By invitation, I recently visited a remote facility in northern Virginia to see a demonstration of NOX – a new Intelligent Perimeter Defense system deployed by the FBI that uses covert Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to track people and assets without their knowledge.

That’s right, using RFID to track people without their knowledge. This system is exactly what the privacy advocates have long feared: Big Brother tracking us with spy chips. As Orwellian as this sounds, the undisputed fact is that this system catches thieves and does so at a fraction of the cost of traditional security solutions.

The NOX team has perfected dozens of methods of tagging people without their knowledge.

Understandably, the NOX team preferred not to answer the majority of my technical questions. They simply stated that they don’t want people to know how this is being done, only that it’s being done and the motivation behind it.