Even Money - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,32
Mum and Dad could take her to France without having to do that quarantine thing when she came back. She simply got scanned by customs to check she was the right dog with the right vaccinations.”
“Like horses,” I said.
“Eh?” said Luca.
“Horses have them too,” I said. “To check they are indeed who their owner says they are. All of them have to have chips inserted or they can’t run. I read about it in the Racing Post ages ago. I just didn’t know what the chips looked like. I don’t know why, but I somehow expected them to be bigger, rectangular and flat.”
Luca looked again at the tiny electrical circuit.
“It must be a passive arfid circuit,” he said. “This little coil must be the antenna.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “What’s an arfid when it’s at home?”
“A radio frequency identification circuit, R-F-I-D, pronounced ARE-fid,” he said slowly as if for a child. “You put a scanner close by that emits a radio wave. The wave is picked up by the little antenna, and that provides just enough power for the circuit to transmit back an identification number.”
“Sounds complicated,” I said.
“Not really,” Luca replied. “They exist all over the place. Those alarm things in shops that go off if you try and take things out without paying, they use RFIDs. They simply have the tags on the items, and the scanners are the vertical things by the doors you have to walk between. Also, the tube and buses in London use them in the Oyster cards. You put the card on the scanner, and it reads the information to make sure you have enough credit to travel. They’re very clever.”
“So I see,” I said.
“Not everyone is keen on them, though,” he went on. “Some call them ‘spychips’ because they allow people to be tracked without their knowledge. But I think they’ll soon be on everything. You know, instead of bar codes. The supermarkets are already experimenting with them for checkout. You only have to walk past the scanner and everything is automatically checked out without you even having to take it out of the cart. One day, your credit card will be scanned in the same way, and the total deducted from your bank account without you having to do anything except push the whole lot out to your car, load up and drive away.”
“Amazing,” I said.
“Yeah. But the trouble is that, theoretically, the same RFIDs could also be used to tell the cops if you broke the speed limit on the way home from the store.”
“Surely not,” I said.
“Oh yes they could,” he said. “They already use RFIDs in cars to pay road and bridge tolls in lots of places—E-ZPass in New York, for one. It’s not much more of a step for them to calculate your average speed between two points and issue a ticket if you were going too fast. Big Brother is definitely watching you, and, even if he isn’t now, he will be soon.”
“How do you know so much about these RFID things?” I asked.
“Studied them at college, and I also read electronics magazines,” he said. “But I’ve never seen one this small before.” He held up one of the tiny glass grains.
So why, I thought, had my father had ten of them in his luggage? Perhaps they were something to do with the photocopied horse passports.
“Is the black remote thing a scanner?” I asked.
Luca pointed it at the chip and pushed the ENTER button. The red light came on briefly and then went off again, just as before.
“It doesn’t have any sort of readout, so I doubt it,” said Luca. “I’ll ask at my electronics club, if you like.”
“Electronics club?” I said.
“Yeah. Mostly teenagers,” he said. “Making robots or radio-controlled cars and such. Every Friday night in the local youth center in Wycombe. I help them out most weeks.”
I thought about whether I should give the device to him, or to the police, along with the money.
“OK,” I said. “Ask at your club if anyone knows what it’s for. Take the glass grains as well, in case they’re somehow connected.”
“Right,” he replied, smiling. “We love a challenge. Can we take it apart?”
“I suppose so,” I said. “But make sure it goes back together again.”
“Right,” he said again. “I’ll take it with me tonight. I’ll let you know in the morning if we get anywhere.”
I dropped Luca and Betsy in High Wycombe, and then I went to see my grandmother.