With the articles that surfaced recently about the post office snapping pictures of faces and license plates as people drove onto their lot, I decided to tell my own recent experience.
I was at a conference, when I noticed a near field antenna hanging in the ceiling. It registered in my subconscious, but I did not act on it until I passed another antenna array on a pole in a hallway. I’m not paranoid, but I am well trained to be aware of my surroundings. I think the military burned that into my brain. So, I took a picture of the antennas on the pole and went back and took a picture of the antennas in the overhead.
As I thought about the technology being used, I wandered if they were tracking my cell phone as it moved through the facility. I had provided a phone number when I registered.
No, that seemed problematic, so I dug out everything I was handed when I picked up my badge. I looked through the booklet and literature for a digital tag. Then I checked the badge lanyard they had provided, but there wasn’t a tag that I could see or feel.
I pulled out the paper printed name tag. It looked normal and felt like thick good quality paper. You can see the front and back of the tag in the pictures. I was about to put it back when I held it up to lights and looked through it. With the bright light behind the name tag, you could see the RFID tag embedded between the paper layers of my name tag.
As a technologist, I found this interesting and was not too concerned about the conference tracking me. Deep down inside though, I am not sure I should have been tracked without providing specific consent.