Love, 1984 Style

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) has been in the news lately. Most recently, a Bellingham man and a Vancouver woman embedded RFID chips into their hands that had been programmed to allow access to each others homes, car doors, and computers among other things.


RFID technology is mostly used track things. Retailers such as Wal-Mart use it to track each individual item in the store, to know when to replenish stock or quickly check in merchandise. Storing medical information is another common use. Future uses could be to store banking info so that all you need to do it walk through the doors of store with your chipped merchandise and have your account debited without every going through a checkout stand.

Privacy advocates are outraged. Some feel this is the birth of “Big Brother” and the chip is the “mark of the beast”. Soon, the government will track us all, our medical status will be monitored, our bank information accessible to anyone with a RFID reader. Scary stuff, no?

Let’s go back to our “chipped” love birds. Would you be willing to do this? Think about it—your movements, medical information, and bank info would be out there. What if this happened? Boyfriend goes “out to Wal-Mart to pick up some stuff.” Girlfriend tracks boyfriend via RFID.

Upon return of BF, GF says:
“Honey, why were you circling the same block near the airport for 20 minutes? You seem to stop, the weight of your car increased by about 115lbs. You then parked down an alley. Next, it seemed your heart rate, blood pressure and breathing jumped, steadily increasing until you had an involuntary muscle spasm and an increased rush of endorphins. Shortly after your heart rate slowed, and then fifty bucks was debited from your account. How was Wal-Mart, big sale, eh?”