I know that a Big Brother vision of the future sounds farfetched. I assure you that this seemingly impossible future is on the drawing board, and I promise that you will be convinced, too.
In a future world laced with RFID spychips, cards in your wallet could "squeal" on you as you enter malls, retail outlets, and grocery stores, announcing your presence and value to businesses. Reader devices hidden in the doors, walls, displays, and floors could frisk the RFID chips in your clothes and other items on your person to determine your age, sex, and preferences. Since spychip information travels through clothing, they could even get a peek at the color and size of your underwear.
I'm not joking. A major worldwide clothing manufacturer named Benetton has already tried to embed RFID chips into women's undergarments. And they would have gotten away with it, too, had it not been for an international outcry.
While consumers might be able to avoid spychipped clothing brands for now, they could be forced to wear RFID-enabled work clothes to earn a living. Already uniform companies like AmeriPride and Cintas are embedding RFID tracking tags into their clothes that can withstand high temperature commercial washings.
Don't have to wear a chipped uniform to work? Your RFID-enabled employee badge could do the spying instead. One day, these devices could tell management who you're chatting with at the water cooler and how long you've spent in the restroom and even whether or not you've washed your hands. There's already a product called iHygiene that can monitor the handwashing habits of RFID-tagged employees during bathroom visits.
Our next generation of workers could be conditioned to obediently accept this degrading surveillance through forced early exposure. Some schools are already requiring students to wear spychipped identification badges around their necks to keep closer tabs on their daily activities. If Johnny is one-minute late for math class, the system knows. It's always watching.
Retailers are thrilled at the idea of being able to price products according to your purchase history and value to the store. RFID will allow them to assess your worth as you pick up products and flash you a corresponding customer-specific price. Prime customers might pay three dollars for a staple like peanut butter while "bargain shoppers" or the economically challenged could be charged twice as much. The goal is to encourage the loyalty of shoppers who contribute to the profit margins while discouraging those who don't. After all, stores justify, why have unprofitable customers cluttering the store and breathing their air?
RFID chips embedded in passbooks and ATM cards will identify and profile customers as they enter bank lobbies, beaming bank balances to employees who will snicker at the customer with a mere thirty-seven dollars in the bank while offering white glove treatment to the high-rollers.
RFID could also be used to infringe upon civil liberties. The technology could give government officials the ability to electronically frisk citizens without their knowledge and set up invisible checkpoints on roads and in pedestrian zones to monitor their movements.
While RFID proponents claim they would never use RFID to track people, the fact is that they are not only considering it, they've done it. The United States government has already controlled people with RFID-laced bracelets—and not just criminals. And now they're planning to embed spychips in U.S. passports so citizens can be tracked as they move about airport terminals and cross international borders.
Hitting the open road will no longer be the "get away from it all" experience many of us crave. You may already be under surveillance, courtesy of your RFID-enabled highway toll transponder. Some highways, like those in the Houston area, have set up readers that probe the tag's information every few miles. But that's child's play compared to what they've got planned. The Federal Highway Administration is joining with states and vehicle manufacturers to promote "intelligent vehicles" that can be monitored and tracked through built-in RFID devices (Minority Report-style).
RFID spychips in your shoes and car tires will make it possible for strangers to track you as you walk and drive through public and private spaces, betraying your habits and the deepest secrets even your own mother has no right knowing. Pair RFID devices with global positioning (GPS) technology, and you could literally be pinpointed on the globe in real time, creating a borderless tracking system that already has law enforcement, governments, stalkers, and voyeurs salivating.
There will be no more secret love letters in the RFID world, either—not if the U.S. Postal Service has its way. They would like to embed every postage stamp with an RFID chip that would enable point-to-point tracking. Even more disturbingly, RFID could remove the anonymity of cash. Already, the European Union has discussed chipping Euro banknotes, and the Bank of Japan is contemplating a similar program for high-value currency. Your every purchase could be under the microscope.
So could your trash. In the RFID world, garbage will become a snoop's and criminal's best friend. Today, it's a dirty job sifting through diapers and table scraps to get at tell-tale signs of a household's market value, habits, and purchases. In the RFID world, scanning trash could be a simple as driving down the street with a car-mounted reader on trash day.
How about the "smart" house? Researchers have developed prototype "homes of the future" to showcase RFID-enabled household gadgets like refrigerators that know what's in them (and can tattletale to marketers), medicine cabinets that talk (to your doctor, government, and HMO), and floors that keep track of where you are at each moment. The potential is staggering. Your insurance company could remotely monitor your food consumption and set rates accordingly, health officials could track the prescription drugs you're taking, and attorneys could subpoena your home activity records for use against you in court.
Home RFID networks will allow family members to remotely track you during your "golden years," or times of incompetence, real or otherwise. Doors can remain bolted to keep you from wandering, toilets can monitor your bowel habits and transmit data to distant physicians, and databases can sense your state of mind. It's all under development and headed your way.
But chipping inanimate objects is just the start. The endpoint is a form of RFID that can be injected into flesh. Pets and livestock are already being chipped, and there are those who believe humans should be next. Incredibly, bars have begun implanting their patrons with glass-encapsulated RFID tags that can be used to pay for drinks. This application startles many Christians who have likened payment applications of RFID to biblical predictions about the Mark of the Beast, a number the book of Revelation says will be needed to buy or sell in the "end times."
While some of these applications are slated for our future, others are already here, right now—and they're spreading. Wal-Mart has mandated that its top one hundred suppliers affix RFID tags to crates and pallets being shipped to selected warehouses. Analysts estimate this one initiative alone has already driven close to $250 million worth of investment in the technology. Other retailers such as Albertsons, Target, and Best Buy have followed suit with mandates of their own. According to one industry analyst, there are now sixty thousand companies operating under RFID mandates and scrambling to get with the spychip program as quickly as possible.
Adding fuel to the fire, the Department of Defense is also requiring suppliers to use RFID. In fact, government cheerleaders can't fall over themselves fast enough to support the technology. The Department of Homeland Security is testing the use of RFID in visas, and the Social Security Administration is using spychips to track citizen files. Not to be outdone, the Food and Drug Administration wants RFID on all prescription drugs, and the makers of Oxycontin and Viagra have already begun to comply. The FDA has also approved the use of subcutaneous RFID implants for managing patient medical records the same implants being used to track bar patrons.
You may have already brought a spychip home with you. If you own a toll transponder or a Mobil Speedpass, you're interacting with RFID every time you use it. And if you bought Procter & Gamble's Lipfinity lipstick at a Wal-Mart in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, between March and June of 2003, you could have brought home a live RFID chip in the product packaging and unknowingly starred in a video, too!
P&G is not the only company that's tested spychips on unwitting consumers. Gillette was also caught tagging packages of Mach3 razor blades with some of the 500 million (that's half a billion!) RFID chips it put on order in early 2003. There's also evidence to suggest that other everyday products like Pantene Shampoo, Purina Dog Chow, and Huggies baby wipes may have been tagged with RFID chips and sold to unsuspecting consumers.