RFID Tags: Universal Tracking
Tracking Everything, Everywhere, All The Time
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Imagine this: you walk into a local store and within seconds the people on duty know your pants size (and how much it fluctuates), that you prefer chocolate ice cream, that you buy a new tube of hemorrhoid cream every three months or so, which stores you usually shop in, your credit rating, and the number of miles currently on all four of your tires - and that's just for starters. Science fiction? No, science fact: the technology is already here. It's just a matter of deploying it.
What are RFID tags?
The source of all that information will lie with Radio Frequency ID tags, or RFID tags for short. They can range in size from as large as a grain of sand to as small as a speck of dust. At this size, they can be placed in absolutely everything without our knowing about - even in food, if the FDA gives its approval. The period at the end of this sentence should give you a good idea of how large the tags should be in the future.Are RFID Tags Valuable?
The value of RFID tags to manufacturers and retailers should be readily apparent. For the manufacturer, it will be possible to monitor where every item is at every moment during the manufacturing process. Powerful computers will be able to provide up-to-the-second reports on what is where and in what stage of creation. There are, however, also many advantages to retailers and customers as well.What's Wrong with RFID Tags?
There are so many obvious advantages to RFID tags and the ability to track items no matter where they go on the planet, it may at first seem perverse to challenge them - but only at first. It shouldn't take more than a few moments thought to realize that RFID tags also pose tremendous problems for consumer privacy, personal privacy, and the way we like to live today.Fearing the Future
Are you ready for the future? It isn't as far away as you might think. Most expect full-scale rollouts of RFID technology to be taking place by 2005. Not long after that and you can assume that most of what you buy will have RFID tags embedded in them, complete with unique Electronic Product Code numbers that can be scanned at a distance by anyone with a reader.
Elsewhere On About
-->RFID: Your Products Are Watching You!
Andrew Somers, the Civil Liberties Guide, has an article discussing the serious privacy issues raised by the use of RFID tags in consumer products. Explaining the basic nature of RFID and the problems it posts, he writes "Because the potentials for misuse along with privacy invasion concerns are very real, it's an issue we need to watch closely as this technology develops."
