My EE Times Contribution

Okay, so I didn't get an article published like Jody, but I asked a question at the Embedded Systems Security keynote address, and the answer to my question made it into the EE Times (the last graph would be it). Okay, lame, I know. But the topic is cool. The article really doesn't do Kevin Ashton's presentation justice. He did an excellent job of putting technological revolutions and public reaction to new technology in perspective. And security is a concern, but you've got cookies on your computer that tell Amazon what you've browsed for. At least RFID tags don't do that. Everytime you use your credit card, information about what you bought, where, and when goes into someone's computing system. Maybe even more than one computing system. This is not a tremendous leap. Now that Walmart is requiring suppliers to include RFID tags on there shipments (not all individual products are required to have them yet - the cost isn't low enough, but a crate of stuff can certainly contain one without too much per unit cost), RFID is up and coming.

Don't get me wrong. There are still issues with the technology and the security at many different levels. But it's more constructive to try to fix the problems than to fight the technology. Who knows? Maybe in the future they'll have "RFID-free" products like they have "all natural" products now.