RFID tags are NOT an “improved bar code” as the proponents of the technology would like you to believe. RFID technology differs from barcodes and RFID in three important ways:
1.With today’s barcode technology, every can of Coke has the same UPC or bar code number as every other can (a can of Coke in Toronto has the same number as a can of Coke in Topeka). With RFID, each individual can of Coke would have a unique ID number which could be linked to the person buying it when they scan a credit card or a frequent shopper card (i.e., an “item registration system”).
2.Unlike a barcode, these chips can be read from a distance, right through your clothes, wallet, backpack or purse – without your knowledge or consent – by anybody with the right reader device. In a way, it gives strangers x-ray vision powers to spy on you, to identify both you and the things you’re wearing and carrying.
3.Unlike the barcode, The diffference between Barcode and RFID, RFID could be bad for your health. RFID supporters envision a world where RFID reader devices are everywhere – in stores, in floors, in doorways, on airplanes – even in the refrigerators and medicine cabinets of our own homes. In such a world, we and our children would be continually bombarded with electromagnetic energy. Researchers do not know the long-term health effects of chronic exposure to the energy emitted by these reader devices.
Many huge corporations, including Philip Morris, Procter and Gamble, and Wal-Mart, have begun experimenting with RFID spy chip technology.
As consumers we have no way of knowing which packages contain these chips. While some chips are visible inside a package , RFID chips can be well hidden. For example they can be sewn into the seams of clothes, sandwiched between layers of cardboard, molded into plastic or rubber, and integrated into consumer package design.
