Posted on 02/08/2008 4:24:56 PM PST by BGHater
Technology already exists that could lead to the tracking of purchases and people. Critics fear a loss of privacy.
Here's a vision of the not-so-distant future:
• Microchips with antennas will be embedded in virtually everything you buy, wear, drive and read, allowing retailers and law enforcement to track consumer items — and, by extension, consumers — wherever they go, from a distance.
• A seamless, global network of electronic "sniffers" will scan radio tags in myriad public settings, identifying people and their tastes instantly so that customized ads, "live spam," may be beamed at them.
• In "Smart Homes," sensors built into walls, floors and appliances will inventory possessions, record eating habits, monitor medicine cabinets — all the while reporting data to marketers eager for a peek into the occupants' private lives.
Science fiction? In truth, much of the radio frequency identification technology that enables objects and people to be tagged and tracked wirelessly already exists — and new and potentially intrusive uses of it are being patented, perfected and deployed.
Some of the world's largest corporations are vested in the success of RFID technology, which couples highly miniaturized computers with radio antennas to broadcast information about sales and buyers to company databases.
Already, microchips are turning up in some computer printers, car keys and tires, on shampoo bottles and department store clothing tags. They are also in library books and "contactless" payment cards (such as American Express' "Blue" and ExxonMobil's "Speedpass").
Companies say the RFID tags improve supply-chain efficiency, reduce theft and guarantee that brand-name products are authentic, not counterfeit. At a store, RFID doorways could scan your purchases automatically as you leave, eliminating tedious checkouts.
At home, convenience is a selling point: RFID-enabled refrigerators could warn about expired milk, generate weekly shopping lists, even send signals to your interactive TV so that you see "personalized" commercials for foods you have a history of buying.
Potential for abuse
"We've seen so many different uses of the technology," said Dan Mullen, president of AIM Global, a national association of data-collection businesses, including RFID, "and we're probably still just scratching the surface in terms of places RFID can be used."
The problem, critics say, is that products with microchips might do a whole lot more.
With tags in so many objects, relaying information to databases that can be linked to credit and bank cards, almost no aspect of life may soon be safe from prying eyes, says Mark Rasch, former head of the computer-crime unit of the U.S. Justice Department. He imagines a time when anyone from police to identity thieves might scan locked car trunks or home offices from a distance.
"Think of it as a high-tech form of Dumpster-diving," Rasch said.
Passive vs. active tags
Presently, the radio tag most commercialized in America is the so-called "passive" emitter, meaning it has no internal power supply. Only when a reader powers these tags with a squirt of electrons do they broadcast their signal, indiscriminately, within a range of a few inches to 20 feet.
Not as common, but increasing in use, are "active" tags, which have internal batteries and can transmit signals, continuously, as far as low-orbiting satellites. Active tags pay tolls as motorists zip through tollgates; they also track wildlife.
Retailers and manufacturers want passive tags to replace the bar code for tracking inventory. These radio tags transmit Electronic Product Codes, number strings that allow trillions of objects to be uniquely identified. Some transmit specifics about the item, such as price, though not the name of the buyer.
The recent growth of the RFID industry has been staggering: From 1955 to 2005, cumulative sales of radio tags totaled 2.4 billion. Last year alone, 2.24 billion tags were sold worldwide, and analysts project that by 2017 cumulative sales will top 1 trillion — generating more than $25 billion in annual revenues for the industry.
Privacy concerns, some RFID supporters say, are overblown. But industry documents suggest a different line of thinking, privacy experts say.
A 2005 patent application by American Express itself describes how RFID-embedded objects carried by shoppers could emit "identification signals" when queried by electronic "consumer trackers."
In 2006, IBM received patent approval for an invention it called "Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items."
The documents "raise the hair on the back of your neck," said Liz McIntyre, co-author of "Spychips," a book that is critical of the industry. "The industry has long promised it would never use this technology to track people. But these patent records clearly suggest otherwise."
Corporations say patent filings shouldn't be used to predict a company's actions.
Guess the guy writing this is going to have to add a couple of layers of tin-foil to his hat.
Marketers' "permanent records" are why identity theft is so huge now.
They lobbied Congress to get to sell your private information to anyone and everyone. People tried to stop this 25 years ago.
Who needs big brother keeping a file on you when private industry can do it for profit, doesn't even have to be accurate, and is never questioned about invasions of privacy.
Just track the little suckers down and smash them or drill a hole in them.
There’s already been a softdrink contest where the winning can notified the company of where the winner was when he opened the can.
It was sold to the public as a “cool feature” not an invasion of privacy.
You only have the right to gay anal sex in private, not soda consumption.
Besides food and sundries, nearly all material items I buy are used. On top of that, I own nearly everything I care to own and make/repair a significant share of that.
Someday, I will dearly enjoy disabling this elint crap.
RFID will eventually get too small to easily detect visually in products. I’m for it as long as it doesn’t leave the stores.
The Borg hive mind from Star Trek isn’t looking so far fetched any more is it?
Resistance is futile.
Do you have a link to that?
I think it is very, very unlikely that the can itself was able to broadcast its location.
I could easily believe that they could identify where the can was sold and not much else.
Already used to that. All the time when in downtown San Francisco I get identified as a target by homeless who chant "Spare change?", "bus fare home", "buy me a meal", etc. Already used to deflecting that spam; different flavor, same stuff.
Noooo... He is a kooky sounding type, but the technology is developing rapidly.
I have worked with devices so small that the scanning electron microscope would no longer measure the critical dimensions of the circuit in photolithographics. We just had to go ahead and hope to get a couple dozen chips out of a possible few hundred per wafer. (Using smaller wafers does help with the uniformity issue.)
Molecular electronics is something up and coming now...
Actually building DNA as an electrical circuit will bring untold horrors.
I hate the Tenderloin... That Grehound/muni bus/BART station is also a filth magnet. It smells like a sewer.
no tin foil needed. i can tell you this is within reach...
I remember an article here on FR that a dissident was trying to escape from china back in the early 2k's. The Chinese border guards used a laptop to track down his identity and his cell-phone to check what to do with them til he was turned back and not allowed to leave.
Even if we COULD trust the industry to keep such promises, which I heavily doubt, these kind of technologies get spread around the world and are quickly incorporated by thugocrats into their oppressive regimes.
This IS a quick way to Big Brother, believe it.
RFID is real technology. However, it is not very advanced. So much so that soon I hope to see devices, legally sold for a while, that will allow people to “burn out RFID” chips safely.
Combined with an RFID detector, such a device would be reliable, because you could both find the RFIDs and check to see that they were no longer functional.
Granted, because there are many powerful vested interests in RFID technology, both in business and government, such devices will quickly be outlawed. But this will only create a strong market for them.
Such as the market that currently exists for cell phone jammers.
However, when anti-RFID devices do come along, the more people who actively use them, the more likely that the RFID technology will be slowly discontinued.
Even a single individual with an anti-RFID device could mess up inventory for a major store. And that wouldn’t have to happen more than a few times before they would have second thoughts about how much effort and money RFIDs save them.
Microchips are ALREADY in your cell phones to TRACK YOU. Even if you have the phone turned OFF, they can still track you. Leave it at home, ot in your car, or at least remove the battery, if you don;’t want to be TRACKED. And, drive only older cars...without the computers or GPS tools in them, not to mention the horror of OnStar! If you have it, the Feds have the power to listen in on your chat inside the car, and to your phone calls on it, WITHOUT a Warrant!!!
San Francisco's Civic Center is the worst. When I walk through the Muni/BART station there I hold my nose. Sometimes the homeless drop their pants, lean against the wall near the escalator and drop a crapload. Yup, those smears on the wall are crap.
The city should implant RFID chips in the homeless to track them. The city spent millions on a fingerprint system at homeless shelters but can't use it for privacy concerns. Implanted chips would make it easier.
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