If you believe that in today's society you can really be out of contract or untraceable you are sadly misinformed, just think how many CCTV cameras cover your journey to work, if you used the London Underground there are at least 20 cameras at every station, London itself has CCTV everywhere on the streets in shops even at work and then the London congestion charge cameras read the number plates of every car entering central London.

But tracking of anything is possible without cameras a number of companies offer a commercial service in the UK that tracks mobile phones by triangulating the signal with 3 base stations giving an accurate whereabouts via a web login. Now don't get me wrong I'm not a civil liberties nut, tracking of goods is vital to business from the humble barcode to security tags on expensive goods, technology has revolutionised the way we do business and in turn lowered the cost of many commodities by making it more efficient to deliver them to you an me.

Picture if you will Amazon trying to run a global distribution business without being able to barcode every product and shipment, they would have literally thousands of people typing ID numbers into computers or more likely we just wouldn't have Amazon! and so business is constantly striving to find new efficiencies and they often turn to technology for the next cost saving.

With the cost of wireless communication falling many corporate organisations have installed Wifi systems, B&Q have their in store staff equipped with wireless PDA's which can query stock and print orders on the spot so its hardly surprising that the barcode has come in for a kind of wireless makeover.

RFID or Radio Frequency Identification is a rapidly developing technology that in its simplest form allows a chip to be embedded within any object allowing it to be tracked and for it to carry a set of pre determined information. It uses a number of frequency ranges 125 KHz, 134 KHz, 13.56 MHz, 958 MHz and the 2.4 GHz Bluetooth standard. The most widely adopted frequency is 13.56 MHz, the ISO organisation has also issued a number of standard which cover RFID.

The advantages of RFID over the barcode are striking, the tag does not have to be physically scanned or read in any way, so merely being within proximity of a detection unit allows the data to be read, no more creased barcodes, no more swipe cards the impact could be huge. Applications in the security industry were among the first to be trialled RFID is now in use to provide access control for both people and vehicles, RFID is in use in car immobilisers and even animal identification systems.

Key exponents of RFID technology point to expanding usage of the system in smart tags for goods and even smart wristbands for people to wear allowing them certain access of rights, unlike a barcode the tag can be re programmed and re used for example a package due to be shipped can have its tag programmed at each stage of the delivery chain so that if the package is scanned it will reveal not only its destination but the time of each of its movements.

Most of the early deployments have found some issues with shielding, the tags are only a few microns thick and low powered these can be defeated by a layer of foil or even being contained in a hand (apparently the salt and water content of flesh is a rather good RF insulator) so the technology may have a bit more refining to go yet.

If used effectively RFID could have a massive impact on many industries with deliveries telling you what's inside before you open the box or a supermarket trolley being wheeled through a checkout with an instant total, the issues as always surround privacy. Who is to say that the RFID tag meant to help a store track its inventory will stop being used when it leaves their premises. All the trials to date have gone to great lengths to show that the tag information is not being sought after it leaves the store but the tag is not deactivated so there is an opportunity for it to be interrogated by 3rd parties be they connected or unconnected to the retailer the standard allows for enough power so that tags can be read from a distance of 20 meters.

The giant retailer Wal-Mart has been very cagey about its use of RFID only confirming trials and trying to allay consumer fears, but to date no retailer has deployed the technology that would kill RFID tags at the store exit, unnecessary the retailers claim, big brother claim the civil liberties groups. Which ever way you see the technology there is no doubting that it could have the largest impact on commerce since the rollout of barcode scanning.

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