RFID

[Archer]

Is this technology as scary as I think it is . . . or do I need to take off my tin foil hat?

Google for RFID

I think what scares me the most is currency. If every single dollar bill carrires it's own unique identifier, then annonimity is gone. Any other type of payment is a choice, and even though I can be tracked with a credit card, or a "Speed Pass" (which is RFID), I can choose to not use any of these.

The are all kinds of issues surrounding RFID. Walk into a Best Buy, and when you walk through the door a scanner records all the serial numbers from all the items you have on you (shoes, hat, cell phone, purse/bag, pants, shirt, your pack of smokes, etc). Then all those serial numbers are uploaded to a central database, cross referenced, and logged. All you have to do is have one item on you which can be directly linked to your identity, and pass through one reader, and every tag on you is then linked to you. Then every time you have any of those tags on you again, with different, unlogged tags, those unlogged tags can be easily linked back to you.

Now make these scanners prevalant enough, say as common as a credit card reader, or a telephone, and now your movement can be tracked via that d-base.

I go on an interview, my potential employer wants to see what I've been up to. He checks a database, sees that I've gone to a gay bar, been scanned ten different times in different places with the same person, who has a drug conviction (also happens to be a friend of mine, hence why I'm around him so much), and that I visited the same pub ten times in the last month. Oh ya, and he can also, with help from some more databases, see that throughout my entire college carrer, I skipped 106 classes, I own a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook, The Divene Comody, 9 Tom Clancy novels, and a number of books about theoretical physics. I use a Nextel cell phone. I buy a number of Cadberry chocolate bars, I smoke (Marlboro Ultra Lights), I drink Dasani water, and use Lifestyle condoms.

Now, do you want your employer, or potential employer knowing all that about you? What about your insurance company? or the police?

This is all without any tracking of currency, throw money in the mix, anyone can see even more information.

Now this is every marketing professionals dream, which is all well and good, but as with any technology; imagine the worst possible outcome of implementation of that technology, and then decide if you really think its a good idea.

I guess I just see a whole lot of Orwellian influences with this technology, and to be honest it scares me.

/puts his tin foil hat back on

edit: vb doesn't like me