Technology, is most definitely a two-edge sword, it offers some incredible savings and efficiencies for consumers as well as businesses that we take advantage of each and every day. Take, for instance, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags which are becoming more and more ubiquitous for just about any item that you might purchase because it is so tiny, (Hitachi has developed a RFID which is just .15mm x.15mm and just 7.5 micrometers thick) which can be utilized for a variety of products, or on the other hand it is flexible enough that it can be embedded under an animal's skin, such as for cattle tracking and identification, as well as doing the same thing for humans.
At the present time, there isn't any uniform standard of marking and the placing of RFID devices on products that consumers purchase, so that consumers don't have the right or the ability to properly "opt out" of purchasing or deactivating an item with a RFID device, but in fairness, they should. This is unfortunate, as it is one thing for RFID devices to be on products for inventory control and such for businesses and an entirely different thing if in the purchase of an RFID encoded product the business can correlate exactly who purchased the product through your smart phone or some other device, thereby identifying you as a consumer to specifically monitor and market items to.
The above are basic issues about RFID, of which some people might be annoyed, some not, some not really caring, and a few might find it to be "really cool". The most significant issue about RFID devices is that if and when it become mandated for convicts or students or immigrants that they must have a RFID device implanted upon their body, the pendulum will have swung completely over to the side of state authorized authority which would mean that citizens at a minimum in the public square, could be easily tracked by state agencies, and effectively all of their motions and activities, stored and analyzed for whatever reasons, good or bad, that the state would have an interest in.
The fact that state-issued identification now have RFID technology embedded within these identification cards, as well as credit cards from banking companies, also having RFID embedded within their credit cards, would seem to imply that the game is already over, and that perhaps it isn't really necessary to embed a RFID device underneath someone's skin. However, not everyone carries a credit card, and not everyone carries state-sponsored identification that has RFID, so that, it could be said, the very people that the government most wants to track, don't typically carry a RFID activated device, therefore the government would like to see that everybody has some sort of RFID attached to them, pretty much making everyone under their surveillance, all of the time.
So too, there is an important issue, which is, when the policing agencies make it a matter of routine course to scan people for RFID devices, this could easily be set as a specific quid pro quo, that those people that cannot be read, will be subject to being stopped and frisked, because those not voluntarily providing clear and actionable information to state authorities that positively identifies them, will be considered to be enemies of the state, until they are properly vetted by Big Brother.