RFID and religion

In a study of the future of RFID that I worked on last year and this spring, I spent some time looking at religious-- or more specifically, millenarian and apocalyptic-- arguments against RFID. Many of the arguments that we saw against bar codes a couple decades ago-- that they're a tool for building a surveillance state that's either Orwellian or biblical-- are now made against RFID.

Today's Wired News has a new twist on the story: CASPIAN founder Katherine Albrecht believes that "technological developments of the last 10 to 20 years could be combining to make the Mark of the Beast a reality, and possibly even in our lifetimes":

Albrecht fears that retailers will match the data emitted by the tags with their customers' information, turning each tag into a potential tracking beacon. She also suspects the government will want access to the retailers' RFID databases.

But one aspect of Albrecht's anti-RFID crusade has been attracting a lot of attention from other privacy groups: her religious beliefs.

Albrecht does not often discuss her religious views with reporters. But she believes that RFID technology may be part of the fulfillment of the Mark of the Beast prophesied in the Book of Revelation.

Other privacy rights advocates want Albrecht to help them connect with Christians who believe that RFID tags -- tiny chips that emit serial numbers -- are the Mark of the Beast. Many of those Christians believe humans one day will be compelled to bear a mark on their heads or wrists, to engage in the buying and selling of goods.

I had not, frankly, expected that the apocalyptic arguments would have much effect on the future of RFID; but maybe I underestimated the odds of their shaping the technology, and the depth of their potential impact.

It certainly would be interesting to see how retailers reacted to a call by, say, James Dodson to boycott stores that plan to implement item-level RFID tagging.

Update: Gizmodo's post on the subject is inspired. Scroll to the last paragraph.

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Comments

[Steve Cisler]

End of Times prophets and ranters have long linked new tech. to 666 and the mark of the beast. This web site (dating from 1995) focuses on bar codes and smart cards.

http://www.av1611.org/666.html

I mentioned this to Marc Rotenberg of EPIC, but he did not see the overlap in his org's views and theirs.

the ese of RFIDs in casino poker chips gives some weight to the fundamentalists' worries!