RFID tag; you're not it. The aspiring "bar code of the future," midwifed at MIT's Auto-ID Center, faces a serious identity crisis. Proponents insist the tiny tracking tags (RFID stands for radio frequency identification) will profitably transform the global economics of supply chains and customer relationships. Outraged privacy activists attack the diminutive digital devices as Orwellian bugs for tomorrow's surveillance society. Though these rival claims are less about honesty than hyperbole, radio frequency ID is emerging as a symbol of innovation that benefits innovators at the direct expense of consumers. That's bad news for a technology bidding to be a ubiquitous global standard.

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