Two of the largest consumers in the world, The Pentagon and Walmart are asking their suppliers to use Radio Frequency Identification - or RFID - tags on all shipments.
The high tech computer chips are rapidly replacing bar-codes for identifying and tracking consumer products.
Delta Airlines is trying it on luggage, and you may even be using it as you drive through tolls using EZ-PASS.
But not all of those radio waves are counting inventory these days.
One company in Portsmouth is using RFID to make hospitals more efficient - mainly by keeping tabs on patients and medical staff.
But critics have their concerns.
NHPR correspondent Dianne Finch has more.
When you were born, chances are a nurse placed a tiny little plastic bracelet on your wrist ? blue for boy, pink for girl--your very first ID.
Today - that bracelet could contain a tiny computer chip and an even tinier radio antenna.
That's if Evan Bontemps, CEO of Portsmouth-based Exavera, has anything to say about it.
Bontemps designed the RFID bracelet after a visit to Portsmouth Hospital to see his friend?s new baby.
He noticed the labor-intensive efforts nurses go through to match newborns with moms.
BONTEMPS: She came in with baby in a cart. She noticed the time she came into room. She recorded on the paper chart.. she took the no. off the bracelet on the baby ? put into chart made sure mom and dad had same id put into her paper work gave mom instructions - and after that transferred baby to mom?.
Bontemps' company has invented an RFID product he hopes will replace those paper charts and ensure that mom and baby are instantaneously identified.
The product includes hospital bracelets, staff and visitor ID cards and equipment tags.
All of which are embedded with an RFID antenna and computer chip that broadcasts data to a small hand held computer, or PDA..
That PDA also communicates with the hospital?s database through a wireless network.
Bottom line ? everything and everyone can be located at any time.
Exavera?s flagship product is E-shepherd ? just like a shepherd watch over sheep in a prairie ? Eshepherd watches over patients in the hospital.
Bontemps demonstrates.
He puts on a bracelet - and moves toward the PDA.
It picks up a broadcast from the bracelet ? and the patient?s name shows up on the PDA screen.
Some information that is there are patient?s name, patient contact, the physician, the insurance agency, and also the emergency contact. Also ? included in the record are vital signs, blood pressure and blood type etc?.and drugs allergic to and drugs currently taking.
AND those prescription drugs ? by the way - will also have RFID tags ? at least if they come from a Walmart pharmacy.
Get the picture?
Hospital computers and wireless PDAs show real-time locations of patients, doctors, nurses, visitors, drug bottles and equipment as they move from place to place.
The information is then stored in databases.
Exavera encrypts its technology ? so at this time only readers built by the company can read the RFID tags.
So what?s the downside?
It makes sense to track individuals and drugs in a hospital setting.
But privacy advocates worry that the technology will be able to track people in public places without their knowledge.
Jerry Kang, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, focuses on privacy and technology.
He says that RFID is quickly moving beyond retail ? and that we should expect readers and tags to become ubiquitous.
KANG: Think about the Michelin attempts to install RFID tags into its tires. Those tires are always running close to the ground ? so cheap readers at highway entrances and exits as well as embedded in roads can clearly read where particular tires and therefore particular cars and therefore particular drivers might be at anytime..
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A handful of states are reviewing the technology now and attempting to pass ?Right to Know? legislation.
But there are no federal laws banning anonymous RFID tags or readers.
One thing everybody should think about is that it is so tiny and so anonymous that all it tracking can be done without people knowing about it
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy is one of a few in Washington pressing for a national discussion on RFID and privacy.
I think those of us ? especially in Vermont and New Hampshire where we GUARD our privacy might be will be really concerned. So you?ve got to do the balance ? if you want to put it on patients in a hospital on a infant, I think it?s a wonderful idea but if you want to sew it into my clothes without me knowing about it ? I think that?s a terrible ideal.
The Federal Trade Commission is not considering any regulations on RFID at this point.
The FTC's Julie Borf says consumers have little contact with the tags, and most companies are using RFID only for inventory management.
In addition, Brof believes RFID technology is not the problem, it's the security of the databases that store the information gathered.
Lets say a surreptitious reader is out there ?the individual is using it for nefarious purposes. .....They have to have access or hack into a system that has more information associated with the item -- and then we are sort of back to - it?s a database.
And Brof believes we should trust that companies will do the right thing with that information.
But Senator Leahy and a handful of other lawmakers believe legislation on RFID is essential to prevent potential abuses.
And Leahy argues that privacy issues should be addressed before consumers are interacting with RFID tags in their daily lives.
There will be legislation at some point and we need to make it clear that we want to encourage the technology of RFID. But it has to be done in such a way that an individual?s privacy is protected.
And ? by the way ? the FTC wants your opinion.
Public comments are being accepted on FTC.GOV though July 9th.
For NHPR News? this is Dianne Finch.
