WHY SHOULD YOU BE WORRIED ABOUT IT?

 

RFID technology has huge potential to enhance our safety and increase our convenience, but at what cost? In the name of easier shopping, we could allow ourselves to become a blip on 1,000 radar screens—a trackable asset rather than a person. It’s up to you how much you’re willing to give up to get in and out of the mall faster.

The signal broadcast by an RFID tag is a burst, scattering signal in every direction. Any receiver within a few inches to hundreds of feet could be picking up your location or other information. Interrogators can be as small as a wallet and cost less than $200 to build.

A criminal with a cloning device could brush against you and instantly gain access to your workplace, your vehicle, your credit cards, and your passport information. From there, he could steal your identity and rob you blind, clear out your office and let you take the blame, and drive away in your car without setting off the alarm.

The potential for government abuse of RFID tags is vast. Like any organization concerned with the acquisition and retention of power, governments are vulnerable to temptation. Given the ability to easily track where you shop, what books you borrow from the library, whom you talk to, and where you go, few governments would be able to resist. To be able to track everyone, all the time, on the off chance that one person in a thousand is dangerous—this is the ideal of any internal security organization, no matter how benign.