Top 10 Scary Uses for RFID Technology

written by Renee Boucher Ferguson; illustrated by Brian Moore

The U.S. State Department started issuing RFID-chipped passports to the public on Aug. 14, 2006, despite overwhelming privacy and security concerns. What’s the big worry? Your identity could be stolen, you could be targeted by terrorists reading your iden

The Real ID Act enacted by Congress in 2005 mandates that every state in the nation overhaul its driver’s license ID card system by 2008. What’s the implication? RFID-chipped licenses that would be connected through a massive national database that would

The departments of State and Homeland Security, under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, issued a mandate Jan. 23 that all residents of the United States, Canada, Mexico and Bermuda have to show a passport to get across the land and sea borders of

Somark Innovations is developing a proprietary ID system based on its ‘biocompatible’ ink tattoo with chipless RFID technology. Inject the ink under the skin and it creates a unique ID that can be detected without line of site reading. Initially targeted

VeriChip is the only company in the country to receive the go-ahead from the FDA for its subcutaneous RFID chip that can be implanted in the fatty tissue of a person’s arm. Marketed initially to health care organizations, the company is targeting military

Developed by a UC Berkeley professor, Smart Dust refers to motes – little computerized chips intended to be about the size of a piece of dust, but about the size of a quarter now – that once laid out in a mesh network, and search and find one another to d

Contactless payment systems are essentially wireless devices used to pay for things in place of a credit or debit card. The contactless chip, which uses radio frequency to transmit financial information, can be embedded in a key fob, cell phone, PDA or a

Toys, that is. A hybrid between traditional CD-ROM and RFID technology, Mattel’s HyperScan gaming system lets ‘tween-aged boys’ scan their favorite characters – Ben Ten, X-Men, Interstellar Wrestling League – into a console that reads an RFID chip in the

OK, there is nothing inherently wrong with using RFID technology to track the nest drifting instincts of bees, as a study by the Zoological Society of London has done to find out why bees move between nests. What is scary is how the ZSL study was inspired

In all likelihood the most technologically advanced stadium on the planet, Alliance Arena in Munich, Germany, has a contactless infrastructure whereby customers no longer have the option of paying cash for anything game related. Tickets into the stadium a