Technology has made some major advancements in the past decade, most of the advancements have been directed towards making business and commerce easier or more efficient in some way. Most recently, Wal-Mart, the most popular distributor of home goods in the world, has made some major adjustments in their methods used for keeping track of inventory.  Wal Mart will soon begin the use of RFID chips in order to keep track of clothing inventory. The RFID chips will be planted in individual pairs of T shirts and pants; the chips can be easily read by a hand scanner, and upon the purchase of the clothing, the tags are also able to be removed after the buy. "This ability to wave the wand and have a sense of all the products that are on the floor or in the back room in seconds is something that we feel can really transform our business," said Raul Vazquez, the executive in charge of Wal-Mart stores in the western U.S.

Although this new measure is designed to increase the efficiency of checking clothing inventory, new concerns over privacy have arose over this topic. One of the greatest concerns about this new system of checking inventory is the misuse of the scanners. Today, many of the personal information cards now contain these RFID chips, the concern is that the cards with personal info, such as credit cards, can be viewed by scanners. Opponents of these RFID’s argue that a license could be scanned along with a credit card, and then the next time the customer enters the store, the store would know their identity. But this is merely criticism, the likely hood of such events happening is very low.

To counter the attack on RFID’s being linked to the big brother theory, which is the fear that if RFID’s are implanted in clothing, that you could be tracked for as long as you own the article of clothing. A simple solution to this theory is to not inbed the chips in the clothing itself, but rather to imbed the chips in removable tags which would be left at the store once purchased.