P.S. People running around talking about the sky falling wiil not stop RFID implimentation, but perhaps public awarness may lead to prudent legislation governing their use.

Furthermore, if one day retailers such as Wal-Mart do ever begin to implement item-level tagging, the information on the tag would simply be a serial number, similar to the number that is represented by a barcode. Should someone even be able to “read” this number, it would be meaningless, only a number, unless he had access to Wal-Mart’s databases. A tag on a shirt will not contain and transmit information such as, “Hanes T-shirt, Blue, Size L,” or any information about the purchaser or anything other than a simple serial number.

Going further with the assumption that item-level tagging will one day be a reality, tags and readers must be precisely configured to communicate with one another, and must operate in an environment that is condusive to the radio signals being transmited. Something as simple as a high humidity environment can make capturing a read impossible. Also, readers generally have a read range of a few inches to about 15 feet. To obtain greater read ranges using RFID technology requires more specialized and high-end tags and readers, which aren’t being used or even considered by retailers today. This severely limits the risk that any old regular Joe is going to be able to purchase an RFID reader and walk around scanning and reading things and getting private information. This fear, as far as I can see, is rather completely unfounded.

If I am to go on to point out futher inaccuracies; it should be noted that there are currently RFID tags available that do carrry their own power supply, so that tags do not require the power supplied by a reader to send out a signal. These tags also already have encryption capabilities and although more expensive, are currently in use in very specialized, security sensitive applications.

It is distressing that there has been so much controvery caused over such a promising technology. Most of the fears people have are based on inaccurate and untrue information, such as this, that is being dispersed about RFID technology. There are actually laws being passed in states, such as California, to inhibit the adotopion of RFID technology in certain industries. RFID has been around and has been in use for decades, without incident, and is only now gaining the attention of the masses because of more prolific implementations, such as Wal-Mart. Nobody has seemed to raise any complaints or have any problems with services such as the Mobile SpeedPass, the EZ Pass toll collection system, or the new MasterCard PayPass now becoming available at smaller retail outlets and McDonald’s drive through windows. All of these services which offers consumers increased convenience and security are based on RFID technology.