One of my cousins in England works in the IT industry and recently alerted me to a developing technology which is nothing but disturbing. It is called RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device). Below is a link to a lecture by Katherine Albrecht who heads the opposition to this technology in the States.
One application of RFID is a small chip that is the size of a grain of rice and can be embedded into pretty much everything. (The soles of your shoes, for instance) Since each chip is UNIQUE, if you bought that pair of shoes with your credit card, anyone with a reader and access to a database will be able to tell when and where you passed any device that can trigger the chip in your shoe to spit out it’s number.
The industry application is to be able to track a product from the manufacturor to the stores all the way into your home in order to optimize logistics. The negative side effects in conjunction with illegal abuse are horrifying.
Imagine a reader in every doorway of every public building and store. As you drive onto a parking lot  of Wal -Mart, the database will alert store security that you hardly ever spend money in the store and in fact have returned 5 items in the last 6 months. (They are putting RFID chip in tires already and all you have to do is drive over a mat embedded in the concrete entrance to the parking lot!)  A friendly “store executive” the size of a gorilla will then catch you at the door and politely ask you to shop elsewhere. (more subtely a test is already being conducted in England where the price shelves have digital price readouts – now imagine walking up to a shelf and the price of that item changes INDIVIDUALLY based on your credit rating!!?? ie if you have no money in the bank and have shitty credit the price automatically gets  jacked up so high that you are deterred from shopping all together. )
Now imagine applying for health care and the insurance broker can track the fact that you have bought ‘off the shelf’ medication for years for some affliction and refuses to insure you based on your health risk…

The potential for abuse and the step toward a totalitarian monitored society just like in George Orwells 1984 (hence Big Brother) are a reality with this technology, and it is being introduced right under our noses.
Watch this lecture and then go to this site to find out more. (The lecture is divided into 7 parts of 8-10 minutes so about an hour…)

Here is IBM’s patent application to do exactly what I just talked about as a risk…!!!