Spychips

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Spychips is a pejorative and inflammatory term used to describe RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) microchips. The term was first coined as "spy chips" by privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht, founder of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering). Later, she and CASPIAN Communications Director Liz McIntyre coined it as one word and started the anti-RFID website www.spychips.com [1]. They also wrote a book titled "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID." In this book they describe RFID as "a technology that uses tiny computer chips--some smaller than a grain of sand--to track items at a distance...We've nicknamed these tiny devices 'spychips' because of their surveillance potential."

Their book describes the world of RFID planned by global corporations like Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, and even government agencies like the U.S. Postal Service.

RFID opponents have raised concern over a human-implantable chip called the "VeriChip" created by Applied Digital Solutions, Inc. and their proposed use for financial transactions, leading to a "cashless" monetary system. Christians have also opposed RFID "spychips", citing biblical warnings of the "mark of the beast" in the book of Revelation. Albrecht and McIntyre address these concerns in a follow-up book to "Spychips" titled "The Spychips Threat: Why Christians Should Resist RFID and Electronic Surveillance."

[edit] Images of "Spychips":

Human-implantable "spychip"	Product-level "spychip" tag from a Gillette Mach 3 razor package. © Liz McIntyre 2003. May be used with attribution.	Katherine Albrecht, founder of CASPIAN	Liz McIntyre, co-author of "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID"
"Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID"