Katherine Albrecht (spychips.com(1)), the founder of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (nocards.org(2)), shared her research on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) products. The small tags which emit identifying signals, are being pitched by major retailers to replace bar codes, and the marketing applications are "quite chilling," she commented.
Albrecht expressed concern that the tags would be read by hidden scanners without consumers' awareness and that marketers would be compiling information about people that they don't necessarily want to share. While the industry is claiming that RFID tags can be turned off after a consumer purchases an item, Albrecht discovered at her trip to the Future Store(3) in Germany, they actually weren't disabling the chips even though they claimed they were.
The government is also involved with the technology, she warned. Cash itself may eventually have RFID chips installed in it, creating a larger tracking and accountability database that Albrecht predicted would be a further erosion of privacy. Of even greater worry, she sees a time when people may be coerced into having implants placed into their bodies in order to make purchases, which she correlated with the "Mark of the Beast" from the Book of Revelation.

1. http://www.spychips.com/
2. http://www.nocards.org/
3. http://www.future-store.org/servlet/PB/-s/1umlsa1aqayy5ukq3kbriilo5uyhrxw/menu/1000154/index.html

Bumper Music

Bumper music from Monday June 14, 2004