12 Things you need to know about RFID
Here’s 12 Fun Facts about RFID and Biometric Passports, from the Wiki: (From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport)
Note: I’ve boldfaced parts of the individual snippets I found particularly relevant.
1.) RFID was actually invented –by the Soviet Union– specifically as an espionage technology.
In 1946 Léon Theremin invented an espionage tool for the Soviet Union which retransmitted incident radio waves with audio information. Sound waves vibrated a diaphragm which slightly altered the shape of the resonator, which modulated the reflected radio frequency. Even though this device was a passive covert listening device, not an identification tag, it has been attributed as a predecessor to RFID technology. The technology used in RFID has been around since the early 1920s according to one source (although the same source states that RFID systems have been around just since the late 1960s).
