RFID Tags—Big Brother is Getting Under Our Skin and Growing

Imagine you’re a small business owner, and the police have called to say a first-time offender has broken into your store. At this moment, he’s pilfering your goods. They’re still on their way there, yet they already know he has taken $50 from your cash register. There are no witnesses, yet they know the looter has blue eyes, a moustache and short blonde hair. They even know his name, weight, and where he lives and works.

Obviously there’s peace of mind knowing the criminal will be apprehended. But since you haven’t installed any cameras or even an alarm, and there aren’t any witnesses, how did the police know he was there? If this is his first offense, he isn’t on release from prison and wearing a bracelet. Also, how do they know he’s taken $50, or anything about him?

Welcome, not to the Twilight Zone or George Orwell’s fabricated society, but to the real world, where Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is threatening to obliterate the last vestiges of privacy in our lives.

In the January 2006 issue of National Geographic Magazine, there’s an article entitled “Who Knew?” written by Joel Achenbach, a Washington Post staff writer. To best explain RFID, he uses the premise that you’re alone at a party and want some romance, but don’t know anyone there or anything about them. “You’ve got a gizmo that beams energy at microchips in everyone’s name tag,” Achenbach writes. “The chips beam back name, occupation, hobbies, obsessions, phobias…” This, in essence, is how RFID works.

“An RFID tag with a microchip can be embedded in a product, under your pet’s skin, even under your own skin,” Achenbach continues. “Passive RFID tags have a tiny antenna, but no internal energy source—batteries are not included because they’re not needed. The energy comes from the reader, a scanning device that sends a pulse of electromagnetic energy that briefly activates the tag.

“Unlike traditional bar code label, a tag carries information specific to that object, and the data can be updated.” At this point I envision a slew of live human bodies being dragged like a sack of potatoes across a grocery store scanner. The feeling of invasion increases when Achenbach goes on to say, “Already, RFID technology is used by highway toll plazas, libraries, retailers tracking inventory, and it might appear in your passport.

“Doctors can implant a silicon chip under the skin that will help locate and retrieve a patient’s medical records. Coroners are using the chips to keep track of Hurricane Katrina victims. At a nightclub in Barcelona—and at its counterpart in Rotterdam —the same implant gets you into the VIP lounge and pays for a cocktail with the wave of an arm.”

True, there are so many humane ways in which this new electromagnetic energy technology can be beneficial. So perhaps I’m being overly paranoid, but I find it alarming that every bit of our personal identity can be included in those chips. Our entire lives will become vulnerable to anyone who learns how to scan, download and take advantage of the information stored there. As is, computer hackers keep finding new ways to break into online accounts. Eventually, hackers will also be able to crack into the data on our chips. Do the benefits of RFID technology outweigh what could happen to us due to misuse? Then again, how we feel about it probably doesn’t matter, because the invasion has begun and is growing, and we can’t do anything to stop it.