The future use of RFID tag; will our privacy become a thing of the past?

In one of our previous classes we’ve mentioned the ever increasing popularity of RFID tags and its various usage by manufacturing companies in supply chain management, department stores and so on. Imagine a job posting on the web where one of the requirement would be to have a valid ISO445 – compatible access – control RFID implant. It may sound farfetched today; a decade from now, maybe not.

"VeriChip is, so far, the only RFID tag approved for use in humans for a medical application. It is a simple device consisting of a coil of wire and a hermetically sealed microchip within a glass capsule. The coil acts as an antenna and uses an RFID reader’s varying magnetic field to power the microchip and transmit a radio signal. Each VeriChip’s signal is a unique identifying number that links to a medical record database. The device is 11 millimetres long and about 1 millimetre in diameter, comparable to a grain of rice. The cap is made from a special plastic designed to bond with human tissue to prevent the capsule from moving around once it has been implemented. The chip modulates the amplitude of the current going through the antenna to continuously repeat a 128 bit signal. The bits are represented by a change in amplitude – low to high or vice versa. About only 32 of the bits vary between any two chips, the rest are use to communicate with the reading device and error-checking correction data." SPECTRUM

How is this chip being powered you will ask? When the chip is being exposed to a varying magnetic field from the reader, the chip powers itself up and repeatedly transmits a code that is unique to the tag. According to VeriChip, there are to this day over 2000 people that already have tags implanted. The VeriChip tag is being used in the medical field to identify patients’ health records. If someone was to show up unconscious at the hospital following a severe accident, a quick scan would reveal valuable health information, thereby speeding up the treatment and possibly saving their lives in emergency situations.
The technology of RFID has great potential, but how far will the technology be used in the near future could bring a darker side to its usage, mainly with regards to our privacy. Do we really want the government to know everything about us as we walk through an airport terminal? Would our every move continuously be monitored? Those small devices can only hold small amounts of information today, but then again, no one would’ve expected 20 years ago to be able to fit 8 million transistors on a 1 square inch surface.