| The RFID chip in RFID cards can only be ready from a few inches away. It's
the
| same chip and technology found in millions of employee badges around the
world.
| If there was a problem with remote survelliance of RFID card holders, you
would
| have heard about it already.
|

I'm incredulous that you could think that. First, you're
contradicting your own point. Isn't the purpose of
employee ID badges to track movements of employees
and perhaps act as a security device? Having a chip read
in proximity to a reader is exactly what we don't want.

Did you ever see the map of the journalist who discovered
his iPhone was keeping a record of all of his movements?
Did you hear the one about the man who only discovered
his teenage daughter was pregnant because Target
started mailing coupons for baby gear? (Target had
guessed she was pregnant based on her purchases.)
How about the issue of cellphones being used to track
people in malls? Why not EMV chips and RFID chips?

I'm very concerned about privacy issues, yet even for
me it's difficult to imagine what problems there could be.
Increasingly, vast data is being combined with vast
analytical capability. It's not farfetched that you might
one day drive past a CVS and see an ad on your
dashboard for a prescription drug sale, on all the drugs you
and your family take, because CVS has a new, improved
RFID chip reader and they picked up 3 RFID tags in your
car, two of which are from Walgreen's (packaging from
the shaver and clock you bought awhile back), and all of
which identify you via your shopping history.

If you shop at CVS you're already being sold out:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/techn...now-too/57183/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...drug-companies

In this theoretical scenario the additional RFID reading
of debris in your car allows all of the dots to be connected,
and your daughter now starts seeing CVS ads for her
birth control pills on her Facebook page. This is not at
all farfetched. (See the links above.) But it is very
difficult to grasp the extensiveness of the growing data
linkage.

I'm often surprised by the news that comes out. It's
so Orwellian that we just don't expect it. And in general
we *don't* hear about them. That's been a big complaint
with intrusions into commercial databases. The companies
don't want to go public because everyone wants to
pretend that credit cards are secure.

I think it's safe to say that if there are problems then the
odds are I *will not* hear about it.

| But as I said - very few EMV cards have the RFID feature.

But both can be read without direct contact, right? So
what does it matter in prctice?