Credit cards tap into radio tags

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I've been doing some reading on RFID. It would be (and actually is already for some stores) a real boon in terms of tracking shipments of merchandise from warehouse to retail store and such. No more counting by hand or misplacing a shipment.

There is a "darker" side to RFID...at least in some people's minds. These tiny tags can be placed in any piece of merchandise and in not only credit cards but any sort of ID or purchase card. Users can be tracked inside the store in terms of who they are and their purchase history. Anyone remember George Orwell's "Big Brother" from "1984"? It also turns out that turning these things off is a bother. Some have proposed "shielded" bags to put your purchases in after you've bought them to prevent their radio signals from being picked up. They have a range of 3 to 30 feet (sorry...I'm not much of a metric guy).

Like any form of technology, RFID has both advantageous and problematic applications.