I heard the story almost as soon as I rolled out of bed this morning. MSNBC was announcing that WalMart was planning to embed tags in male underwear in order to track these items of clothing for inventory and stocking, but the implication was that these RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) tags could also be used to track individuals as well.

  I wrote a comment on the MSNBC site about the fact that I have previously written about these tags and that, in fact, I used this technology in my novel, Master Spies Die Laughing, to track one of the bad guys. Well, the response to my comment was incredible. And a lot was really quite disparaging. There were even some who suggested I might be wearing my tinfoil hat a little tight, that I might be paranoid, and that I might just be flogging my book.

  All of which may true. However, here is my response:

One of the reasons I am familiar with this and other technology used for electronic tracking is that I helped develop it.

The story we are talking about today is about adding the RFID tags to male clothing. In fact, these tags have been used for years in bras, panties, and other items of clothing where they are not in fact embedded within the product so that they cannot be easily removed and discarded. For example, these tags are embedded within the soles of shoes and can only be removed by destroying the shoe. The use of the term "removable" is mostly a marketing term.

The information on RFID chips can be remarkably detailed, providing color, style, size, manufacturing source, COE, POO, sku’s and even individual coding similar to a social security number. In addition to their application in clothing, they can be embedded within commodities and personal appliances. I once embedded one inside a tooth–on a lab bench not in a person.

During the time I worked at ISIS Labs in New Jersey, I succeeded in embedding a RFID thread within a paper substrate, the forerunner of document security and possibly future anti-counterfeiting technology. At the Southport, CT lab we worked on the prototype of embedded currency tracking and managed to create a quantity of ersatz cash that was capable of not only of tracking itself but possible counting itself as well.

Although the chips can easily be deactivated, it is not particularly difficult to reactivate many of these and of course, there are some that can be individually programmed, erased and reprogrammed as necessary. Nor is the radio equipment necessary to read, store and manipulate this technology particularly difficult to build. Over the years, I have constructed various readers and scanners and detectors, mostly from off the shelf hardware.

As for pushing my novel, Master Spies Die Laughing, of course. It’s a fun read and yes, the book goes into some detail on how the technology actually works. In fact, the technology described in the book is absolutely sound science–and in some cases, I know this to be true because not only did I invent it, but I was granted the U.S. patents, and worked on both private and government projects that implemented that technology.

As for being paranoid, that be true, but then, I don’t sell a lot of college textbooks anymore and haven’t filed nor received a new U.S. Letters Patent in years, but this is because I have been retired from lab work for many years, although, of course, I do keep up with the technology and occasionally have discussion with old friends and new scientists.

In any case, the literature on RFID is extensive, both in the scientific and technical journals, popular media, and professional trade journals on POS, business computing and technology, and even social and psychological marketing. A careful reading of what is being done and what is possible can be quite informative and almost certainly will reduce the demand for aluminum foil.

What fun it was writing that. You can read about my novel in column on the right and if you haven’t read the book, go ahead and get it. You will not be disappointed. Everyone who had read it has loved it and has described it as one of the funniest spy novels they have ever read. And, of course, you will actually learn about a lot of clandestine spying technologies that you probably never knew existed.