Recent news items got me thinking about this topic I had covered several times in past years. As the voracious public keeps driveing tech, telecomm, wireless and palm of the hand portability, new vistas are being opened for keeping an eye on you. In practice, this familiar Orwellian theme as it was written years ago, may seem more of an optimistic cautionary tale, than a viable blueprint to controlling the masses. However, the literary realm of science fiction often spins a believable and much scarier version of this tale where the central character is technology. With so much of what was once tech fiction becoming fact, the potential for big brother to snoop around your business is much greater than ever before. The biggest culprit is wireless communications of all sorts

Of course, the most obvious tech to exploit is mobile phone communications. As DOT driven traffic monitoring continues to grow from the early days of the Missouri Department of Transportation ‘just’ wanting to monitor cell phones movements to map real-time traffic conditions statewide. To Google using its maps software to evolve from just satellite mapping to show street views and their GPS locations. While cell monitoring has long been able to detect the speed and movement pattern of mobile phones by network signal as long as the phone is turned on. DOT’s indicate their aim is to more intelligently manage traffic flow through wireless data collection and stress that the data will remain anonymous with no possibility to track specific people from their driveway to their destination. But privacy advocates are uneasy nonetheless.

It doesn’t stop with just monitoring the mobile phones themselves. The rising popularity of short-range blue tooth technology, particularly in mobile hands free headsets, opens up another avenue for listening into mobile conversations. The New York Times recently covered the increasing phenomenon of consumers that use blue tooth technology to easily overhear snippets of conversations that aren’t their own as they roam around the city.

Mobile tech isn’t the only avenue. Our wireless appetites extend extensively throughout the home and business. The enabler in these environments is the unregulated and heavily utilized 2.4 and 5.8 ghz frequency bands, which encompasses devices from home telephones to wireless video monitoring equipment – much of it not using encryption. The ease of monitoring this common band was demonstrated recently by an experiment conducted in a Canadian city where with a little bit of know how and some commonly available equipment, allowed whole range of images and conversations to be easily monitored just by wandering the city streets with equipment in tow.

For the tech savvy or long time gadget geek such as myself, this wireless risk may all be disconcerting but is hardly surprising. However, the tech that scares me the most and that could wind up being Big Brothers device of choice is a range of tiny chip devices referred to as RFID (radio frequency identification). RFID has quietly revolutionized the industrial, manufacturing and logistical transportation industries. It is a key link in the chain that moves products and raw materials to business and products from business to the consumer. This is reliable big tech that comes in a relatively unsophisticated form and often in very small packages.

It can be as small as half the size of a grain of sand, respond with a readable signal for years and carry a wide range of digital information. Though its not new tech, it continues to evolve and demonstrate a vast applicability to any situation where tracking, monitoring or identifying is required. A well-known use of RFID in the consumer sector that has spawned much debate, is the chips embedded in the family pet that carry information on the animals owners. With pure breed and rare animals worth thousands of dollars RFID chips have been embraced by the veterinarian and animal shelter communities nationwide as a sure fire way of lost pet identification, wherein small chips are injected under the skin of the animal to be read by electronic readers confirming the animals identification.

Of course the subsequent discussions of using the technology in the human populace might be the worst scenario but it is not the only ominous development.

Manufacturers and marketers are exploring the role of using RFID in durable goods such as apparel for numerous purposes such as linking a person’s identity with the clothes they buy and wear. Even worse, by coupling RFID to a knowledgebase about individual consumers, advertisers can target messages consumers see in a wide range of environments, just by tracking their spending habits or by product data attached to RFID chips on their person. The myriad number of uses becomes staggering. Even the European Central Bank is considering imbedding RFID in bank notes. Should this sound like something to only consider for the future, RFID availability for use as the global passport standard has been circulating for years.

It’s easy to see how quickly the implications get dizzying. My suggestion, be aware, choose and use your tech wisely and oh yeah, if you thought I forgot to mention the Internet, that was intentional! The Web is becoming less anonymous all the time and that topic is a Pandora’s box all its own.