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What is RFID?

If you're the type to be a bit bothered by the privacy-breaching potential of shopper loyalty cards, then RFID tags should make you pretty twitchy. Short for Radio Frequency IDentification, these transponders come in sizes as small as a grain of sand, can be manufactured for dirt cheap, and hold the potential to expose uncomfortable levels of information about you to whomever is interested in finding out.

From the Boston.com article:
Why is this so scary? Because so many of us pay for our purchases with credit or debit cards, which contain our names, addresses, and other sensitive information. Now imagine a store with RFID chips embedded in every product. At checkout time, the digital code in each item is associated with our credit card data. From now on, that particular pair of shoes or carton of cigarettes is associated with you. Even if you throw them away, the RFID chips will survive. Indeed, Albrecht and McIntyre learned that the phone company BellSouth Corp. had applied for a patent on a system for scanning RFID tags in trash, and using the data to study the shopping patterns of individual consumers.

RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) is a wireless system used to identify tags. These tags may be carried by people or animals or mounted on object or vehicles. They may even be embedded under the skin. RFID tags are non-contact and non-line-of-sight. This means that you don't have to "swipe" your card for an RFID system to identify you.

RFID tags store data, which is typically used for authentication. Passive tags typically store between 32 and 128 bits of data; Active tags can store up to 1MB of data.

Passive RFID tags are used in retail Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) system to reduce shoplifting. These are the little white tags you find attached to clothing items and hidden in the pages of books. Most of the EAS systems are manufactured by Checkpoint Systems or Sensormatic.

US privacy campaigners fear mark of the beast James Sturcke - The Guardian

A decision by the Bush administration to proceed with what is believed to be the largest radio frequency tagging programme in history has triggered protests from US privacy campaigners. --"It raises issues not just about the movement of products but about watching people's lives," Ms Albrecht said. "We are not a long way off from people beginning to demand publicly that systems be used on humans." More

RFID: Tracking everything, everywhere

Supermarket cards and retail surveillance devices are merely the opening volley of the marketers' war against consumers. If consumers fail to oppose these practices now, our long-term prospects may look like something from a dystopian science fiction novel. More

Surveillance Since 9/11
The Front Porch, New Hampshire Public Radio
Reported by Shay Zeller | April 19, 2006
Katherine Albrecht discusses RFID privacy issues and recent New Hampshire legislation. The NH bill would ban the state from implementing REAL-ID or participating in a scheduled pilot program. click here to listen

Privacy Under Attack - The Spychips Story
The Conservative Voice | March 22, 2006 | Rob Hood
With this article I am putting aside my personal religious and political stances to ask everyone, Christian or not, conservative and liberal, Democrat and Republican to realize what is at stake with Radio Frequency Identification... More

"The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values The capacity to assert social and political control over the individual will vastly increase. It will soon be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and to maintain up-to-date, complete files, containing even most personal information about the health or personal behavior of the citizen in addition to more customary data. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities."

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