Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has incubated in relative obscurity for over 60 years, quietly changing our lives with scant consideration outside the technology community. First used to identify Allied aircraft in World War II, RFID is currently well integrated in developing security, transportation, fast meals, well being care and livestock management.

Proponents hail RFID as the next natural part of our technological evolution. Opponents forewarn of unprecedented privacy invasion and social control. Which is it? That?s a bit like asking if Christopher Columbus was an intrepid visionary or a ruthless imperialist. It depends on your perspective. One factor is clear: As RFID extends its roots into common culture we every single bear responsibility for tending its development.

Your Eyes Only

RFID functions as a network of microchip transponders and readers that enables the mainstream exchange of additional ? and more specific ? information than ever before. Each and every RFID transponder, or ?smart tag?, is encrypted with a distinctive electronic product code (EPC) that distinguishes the tagged item from any other in the planet. ?Smart tags? are provocatively created with both study and write capabilities, which suggests that every single time a reader retrieves an EPC from a tag, that retrieval becomes element of the EPC?s dynamic history. This continuous imprinting provides true-time tracking of a tagged item at any point in its lifespan.

Recognizing the potential commercial benefits of the technologies, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) began building retail applications of RFID in 1999. Set up a reader in a show shelf and it becomes a ?smart shelf?. Network that with other readers throughout the store and you?ve got an impeccable record of prospects interacting with goods ? from the shelf to the shopper from the shopper to the cart from the cart to the cashier, and so forth.

Proctor & Gamble, The Gillette Company and Wal-Mart were amongst the first to deliver financial and empirical assistance to the project. Significantly less than five years later RFID has eclipsed UPC bar coding as the next generation standard of inventory manage and provide chain management. RFID gives unparalleled inventory handle at reduced labor fees naturally the retail market is excited.

Katherine Albrecht founded the consumer advocacy group CASPIAN (Buyers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) to educate consumers about the possible dangers of automatic-identification technologies. She warns that ?smart tags? ? dubbed ?spy chips? ? increase retailer profits at the trouble of consumer privacy.

RFID provides a continuous feed of our activities as we peek, poke, squeeze and shake tagged products throughout the store. Advocacy groups take into account this electronic play-by-play a treasure for corporate advertising and marketing and a tragedy for customer privacy.

Albrecht?s apprehension is understandable. Even so, shopping in virtually any public venue is not private. It is public. The decision to stay a public space contains a tacit acknowledgement that 1 can be seen by others. That is the difference between the public planet and the private planet.

What if these worlds collide? CASPIAN and other consumer groups are worried about retailers applying RFID to connect public activities with private details. Because each EPC leaves a singular electronic footprint, linking every single item of every transaction of each customer with personally identifying data, anyone with access to the system can merely stick to the footprints to a dossier of the client and their purchases.

Again, we ought to be clear. RFID does enable retailers to surveil buyers and link them with their purchasing histories. As disconcerting as that might be, it really is neither new nor exceptional to RFID. Everyone who uses credit cards agrees to forfeit some degree of privacy for the privilege of getting now and paying later. Credit card companies collect and retain your name, address, phone and Social Security numbers. This personal information and facts is made use of to track the date, time, location, items and price tag of every purchase created with the card.

Don?t use bank cards? Unless you spend with cash, someone is monitoring you also. The now familiar UPC bar codes on practically all consumer goods neatly catalogue the intimate details of all check and bank card purchases. Cash remains the final outpost for the would-be anonymous consumer. Of course, all items are subject to alter. RFID inks might be coming quickly to a currency near you, but that?s animal microchip transponder scanner for yet another day.

If RFID is not any more intrusive when compared to a curious fellow shopper or perhaps a ceiling mounted safety camera, what is the downside for customer groups? If RFID is no more revealing when compared to a bank or charge card transaction, what is the upside for the organization suits? There have to be more.

Indeed, there’s. Bear in thoughts that ?smart tags? are uniquely designed to pinpoint tagged things anytime, anyplace from point of origin through point of sale. And, theoretically, beyond.

Ah, the wonderful beyond. RFID?s possible is restricted only by our imaginations. And not simply our imaginations the imagination of anybody who has a reader and a transponder. Wal-Mart. Your employer. The government. Anyone.

Everything Costs Something

Members of German privacy group FOEBUD see shadowy strangers lurking in the imagination playground. Their February 2004 demonstration in front of Metro?s RFID-rigged Future Store was intended to raise public awareness of the implications of RFID.

?As the spy chips are not destroyed at the shop exit, they continue to be readable to any interested celebration, such as other supermarkets, authorities, or everyone in possession of a reading device (out there to the basic public)… The antennas made use of for reading are nonetheless visible in the Future Store, but soon they will be hidden in walls, doorways, railings, at petrol pumps anywhere. And we won’t know anymore who’s when or why spying on us, watching us, following each of our steps.? 1