Tagging toothpaste and toddlers.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: Up front: news, trends & analysis - Radio frequency identification technology

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has been used for about a decade, most commonly in the E-Zpass system that enables drivers to speed through East Coast tollbooths. But now the technology is cheap and robust enough to expand to other uses.

For example, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security soon will begin using RFID technology at U.S. border checkpoints. According to The Washington Post, officials in Great Britain are discussing proposals to embed tags in vehicle license plates. IBM wants banks to issue its best customers cards containing the tags, allowing them to be given special treatment. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is pushing the pharmaceutical industry to tag medicines by 2007. Delta Airlines recently announced that it will invest $25 million to deploy disposable radio tags to track and locate lost luggage, which costs the airline $100 million annually. Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport said it will begin attaching radio tags this fall to all luggage checked there. Retail giant Wal-Mart is rolling out radio-tagging on product shipments from 300 of its suppliers by early 2006.

For retail use, radio-tagging is meant to help reduce theft, better locate items, better match supplies to demand for products, and speed distribution. Unlike barcodes, which must be passed in front of a scanner, RFID tags can be read remotely by a device up to 20 yards away, reducing the time and labor needed to take inventory and replenishing stocks more quickly when they are low. They also carry much more data than a barcode.

But the technology has privacy watchdogs, as well as some government officials, worried about the possibility of abuse in the tracking of goods and people. Radio signals can be detected through cardboard, clothes, and, in some cases, walls. For example, tags sewn into clothing or embedded into shoes would make it possible to track consumers as they enter or leave stores, possibly allowing retailers to track products or consumers after they leave the store.

"RFID has tremendous potential for improving productivity and security, but it also will become one of the touchstone privacy issues of our times," Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) told the Post. For example, a California company has developed a soap dispenser capable of reading employee tags to let restaurant managers know whether their workers wash their hands while in the bathroom. A Buffalo, N.Y. charter school tags its students as a way of taking...