Now This Could Be a Real Dust Up

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Time for a little fear and paranoia from the security world. I'm a fan of Princeton University computer science professor Ed Felten's blog, Freedom to Tinker. His latest entry on current and future use of RFID tags is pretty simple to understand and scarey to contemplate. Marketed primarily as a way to track inventory, these microscopic tags also can keep tabs on where you go and what you do. Think of the current IBM television commercial where a woman at a desk in the middle of a lone highway stops a Fresno-bound 18-wheeler heading to New Mexico instead. She says she knows the driver's lost because the boxes told her.

Every conference session on this technology I've attended in the past two years has been packed, mostly with admins freaked about the security and privacy implications. Felten's discussion will not allay those fears. Not only are RFID tags readying for primetime, but a future incarnation may be dust motes. That's right. You'll have no idea your clothing, hair or anything clingable is embedded with a tracking device. And no idea who's monitoring your movements. [Shudder.]

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