BEIJING – (October 8, 2010) — Invasion of privacy, with cameras on every street corner, is going another step further. Futurists believe that one day our every move will be monitored by RFID (Radio frequency identification). Nowadays, this prediction is becoming real.
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If you haven’t heard of this term, you should become familiar with RFID technology because you’ll be hearing much more about it in the near future, as more and more people begin carrying chips with them. Discretely, the U.S government and corporations have started mandating chips as a routine,; but most people still do not know it.
RFID, or radio-frequency identification, is a system that identifies and wirelessly transmits the identity of a person or an object via radio waves. An RFID system comprises of an antenna, a reader and unique active, passive or battery-assisted passive tags. The main purpose of an RFID system is the transmission of data through a tag (which is a portable transmitter). The RFID reader deciphers and processes the data at the receiving end. This technology is popularly used in the health care, manufacturing, retail, animal-tracking, defense and security, and transportation sectors.
Anyone with an appropriately equipped scanner and close access to the RFID device can activate it and read its content. Obviously, some concerns are greater than others. If someone walks by your bag of books from the bookstore with a 13.56 Mhz “sniffer” with an RFID field that will activate the RFID devices in the books you bought, that person can get a complete list of what you just bought. That’s certainly an invasion of your privacy, but it could be worse. Another scenario involves a military situation in which the other side scans vehicles going by, looking for tags that are associated with items that only high-ranking officers can have, and targeting accordingly.
RFID has been in existence for about 50 years, but very few people are aware of the technology. RFID chip in human is just an advancement of this technology. Now, RFID chip is experimentally being inserted in to human bodies. It can monitor all the activities of the people who wear this chip. Through this means, people are regularly monitored by the authority.
This in a way shows that people do not have the so-called human rights which the United States claims to protect.