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How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with Radio Frequency Identification

"Imagine a world of no more privacy."

We speak with Liz McIntyre, author of "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID" that examines radio frequency identification - a technology that uses tiny computer chips to track items at distance. Major corporations are working right now to install RFIDs on all consumer products.
Democracy Now! Transmission date: 103/01/06
 

"Where your every purchase is monitored and recorded in a database, and your every belonging is numbered. Where someone many states away or perhaps in another country has a record of everything you have ever bought, of everything you have ever owned, of every item of clothing in your closet -- every pair of shoes. What's more, these items can even be tracked remotely.

"Once your every possession is recorded in a database and can be tracked, you can also be tracked and monitored remotely through the things you wear, carry and interact with every day.

"We may be standing on the brink of that terrifying world if global corporations and government agencies have their way. It's the world that Wal-Mart, Target, Gillette, Procter & Gamble, Kraft, IBM, and even the United States Postal Service want to usher in within the next ten years.

"It's the world of radio frequency identification.

"Radio frequency identification, RFID for short, is a technology that uses tiny computer chips -- some smaller than a grain of sand -- to track items at distance. If the master planners have their way, every object -- from shoes to cars -- will carry one of these tiny computer chips that can be used to spy on you without your knowledge or consent."

Those are the opening words of the book, "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID." Today we are joined by one of the co-authors of "Spychips" - Liz McIntyre.

• Liz McIntyre, a consumer privacy expert and author of "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID." She serves as the Communications Director for CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), a grass-roots organization that has been tackling consumer privacy issues since 1999. She also writes about consumer issues as the MoneyMom, a syndicated family money writer and columnist.
  - Website: Spychips.com
• Annalee Newitz, freelance journalist. She writes about the intersection of technology science and culture and is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine. She recently had an RFID implanted in her arm.
  - Website: Techsploitation.com

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