With pharmaceutical products, patient privacy is protected by HIPPA [Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act], another cause of concern. Prescription medicine may be the first to be tagged at the item level, in which case a tagged prescription could easily be associated with a person and read by someone other than the pharmacist.

Dr. Ann Cavoukian, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada, who said the clipped tag concept solves a problem she has wrestled with for years: how to protect a consumer's privacy while still offering them the benefits of RFID technology.

Technology currently exists to kill an RFID tag at the point of sale. However, Cavoukian said it also kills the post sale benefits of an RFID tag.

But tags that are perpetually embedded in an item can easily link purchases with consumer's personal information through credit or loyalty cards.

"You could create a data trail relating to all of your purchases and activities that could then be developed into a personal profile, and from that you could create an infrastructure for surveillance," said Cavoukian.