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Radio frequency identification has been heralded as a breakthrough in tracking technology, and denounced as the next Big Brother surveillance tool.
RFID chips, injected under the skin, can store a medical history or be used to control access to secure areas. The next generation of passports and credit cards are hotbeds for RFID. It could make bar codes obsolete.
"When RFID chips are embedded in your ID cards, your clothes, your possessions, you are effectively broadcasting who you are to anyone within range," he said. "The level of surveillance possible, not only by the government but by corporations and criminals as well, will be unprecedented. There simply will be no place to hide."
Prices for the chips can range from several cents to a couple of dollars apiece, depending on the application and whether they are ordered in bulk. The cost has limited RFID's appeal. To compete with barcodes, RFID chips need to be priced at under a penny each. The cost is gradually coming down, though.
A group of hackers at the 2005 DefCon technology convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, used an antenna attached to an RFID reader to scan the information on a tag nearly 70 feet away
The kind of RFID that is becoming widely used has no power source, and can send information over tens of feet. Compared to, say, a cell phone, which transmits personal identity and location information for miles, RFID's potential for misuse and abuse is quite trivial," Kevin Ashton, vice president at ThingMagic LLC, a manufacturer of RFID readers.
That responsibility was recently addressed by a best-practices manifesto composed by the RFID industry. Participating companies included Microsoft, IBM, and Intel, Visa U.S.A. and Proctor & Gamble.
A company in Cincinnati, Ohio, recently delved into new territory with RFID tags by chipping its
employees. CityWatcher.com provides video surveillance for clients and police. The information it collects is the company's biggest asset and needs to be kept in a room that has more security than a lock and key, CEO Sean Darks said. The answer was an electronic lock, and the company has given its handful of employees the option of using an electronic key or getting an RFID chip implanted in their arm.
VeriChip Corp. is a Florida-based company that makes the government-approved, human-implantable RFID chips. A certified doctor injects the chip, which is about the size of a grain of rice.
"That is, if you buy stuff today with a credit card, that information is stored in a database," Roberti wrote. "When or if RFID is used to record sales, data will go in a database, the same one in fact. If the government wants access to the RFID data or the bar code data, it's essentially the same thing."
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