Somehow I find this comforting

One of the things that would be getting its proper share of concerned notice, if there weren't so many things higher on the list, is the increasing use of RFID--little radio-frequency ID doohickies that store information and give it up when scanned--meaning they can identify and help track anything from a package of disposable razors in a grocery store to CDs in a Wal-Mart to passports to hospital patients.

Fans of "The X-Files" are already imagining the potential for RFID to track private individuals like inventory. But it needn't get that baroque to deserve our concern; the main agreed-upon problem with their use, according to privacy and security experts, is that the chips, attached to consumer products, remain functional even after purchase--enabling snoopers to locate valuables within a house from a distance, or simply to poke their noses where they have no damned business.

Which is why I find a perverse satisfaction in the achievement of a group of privacy hackers in Germany: They've figured out how to cheaply and simply convert a disposable camera into a device that fries the RFID with high energy microwaves, making it useless.

I don't want to romanticize this too much: Some of the people interested in this are speculating about seriously disrupting supply chains, not just indulging in paranoid hobbyism. Still--they built it into a disposable camera. Not bad.