Picture Source: U.S. Navy

What is 'RFID' ? The answer, plane and simple, is that RFID is a device built to spy on people by tracking them. You might wonder why you care, why would anyone want to waste their time tacking you, since you have nothing to hide? Well that doesn't seem to matter anymore. It all started years ago when tracking devices were somewhat larger and used by police and government agencies around the world. We all know about James Bond and his fictional tracking devices, but were they really fictional? It doesn't seem so anymore. What used to be the size of a cigar box and the price of a car is now the size of a small tag, or in some cases much smaller and cheap enough to mass produce and hardly effect the price of a product.

It has been said that one of the largest retail chains teamed up with a couple of corporations to sell cosmetic products that had tracking devices inserted in them. Of course the unknowing purchasers brought them home and some carried them in their purse, thus alerting the manufacturers of the products to their every move. These chips have been hidden in lipsticks, shampoo and between layers of paper of a product, such as a dog food pouch. Other products were scheduled for insertion of the same chip and these were baby wipes, soap, deodorant and soft drinks. I am sure that these have been inserted into many other products but the ones I have mentioned have been said to have been proven. I remember when tracking devices first became popular in the business world. A card was issued to all supervisors in the company that I had worked for, they were to use to get through certain locked doors. What no one realized at the time, was the fact that the card, even when in a wallet, was being tracked and read by computers and your location within the facility was always known. It seemed that the card had one of the first of the available commercial tracking chips in it.

How does this tracker work, if there are thousands of them out there all transmitting? Easy, each tracker chip transmits a unique set of numbers so it is always readily identifiable, this way if you have several people being tracked in the same area it is possible to track each one individually. It is bad enough that a manufacturer of a product can track a person with a chip in his product but readers are available for UNDER $30.00. This means that anyone can purchase a reader and track a person. This is the end of personal privacies. Some of these tracking chips can be turned off and restarted at any time giving them the ability to hide from detectors.

A famous Italian designer stated he was going to insert tracking chips into ladies underwear. Another spy item being inserted into stores is the 'Smart Shelf'. This shelf is said to have the ability to photograph consumers who pick up an item from it. In Japan electronic bugs are being planted all around in stores so that the owners may gather as much info as possible on the buying habits of their customers. On March 12, 2003, USA Today carried a story about devices in clothes. See http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2003-03-12-clothing-tags_x.htm.

How far has this tag business gone, we may never know but a site on the net located at http://www.prisonplanet.com/022904rfidtagsexplode.html is running an article about tracking devices is the new U.S. bills. They claim that there are some very strange characteristics to the new $20.00 bills.

Now before we become overly paranoid we have to realize that RFID may have some great benefits to manufactures, other than uses on people. It is great for tracking packages or pallets or even seeing how long it takes dress a to get to point b. Maybe with some restriction it would be very serviceable in shops. Imagine for example that someone walks out of a shop with an expensive dress. It would be very easy to track them down and recover the merchandise. In the military RFID would allow commanders to know exactly where their troops are at any time. The problem I have with this is that the device should be deactivated when an item is sold and it doesn't seem that you can ever be sure that it was deactivated and not merely turned off to be turned on again at a later date.

Anyone can purchase RFID products. An example of a place selling them on the net is http://www.rfidinc.com/. Notice how relatively cheap the devices and readers are.

A lot of us on the east coast of the United States have tracking devices with us already. You might wonder about what I am talking about and if I have lost my mind, but rest assured I haven't. The tracking devices I am talking about are the EZPass devices used on our cars. These devices use a similar technology to the chip we are talking about. I hope this didn't make you paranoid, it did me a little. Since this is a similar technology it may be able to be tracked by others. Think about this the next time you take your car to a place you wouldn't want your mother to know about.