web sites to get first-hand knowledge about how your privacy is being eroded in ways you can’t begin to imagine.
One of my favourite aphorisms is Wendell Phillips’ “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary convenience deserve neither liberty nor convenience.”
There you have it. Happy shopping.