The Radio that was not meant to be

It seems that contact-less communication is the hot tech that every government and company wants to be using. RFID tags in passports and merchandise, no-swipe credit cards and pet identification are the new monitoring wave.

In Brazil at least we are not yet moving to RFID passports, and while it may be a good thing from the privacy perspective, it may become a hurdle when asking for Visas for countries like US. Eventually, people will want the faster treatment on visa requests that countries with RFID passports get, and will pressure the Brazilian government to start issuing them.

And it will be a major security fiasco. Or maybe not... maybe we'll learn from the US process and somehow better protect our data.

But there will always be other vulnerable radio waves to be attacked. The ability to read no-swipe credit card and copying its data will be a big deal in places like, shopping centers, conventions and fairs.

As the amount of fraudulent abuses rise, there will also be an opportunity to legitimate users to flag legitimate purchases as fraudulent. Since both cases would be very hard to defend against, hardly the credit company will have the chance of proving that a reported purchase was indeed a legitimate use of its card.

Do we really want to have the ability of being followed, monitored and have our data stolen without our knowledge?

Take this radio emitter away from me!