RFID Tags & Radio You

When people think of science and technology that changes the world, they tend to think of big things, dramatic things. Atom bombs, vaccines for dread diseases, and the like. As James Burke could tell us, however, big changes often come from developments that seem minor at the time and lack drama. Most of the time, it's the unexpected combinations and connections between discoveries that really change our world.

Here's one from that category. What do you get when you combine miniaturization, wireless networks, a planetary Internet, embedded sensors in most devices, progress in computing capacity and storage, and Radio Frequency I.D. (RFID) tags?

The answer may be a very different society, and effects that stretch far beyond our corner of the world.

Let's start with a quick definition, courtesy of SecurityFocus columnist Scott Granneman:

"RFID tags are essentially microchips, the tinier the better. Some are only 1/3 of a millimeter across. These chips act as transponders (transmitters/responders), always listening for a radio signal sent by transceivers, or RFID readers. When a transponder receives a certain radio query, it responds by transmitting its unique ID code, perhaps a 128-bit number, back to the transceiver."

As usage of RFID tags spreads, the benefits to military and civilian supply chains and inventories could easily run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, or more. Now they've become so small that they're finding their way into airline baggage tags, Euro banknotes, even clothing.

That has real implications and consequences - both good and bad. How much do we want to know? What will we do with that knowledge? For instance, what does RFID in bank notes mean? On the plus side, money laundering becomes much more difficult. So does counterfeiting. On the dark side, Scott Granneman notes:

"Unfortunately, such a move would also makes it possible for governments to track the passage of cash from individual to individual. Cash is the last truly anonymous way to buy and sell. With RFID tags, that anonymity would be gone. In addition, banks would not be the only ones who could in an instant divine how much cash you were carrying; criminals can also obtain power transceivers."

It's a point I've made before, and one worth repeating: don't assume that privacy issues are limited to your interactions with governments, businesses, and people more or less bound by laws. Now, let's take the RFID concept into other areas. Back to Scott:

"Right now, you can buy a hammer, a pair of jeans, or a razor blade with anonymity. With RFID tags, that may be a thing of the past. Some manufacturers are planning to tag just the packaging, but others will also tag their products. There is no law requiring a label indicating that an RFID chip is in a product."

Talk about "radio you"! For instance, your tires could easily create a footprint of where your vehicle has been. That's not even implausible; as Harrow notes, GPS technology has already been used in this way by a car rental agency to hand out speeding tickets to its customers. That's alarming enough, given trends that already have private agencies and corporations assuming quasi-regulatory powers. Even so, your car isn't the final frontier. Scott Granneman again:

"In May, delegates to the Chinese Communist Party Congress were required to wear an RFID-equipped badge at all times so their movements could be tracked and recorded. Is there any doubt that, in a few years, those badges will be replaced by [implanted] VeriChip-like devices?"

RFID, plus widespread wireless networks, connected to a global network, and hooked into massive computing and storage power that continues to get cheaper, certainly makes a "Panopticon" style future possible. Knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing, and as people like Bruce Sterling have pointed out:

"You don't want to wander into a Kazaa and Napster version of George Orwell. Ubiquitous computation, unlike information, does not "want to be free." This is not a technology of freedom. Ubiquitous computation wants to make you its slave. Try to remember that, for all our sakes, all right? This is not a water-cooler for gossip, like the Internet is. This is a hard-case, hard-times, hands-on, rather ruthless command-and-control system."

Now let's take attorney Larry Resse's point:

"We've crossed a threshold into an age when virtually anything (no pun intended) could be used to monitor a person's behavior - from their car, to their cell phone, to their web browser, to their credit card, bank, and travel records."

Which means that one of the key social questions emerging as a result of our inventions is: "what will we choose NOT to know - and how will that ignorance be designed, secured, and enforced?"

Yet knowledge does have its place. As Harrow himself notes: "Given these directions, remember that we will get exactly the type of society (Big Brother wise) that we allow ourselves to create. The result is up to EACH of us... the more we know [about the technology and its implications], the less we'll be surprised at the society that WE create."

Ah, the question of knowledge...