Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has incubated in relative obscurity for over 60 years, quietly altering our lives with scant consideration outside the technology neighborhood. First used to recognize Allied aircraft in Planet War II, RFID is currently well integrated in constructing security, transportation, fast food, overall health care and livestock management.

Proponents hail RFID because the next natural step in our technological evolution. Opponents forewarn of unprecedented privacy invasion and social control. Which is it? That is a little like asking if Christopher Columbus was an intrepid visionary or perhaps a ruthless imperialist. It depends on your perspective. 1 issue is clear: As RFID extends its roots into widespread culture we every single bear duty for tending its development.

Your Eyes Only

RFID functions as a network of microchip transponders and readers that enables the mainstream exchange of much more ? and more specific ? information than ever before. Every RFID transponder, or ?smart tag?, is encrypted with a one of a kind electronic product code (EPC) that distinguishes the tagged item from any other in the world. ?Smart tags? are provocatively designed with both read and write capabilities, which means that every time a reader retrieves an EPC from a tag, that retrieval becomes part of the EPC?s dynamic history. This constant imprinting provides genuine-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 Technologies (MIT) began building retail applications of RFID in 1999. Set up a reader in a display shelf and it becomes a ?smart shelf?. Network that with other readers all through the store and you?ve got an impeccable record of consumers interacting with merchandise ? from the shelf to the shopper from the shopper to the cart from the cart to the cashier, and so on.

Proctor & Gamble, The Gillette Corporation and Wal-Mart were amongst the first to present financial and empirical help to the project. Significantly less than 5 years later RFID has eclipsed UPC bar coding because the next generation regular of inventory manage and provide chain management. RFID offers unparalleled inventory control at reduced labor costs naturally the retail industry is excited.

Katherine Albrecht founded the consumer advocacy group CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) to teach consumers about the prospective dangers of automatic-identification technology. She warns that ?smart tags? ? dubbed ?spy chips? ? raise 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 contemplate this electronic play-by-play a treasure for corporate promoting and a tragedy for consumer privacy.

Albrecht?s apprehension is understandable. Having said that, shopping in virtually any public venue isn’t private. It?s public. The decision to be in a public space consists of a tacit acknowledgement that a single can be noticed by others. That is the difference between the public globe and the private world.

What if these worlds collide? CASPIAN and other consumer groups are concerned about retailers applying RFID for connecting public activities with private facts. Because every single EPC leaves one electronic footprint, linking every single item of each and every transaction of each consumer with personally identifying facts, anyone with access to the system can merely comply with the footprints to a dossier of the customer and their purchases.

Again, we must be clear. RFID does allow retailers to surveil shoppers and link them making use of their getting histories. As disconcerting as that may possibly be, it is neither new nor distinctive to RFID. Any individual who uses credit cards agrees to forfeit some degree of privacy for the privilege of acquiring now and paying later. Credit card companies gather and retain your name, address, telephone and Social Safety numbers. This personal details is utilized to track the date, time, place, items and price tag of every purchase produced with the card.

Don?t use credit cards? Unless you spend with cash, somebody is monitoring you as well. The now familiar UPC bar codes on practically all customer goods neatly catalogue the intimate details of all verify and bank card purchases. Cash remains the last outpost for the would-be anonymous customer. Of course, all issues are subject to transform. RFID inks may well be coming quickly to a currency close to you, but that?s a discussion for another day.

If RFID is not any more intrusive than a curious fellow shopper or a ceiling mounted security camera, what is the downside for consumer groups? If RFID is no more revealing when compared to a bank or charge card transaction, what is the upside for the corporate suits? There ought to be more.

Indeed, there is. Bear in mind that ?smart tags? are uniquely created to pinpoint tagged things anytime, anywhere from point of origin by way of point of sale. And, theoretically, beyond.

Ah, uhf rfid reader beyond. RFID?s prospective is limited only by our imaginations. And not simply our imaginations the imagination of everyone who includes 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 Shop was intended to raise public knowing of the implications of RFID.

?As the spy chips aren’t destroyed at the shop exit, they continue being readable to any interested celebration, such as other supermarkets, authorities, or anyone in possession of a reading device (offered to the common public)… The antennas utilised for reading are still visible later on Store, but soon they’ll be hidden in walls, doorways, railings, at petrol pumps anyplace. And we won’t know anymore who is when or why spying on us, watching us, following each and every of our steps.? 1