The ID chip in my brand-new shoes
And the ID chip in my jeans
Have been talking to strangers I pass on the street
And I’m not really sure what that means

The chip in my shirt holds a brief conversation
With chips in the windows of stores
It talks to the bagels and talks to the books,
But me, it politely ignores

Are they planning surprises? Sharing some gossip?
Just talking behind my back?
Are they sentient beings with minds of their own
Using software to plan an attack?

Is it companies working to track their consumers
To figure which items are hot?
Is it Microsoft, Apple, McDonald’s or worse,
Some sort of a government plot?

I’m ripping the tags from my shoes and my clothing
To frustrate the spies and the moles
So no one will know as I walk down the street
With my clothing in tatters and holes.

Paranoid rant, after the jump:

Via the BBC, a story on the growing number, and functionality, of HFID chips in, well, everything. Laptops and smartphones, sure, but also cars, clothing, livestock, buildings… add to this the notion of embedded sensors that wirelessly monitor and send data, and it’s a consumer researcher’s dream. Which people browse, which buy, which repeat? Do people who buy X also buy Y? Data not in aggregate, but identifiable at the individual level, and streaming in real time (potentially).

And yes, it would also be a dream for any evil entity (government or not) who wanted to monitor individuals. Now, I’m not actually paranoid, but I have not gone to the trouble of installing the electronic toll deally on my car. I do note every once in a while, a news account of somebody’s alibi getting busted by their toll-deally.

I have no real reason for it, but I don’t want anybody to know where I am 24 hours a day. Not even myself.