RFID may give “Tag, you’re it!” a whole new meaning

Picture this: You’re sitting in the food court at your favorite mall with the family, munching on greasy kung pao chicken from Panda Express, followed by a warm, sweet Cinnabon, when a cordon of mall police surround your table, guns drawn, screaming at you to “Drop the bun and put your hands up!”

Reluctant as you are to give it up, you comply.

What went wrong? Your wife is wondering if you’ve been leading a secret life, but it’s nothing so exotic. Rather, the clerk at the Gap forgot to deactivate the RFID (radio frequency identification) tag in the sweater you just bought. When you passed an RFID reader, connected to the Wi-Fi enabled network, it sent a message to the security desk, and as you passed each RFID reader along the way, they tracked you down in the food court.

Here’s another scenario: You’re going on vacation in Las Vegas, and while you’re in that same mall, you buy a book on card counting. Unbeknownst to you, it, too, has an RFID tag impressed into the binding. RFID tags along with their antenna are already part of paper labels attached to shipping containers. It is no stretch to think how unobtrusive they might yet become.

Now as you enter the hotel/casino, an unobtrusive RFID reader tells management that you have in your possession a book on counting cards. The book has a unique serial number associated not with your credit card — that would be illegal — but with a customer ID, name, and address. The casino, in turn, subscribes to a service, maybe from Amazon, with a database of every book in print. 

In a world of zero latency, as you passed through the doors, your photo was also taken and now it is distributed to every casino on the strip, so that every time you try to enter a casino, your image is matched to the database as a possible card counter, and two guys with closely cropped hair and tight-fitting sports jackets politely ask you to leave.

These very possible tableaus come courtesy of Hal Etterman, an expert on data encryption and surveillance systems at MindForce Consulting.

There is no doubt that RFID tags will be sewn into the lining of every item of clothing manufactured. Current RFID prices are about 16 cents each on orders of 10 million tags, with the price expected to reach a nickel a tag in a year or two.

By using RFID in clothing, not only will companies be able to discourage shoplifting, they’ll also be able to spot other frauds, such as counterfeit brand names or buyers who purchase an item at a discount outlet and then try to return it for the retail price at a regular store. Warranties can now also be easily tracked to date of purchase.

With those benefits to the supply chain, the question is, will the store really want to turn off the tag after the item is purchased, and how can you, as a consumer, tell? “What if you have some strange hobbies you’d like kept private?” Etterman asks.

It is certainly a small step from deploying RFID tags, which have a reach of only about three feet, to putting the readers in public places that already have hot spots. The combination is potent. Suddenly, the information in the tag can be transmitted over the Wi-Fi network and associated with all kinds of other data by all kinds of organizations, such as insurance companies. Or, you may be on the Most Wanted list at your local public library. Why shouldn’t they have a piece of you, too?

While these scenarios are not possible today, there is no technological barrier preventing them from becoming reality. Who can really say what’s next?