Do you value privacy?

Many friends and acquaintances I've spoken with lately have no real problem with being tracked by corporations or the government through RFID (or any other) methods. For instance, some of my friends don't mind if Wal-Mart knows what they buy or when they shop, since they're "not doing anything wrong" and since we're really *already* trackable by our credit card or grocery store card purchases.

Some don't mind if the government tracks them, for similar reasons that they're innocent of crimes and acts of terrorism.

Did it ever occur to you that if you're using a highway "SpeedPass" that you're leaving a breadcrumb trail and publishing your movements? Does that bother you in any way? For most people, probably not.

Thoughts?

Driving with RFID

It occurred to me, as I drove from Arkansas to Utah last week, that if my car or something in my car (like me) was outfitted with an RFID tag with a good enough range, my progress across the country could be tracked for varying reasons. For instance, my family waiting for us in Utah as we plod through the midwest snowstorms could log into a Web site and track our progress, much like tracking a package with UPS or FedEx. A series of highway overpasses would just need RFID readers on them and we would just pass under or through these "portals" and our progress would be logged into a Department of Transportation database.

Then I wondered why the computer wouldn't also say "It appears that your average speed between underpass exits 301 and 304 was 87.3 miles per hour. Expect a traffic ticket in the mail for exceeding the posted speed limit."

My del.icio.us list of RFID sites

I'm keeping a list of interesting sites dealing with RFID and its development. It's here on my del.icio.us web space.

It's an RFID World... or will soon be

Why am I doing this? I'm really just an interested citizen and consumer watching the world of RFID and the RFID-ification of the world. I'm simply fascinated at the implications and look forward (with some trepidation) to watching the technology be deployed across all aspects of life.

Even though there is a massive and rapid Radio Frequency Identification deployment going on as I type, most people wandering into stores and driving down the street aren't aware of the situation. We're all going to be interacting more and more with business and government, thanks to RFID, as the months of 2006 go on, unlike any other time in history.

I believe it's a technology that easily could have as profound an effect on the world as did the internet. In fact, I believe that RFID will help propel the idea of the internet into complete maturity, for better or worse.

It's not a brand-new technology by any means. RFID has been used by the military for awhile in keeping track of its important "assets." We're also most familiar with it's functionality when we drive into a parking garage with our parking pass stuck to the dashboard or circumventing the toll booths with our "SpeedPass," whether we know that it's RFID enabling this or not.

But RFID is going to be expanding it's tentacles out into every aspect of life over the next few years as Wal-Mart and other massive companies embrace the incredible possibilities it promises in the supply chain. It'll be in our clothes, our shoes, our vehicles, our credit cards, our passports, our driver's licenses and under our skin, to name a mere few.

I'm keeping up to date on the developments by setting up a Google News Alert that shows me everything in the RFID world that Google finds. I'm also keeping a list of bookmarks on my del.icio.us area that deal with RFID.

There's a lot of good stuff happening from all sides, like Katherine Albrecht and the people over at Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN/Spychips) as they keep an eye on the technology and it's major players from the privacy and biblical realms.

Stay tuned and hopefully we can get some good discussions going.