On not learning from history
[I wrote this piece before the passport ID fiasco came to light. I think its points are still valid.] One use of implantable RFID chips is as replacements for biometric (and other) identification. Implant a chip in your hand and -- voila! -- a single flamboyant gesture grants access to your car, home, work, bank account, credit, theater tickets, and so on. At least, that's the vision. Its success hinges on the "uncopy-ability" of an RFID tag--obviously, if someone can remotely make a copy of your tag, then he becomes, for all practical purposes, you...which means that shortly you'll be able to write a book called something like "How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Identity Theft." Imagine, then, the wailing and gnashing of teeth at one implantable biometric RFID chip vendor, one of whose tags has apparently been cloned using little more than a PC and a homebrew antenna...
So what?
RFID chips have attracted a lot of negative attention over the years--some people consider them the latest Mark of the Beast (displacing bar codes for that honor) while others merely find them an example of creeping Big Brother-ism. Less attention has been focused on the possibility that the chips might not work as advertised--indeed, the tendency is to impute a lot more functionality to them ("I tell you, it's