RFID: big brother global?

Nowadays, one of the most utilized technologies, which simplifies the daily life of millions of people, is the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). This technology works on a radio frequency emission that automatically and without the necessity of human intervention identifies "tags" placed on people, animals, equipment and packages that contain information about hosts. This technology first appeared during the Second World War due to the necessity of authentication. It has since proved to have many varied uses but it also has many vulnerabilities that could be taken advantage of by evil doers. The main one obviously, being the violation of the right to privacy of citizens everywhere. Nowadays this technology is used in many of our daily routines. In the near future, there are many different areas which will seek to avail of its usefulness, such as health care, safety and security, commerce, industry or common services. In a world full of computers, all kinds of objects and even people will be tagged for easy automatic recognition. Nevertheless, the excessive and abusive use of this technology by business people and governments has raised important concerns that need to be studied and discussed. This article revises the areas and forms in which this technology is used, so it is possible to understand how the combination of the available information provided by RFID represents a threat to people and systems, whether they are private or public. The study developed shows that RFID have the potential to be used by individuals, organizations and governments with evil intentions to implement systems that could represent threats, such as violation of privacy, the strengthening of control by government dictatorships and other criminal acts, like theft, industrial espionage or even terrorist attacks. These potential threats are the scope of this work.