Overview

Citizens are becoming wary of technology. While they appreciate the convenience of cell phones and ATM cards, they are not so sure about video surveillance, POS terminals, digital television, and the Internet. The Internet is the defining technological achievement of our time, but citizens notice that it has brought pornography into their lives; it has enabled spam, identity theft, and viruses; and their children spend hours every day with incomprehensible mayhem, violence, and destruction.

Christians think of RFID professionals when they read in Revelations: "And he shall make all, both little and great, rich and poor, freemen and bondmen, to have a character in their right hand or on their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, but he that hath the character, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name." (Revelations 13:16 17). The citizens of free countries shift uncomfortably in their chairs as they read about the State Department putting chips in passports, the various states tagging their drivers' licenses, and the former Secretary of Health and Human Services getting a microchip implanted under his skin. It is no wonder they explode when their children come home wearing new name tags and a notice that says they're using RFID to take attendance.

RFID, while a powerful solution to intractable business problems, appears to the consumer to be another trick of the technologist, a loss of control over her own personal information, another tool for the terrorist, the brigand, the careless, or...