"Spychips" is a scary new book out by consumer-privacy advocates Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, and it should be must-reading for anyone who doesn't "get" the concerns over RFID chips. Even if half of what the book says in the planning or thinking stages is true, that's more than enough to make anyone nervous about the potential -- or even planned, if the authors are to be believed -- misuse of this technology.

Albrecht is by no means without bias here -- she also is the founder and director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIN), which, among other things, has organized events such as the recent consumer protest against RFID use at a Dallas Wal-Mart. She definitely has an ax to grind.

So it would be easy to dismiss the concerns highlighted in the book, and the evidence backing them were it not for where Albrecht and McIntyre dug up some of this stuff. They wielded the Freedom Of Information Act, hunted through corporate Web sites, crawled through company reports, and excavated some very interesting proposals filed at the patent office.
They even checked up on the government. Much of this is stuff you could track yourself, except for perhaps a page with what Albrecht claimed was misleading information on RFID, which allegedly was removed from a medical-products company's Web site after the publication of "Spychips."

McIntyre is quoted in a CASPIN release saying that "...companies like IBM, Procter & Gamble, Bank of America, BellSouth, and Philips will also have some explaining to do when people read about their patent pending ways to use RFID to track people through the things they wear, carry, and throw away. Consumers will realize these companies have an RFID agenda that should concern us all." Like what? Well, like embedding the chips in shoes so that the wearer can be tracked in RFID reader-equipped buildings. There is even a reference to a company that wants to implant RFID chips inside of people. How nice.

Indeed, as RFID reporter Laurie Sullivan notes in a recent story, the start of what has privacy advocates and some consumers worried is already happening: "Check the next Hewlett-Packard printer you buy at Wal-Mart or that Ann Taylor blouse you picked up. Chances are a radio-frequency ID tag came home with your purchase."

I don't think anyone cares about the really neat uses of RFID -- to track Alzheimer patients or newborns, manage inventory, or track the shipment of goods. Sun, for example, is trialing an RFID-fueled asset-tracking service that supposedly lets the company verify any item's location and physical characteristics within an hour, without linking to a network. And Ford just announced an RFID just-in-time delivery system, which will enable better coordination of 40 to 50 shipments a day of truck parts. Lots of people would like their appliances and cars to alert them before a major failure.

But none of this changes the fact that RFID can be used badly, invasively, and secretly, something "Spychips" makes plenty clear. Even potentially useful applications, such as installing biometric or RFID chips in passports and licenses, have as many cons as there are pros. It's worth stopping to take a breath and think this stuff out. Which is what some people are doing.

Sullivan has reported on a bill pending in the California Senate that is seeking to put a three-year moratorium on using RFID chips in various government-issued documents -- driver's licenses, library cards, etc. And in a somewhat related action, Microsoft is pushing for a national, federal standard on protecting consumer data. Obviously, one of the concerns about RFID tracking is who will have access to any data that is collected.

To get an idea of where Albrecht is coming from, and to judge her views on RFID for yourself, listen to Sullivan's two-part podcast with the privacy advocate and author. You can access part one here.