One of my local chain supermarkets has just installed those electric gates - the kind that beep if you walk through them with an item which has a "tag" attached to it. Normally seen in clothing stores.

These ones are on EVERY checkout as well as on the entrance and exits. It BEEPED at me the other day when I walked in! (Maybe my mobile phone set it off. It also beeped a couple of minutes later when another person walked in who was also carrying a mobile phone.)

When I saw them I thought... what good is that... stuff in the supermarket doesn't have those tags. It's just bar codes on cans and boxes and packets. NOW, however, your post about the RFID tags makes it all fall into place.

My supermarket is getting ready to use these tags - if they haven't begun doing so already.

NOW might be a good time to create a de-tagging device. Something that can scramble the tags and render them useless. Set up outside the supermarket and charge a few bucks to nuke each shopper's tags. Or sell the device to the shoppers. (Walk through the supermarket nuking all the tags :o))

Could also develop a tag detector. Something you can move over an object to determine if there is a tag in it.

Very interesting. Thanks for posting it, Cornell.

Michael Ross