An article titled RFID privacy concerns are global discusses some of the steps officials are supposedly taking to protect us against RFID chips.

"Privacy concerns over the use of radio frequency identification technology aren’t confined to the United States. Officials in Europe and Asia have completed or are developing guidelines and directives to ensure that RFID technology is used properly."

How can hackable, radio-wave transmitting chips that are capable of tracking everything you do be “used properly”? The article continues, talking about the “legitimate” uses of implanting RFID chips in your body:

"Laurant expressed special concerns about a miniaturized RFID device about the size of a grain of rice from a company called VeriChip. The chip is implanted below a person’s skin and contains a unique verification number.

Laurant said the chip could legitimately be used by health officials to obtain information, such as blood type, about an unconscious person and used to treat them. But it could also be used for more controversial applications such implanting them in the arms of soldiers who are on special military missions."

Spychips.com has a press release announcing that the American state of Wisconsin has just banned forced injection of RFID chips.

"Civil libertarians cheered yesterday upon news that Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle signed a law making it a crime to require an individual to be implanted with a microchip. Activists and authors Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre joined the celebration, predicting this move will spell trouble for the VeriChip Corporation, maker of the VeriChip human microchip implant."

It may be hard to imagine that it is legal to require someone to get a radio chip injected into their body, but it has already happened.

RFID chips will soon be everywhere. These are the frightening "implanted chips" of the future, except that they don’t need to be implanted. They will be embedded in every product that you use, tracking your every move.

RFID chips have very bad security and can easily be hacked:

"James Van Bokkelen is about to be robbed. A wealthy software entrepreneur, Van Bokkelen will be the latest victim of some punk with a laptop. But this won’t be an email scam or bank account hack. A skinny 23-year-old named Jonathan Westhues plans to use a cheap, homemade USB device to swipe the office key out of Van Bokkelen’s back pocket."

Another hacker uses a prank to open his locked hotel room with a box of cream cheese:

" ‘I was at a hotel that used smartcards, so I copied one and put the data into my computer,’ Grunwald says. ‘Then I used RFDump to upload the room key card data to the price chip on a box of cream cheese from the Future Store. And I opened my hotel room with the cream cheese!’"

But the uses of cracking into RFID chips go far beyond pranks:

Aside from pranks, vandalism, and thievery, Grunwald has recently discovered another use for RFID chips: espionage. He programmed RFDump with the ability to place cookies on RFID tags the same way Web sites put cookies on browsers to track returning customers. With this, a stalker could, say, place a cookie on his target’s E-ZPass, then return to it a few days later to see which toll plazas the car had crossed (and when). Private citizens and the government could likewise place cookies on library books to monitor who’s checking them out.

Wired.com has an article about a new book on RFID titled Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID.

"A new book by privacy advocates makes the case that corporations and government agencies are in collusion to put tiny radio transmitters on nearly everything we buy…

Albrecht and McIntyre make a staggering accusation in Spychips: that Philips, Procter and Gamble, Gillette, NCR and IBM are conspiring with each other and the federal government to follow individual consumers everywhere, using embedded radio tags planted in their clothing and belongings…

In one example, Gillette vice president of global business management Dick Cantwell in quoted in a 2001 Technology Review article as saying he looks forward to the company using (RFID) readers ‘to track consumer use of its products at home.’"

Big Brother will be watching.

Jim Rapoza writes about the potential security risks of RFID chips, and discusses some of their troubling uses:

"Recently, a grade school in California tested a program in which students were required to wear badges during the day. What school administrators neglected to tell parents was that the badges contained RFID tags and were tracking students’ comings and goings throughout the school. After parents expressed their outrage, the school discontinued the test….

Readers of my columns know that I’m a big proponent of weighing potential risks versus potential rewards. So this push for RFID in so many sensitive areas of people’s lives confuses me because the risks are so high and the rewards seem so minimal."

You can read his full article at Extremetech.com.

Many paranoid people fear the coming age of RFID chips where ID chips will be implanted in your brain.

The good news is that Belgians have now figured out a way to implant the RFID chips in your tooth. So, the chip may not go in your brain, but in your tooth instead. What a relief.

In the coming age of RFID it is interesting to be aware of how easily these chips can be hacked.

. . . with the appropriate firmware a cellphone can be modified to attack and kill UHF tags.

I found a post at Analog Medium about a method to deactivate RFID chips. More information can be found here.

RFID chips — the chilling "implanted chip" of the near future — are able to be infected with computer viruses. These computer viruses are able to spread from RFID chip to database, and then to other RFID chips. As RFID tags become more sophisticated, this threat will become even more dangerous. The BBC also is running a story on it.

What will RFID chips be used for?

• Passports — New US Passports will have RFID chips in them.
• Implanted chips — Yes, implanted chips are already here
• Tracking products in stores. — This is already taking place at stores like Tesco.
• Emergency rooms and bars.

55% of people surveyed in Europe are worried about RFID. More about RFID coming soon.

The United States has started using RFID "chips" in new passports. The new passports will be able to transmit information about you to electrical sensors, and will store your digital photo in order to make your photo available to facial recognition cameras.

The new computer chip in your passport will be mandatory.

The government answers some other frequently asked questions here. You may be concerned about the fact that your new electronic passport will be transmitting your personal data at all times, wherever you go in your travels, readable by any government RFID sensor, or any hacker who knows how to read the data.

You can read a long list of anti-RFID passport comments on the government web site here.

A company in Ohio has just made it mandory for some of their employees to have RFID tags implanted under their skin. The identification "chips" are implanted in the upper arm. The chips are not required for employment, but are required for certain jobs, specifically accessing their data center. Ironically RFID tags can be cloned, allowing hackers to bypass the security. The age of RFID tags is coming. More about RFID coming soon.