Speaker: Your clothes say a lot about you-- your personality, your interests, maybe even your mood. But how would you feel if companies placed a small chip in your clothes that will allow them, the government, and any potential muggers the ability to track you wherever you go? Sounds like privacy invasion, doesn't it?

Well there are manufacturers today who wish to place RFID chips-- which would enable the scenario previously mentioned-- into just about everything connected with your lives-- passports, groceries, credit cards. In fact, because of a general public ignorance of this technology, odds are you could be wearing one right now-- and you wouldn't even know about it.

Now in order for you to understand the inherent danger of RFID technology, you first have to understand how the technology works. According to [? scientist.com, ?] last accessed January 3, 2007, RFID stands for "radio frequency identification"-- a tracking technology that uses tiny computer chips to track items at a distance. These chips have tiny antennas on them that beam back information about items to which they're attached-- invisibly and silently by radio waves.

Now RFID tags have been around for some time. It's what's used in national EZ TAG. However, over the past several years, there has been an increasing number of companies who decides to use it in other products as well.

As previously mentioned, this technology has various flaws-- yet its employment is increasing at a great rate. However [? steps ?] to protect individuals from its abuse are not. So guidelines do need to be established-- and rules put in place.

According to the November/December 2006 issue of Information Management Journal, Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, released privacy guidelines aimed at protecting Canadians' privacy for the use of RFID technology. Cavoukian also released a companion piece entitled "Practical Tips for Implementing RFID Guidelines" in order to help organizations put the guidelines into place. So, I ask why such steps cannot be taken in the US? And you should be asking that, too.

What you can do about that is contact your elected officials, because according to [inaudible], RFID-laden legislation entitled "The RFID Right to Know Act" has been available to federal lawmakers since 2003-- yet they haven't acted on it. Which means they probably just need a little motivation and stimulation from constituents like you.