we have reached the point where now at any point in the future they can trace anyone backwards for months without a warrant (and without probable cause)
they can pick a person and then just look for a crime to prosecute since most people break laws daily without realizing it
Nah, they won't prosecute for a crime. People accused of crimes have these pesky things called rights.
They'll find some civil infraction to threaten you with. You'll be cast into a kangaroo system where the deck is stacked against you, you have no presumption of innocence, no right to not self incriminate, you have nearly no right to see let alone question the evidince against you. And of course the civil infraction will have some absurd dollar figure attached thanks to all the useful idiots who think that the fine "needs to be a deterrent".
Friendly reminder many manufactured goods also have RFID stickers within, used to track/trace parts during factory assembly. These are active at all times irrespective of if the devices are powered.
ha my shoes have RFid tags for stock tracking, I wonder how far away that can be read
even most watches people have now broadcast bluetooth MAC (and maybe ANT+ id)
and that data is never ever going away, there's no warrant and no law to regulate it
they still have tracking data for everyone who visited Epstein Island decades ago (which is even more crazy that no-one was prosecuted out of hundreds)
"Right equipment" is probably very load bearing. Wouls need a very high gain directional antenna, not sure if a camera next to the road has the space to pick this up from a moving car.
Long distance RFID readers are currently used mostly for warehouse inventory tracking. Nowadays you can steer antennas using phased arrays like they use in 5G.
Are passive RFID tags actually trackable for these purposes? That's horrifying. But I thought they would only be readable from at most a meter, maybe several with sensitive equipment - far too short of a range, no?
I turned on the RFID scanner and did a leisurely stroll through a local Walmart Supercenter.
I read nearly 6200 unique tags over 39,000 times in the span of a ~20 minute walk in the store. Every single tag has a unique serial number and a unique serialized EPC GTIN.
RFID/EPC enabled merchandise is going to be a huge trackpoint for passive RFID scanning moving forward. Walmart attempted this back in the early 2010s (and failed because it cost so much) and now that tags are pennies a tag, they can finally force suppliers to roll it out (starting with apparel, then hardlines over time).
Sad, isn’t it? I saw this coming many years ago, as I’m sure many of you did. We create so much metadata in our lives, both physically and digitally evident, that our past and future behaviors can be observed at a level of detail only previously imagined in dystopian fiction.
We learned about the government’s domestic surveillance programs from Snowden over 13 years ago.
About ten years ago, I learned about fiber optic and WiFi sensing techniques that would make the hair stand up on the back of most people’s necks.
14 years ago, stories were written about a pregnant teen whose parents were sent coupons from Target for baby items, because Target had automatically marked the girl as pregnant because of her shopping habits.
Computers, vehicles, and software that we pay for have so many built in tracking mechanisms that I think circumventing them would make you more of a surveillance target at this point than not.
I know people try to rationalize the whole “I said something near my phone and Facebook gave me ad impressions for it” as simply the algorithm finding a strong signal in your browsing data, but I’m fully convinced that Meta apps are listening on iOS, even with the screen locked.
Those who enable these sorts of things should feel shame. You’d have to be a complete asshole to do this stuff to fellow humans just for money.
there were bluetooth recievers placed in road beds when tire pressure sensors started useing bluetooth, 20? years ago?
local garage does not even ask before ripping them out and replacing with conventional valve stems.
20 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 23.6 ms ] threadwe have reached the point where now at any point in the future they can trace anyone backwards for months without a warrant (and without probable cause)
they can pick a person and then just look for a crime to prosecute since most people break laws daily without realizing it
They'll find some civil infraction to threaten you with. You'll be cast into a kangaroo system where the deck is stacked against you, you have no presumption of innocence, no right to not self incriminate, you have nearly no right to see let alone question the evidince against you. And of course the civil infraction will have some absurd dollar figure attached thanks to all the useful idiots who think that the fine "needs to be a deterrent".
even most watches people have now broadcast bluetooth MAC (and maybe ANT+ id)
and that data is never ever going away, there's no warrant and no law to regulate it
they still have tracking data for everyone who visited Epstein Island decades ago (which is even more crazy that no-one was prosecuted out of hundreds)
https://www.zebra.com/us/en/products/rfid/rfid-readers.html?...
Although, as I understand it, Flock itself is mostly just looking for Bluetooth, BTLE, TPMS Sensors, and Wifi devices.
https://www.zebra.com/us/en/products/mobile-computers/handhe...
I turned on the RFID scanner and did a leisurely stroll through a local Walmart Supercenter.
I read nearly 6200 unique tags over 39,000 times in the span of a ~20 minute walk in the store. Every single tag has a unique serial number and a unique serialized EPC GTIN.
https://i.ibb.co/994NJfgJ/photo-2026-08-16-13-14-52.jpg
RFID/EPC enabled merchandise is going to be a huge trackpoint for passive RFID scanning moving forward. Walmart attempted this back in the early 2010s (and failed because it cost so much) and now that tags are pennies a tag, they can finally force suppliers to roll it out (starting with apparel, then hardlines over time).
We learned about the government’s domestic surveillance programs from Snowden over 13 years ago.
About ten years ago, I learned about fiber optic and WiFi sensing techniques that would make the hair stand up on the back of most people’s necks.
14 years ago, stories were written about a pregnant teen whose parents were sent coupons from Target for baby items, because Target had automatically marked the girl as pregnant because of her shopping habits.
Computers, vehicles, and software that we pay for have so many built in tracking mechanisms that I think circumventing them would make you more of a surveillance target at this point than not.
I know people try to rationalize the whole “I said something near my phone and Facebook gave me ad impressions for it” as simply the algorithm finding a strong signal in your browsing data, but I’m fully convinced that Meta apps are listening on iOS, even with the screen locked.
Those who enable these sorts of things should feel shame. You’d have to be a complete asshole to do this stuff to fellow humans just for money.