Buyer beware: RFID chips are here (scary)!

[Lorien]

I talked to the father of a friend of mine about this last year. He works for a company that is involved in marketing this technology, and I told him that I wasn't interested in living in this "Brave New World" that they were hellbent on creating. He said "Nothing you can do about it. It's coming". (He wasn't being nasty; just honest):

RFID Chips Are Here
RFID chips are being embedded in everything from jeans to paper money, and your privacy is at stake.
By Scott Granneman

Right now, you can buy a hammer, a pair of jeans, or a razor blade with anonymity. With RFID tags, that may be a thing of the past. Some manufacturers are planning to tag just the packaging, but others will also tag their products. There is no law requiring a label indicating that an RFID chip is in a product. Once you buy your RFID-tagged jeans at The Gap with RFID-tagged money, walk out of the store wearing RFID-tagged shoes, and get into your car with its RFID-tagged tires, you could be tracked anywhere you travel. Bar codes are usually scanned at the store, but not after purchase. But RFID transponders are, in many cases, forever part of the product, and designed to respond when they receive a signal. Imagine everything you own is "numbered, identified, cataloged, and tracked." Anonymity and privacy? Gone in a hailstorm of invisible communication, betrayed by your very property.

But let's not stop there. Others are talking about placing RFID tags into all sensitive or important documents: "it will be practical to put them not only in paper money, but in drivers' licenses, passports, stock certificates, manuscripts, university diplomas, medical degrees and licenses, birth certificates, and any other sort of document you can think of where authenticity is paramount." In other words, those documents you're required to have, that you can't live without, will be forever tagged.

Consider the human body as well. Applied Digital Solutions has designed an RFID tag - called the VeriChip - for people. Only 11 mm long, it is designed to go under the skin, where it can be read from four feet away. They sell it as a great way to keep track of children, Alzheimer's patients in danger of wandering, and anyone else with a medical disability, but it gives me the creeps. The possibilities are scary. In May, delegates to the Chinese Communist Party Congress were required to wear an RFID-equipped badge at all times so their movements could be tracked and recorded. Is there any doubt that, in a few years, those badges will be replaced by VeriChip-like devices?

More: http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/169


What my friend's dad also said was that the info from the tags would be downloaded into a consumer data base. Eventually, when you walked into a store you would be scanned and TV screens around the stores would flash ads for products they thought you might be interested in as you passed by. These screens would also be posted in filling stations and bank teller lines-any place you might be in public where there is the possibility of an idle moment. Advertisers see the idle moments we spend daydreaming or reflecting as having "great untapped potential" for marketers.

:scared: :tinfoilhat:

[RoyGBiv]

1. For an interesting discussion ...

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/20/1923224&tid=193&tid=126

[Lorien]

4. A long conversation, too

starts off with all the wondrous possibilities of RFID tags, but I still find myself agreeing with this guy;

RFID tags *could* promise a better future. But, like anything that provides potentially personal information to anyone with the right scanning device, RFID tags could be abused on a scale never seen before.

Have you seen anywhere at all that mentions anything about the ability to turn *off* an RFID switch?

Not to mention the possible side effects of having a radio transmitting from inside a human body for long periods of time.

Abuse by car insurance companies able to read your car's performance?

The chance of abuse is too great...

[grasswire]

2. American conservatives...

...will also rue the day they didn't fight for privacy rights. I believe only Ron Paul has been fighting. When dissent is criminalized, it's all over for everyone.

[Lorien]

3. They seem to believe that only "everyone else's" rights

will be taken, just like their belief in free speech (for themselves but not for us). Technology like this is an equal opportunity offender.