Spychips
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Spychips is a term privacy advocates and civil libertarians use to refer to radio-frequency identification (RFID) microchips because it conveys what they see as the potential downsides of the technology.
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 multinational corporations like Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, and even government agencies like the United States 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. Some fundamentalist Christians have also opposed RFID "spychips", citing biblical warnings of the "Number 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."
