About 25 individuals participated in a public protest at McCormick Place on the morning of Tuesday, September 17, 2003. The protest opposed a major new surveillance technology, radio frequency identification (RFID), which was unveiled at the Electronic Product Code Symposium held Tuesday at McCormick Place.

RFID involves extraordinarily tiny computer chips, with each chip uniquely numbered and implemented in every consumer item--combined with nonstop high-frequency electromagnetic broadcasts to link those computer chips as a communications network. The goal behind RFID is to establish around-the-clock surveillance of every consumer item in the world, presumably intended to deter theft and to expand market research.

More than 100 major corporations have signed on to RFID in the hopes of implementing RFID within the next year to three years.

But RFID is fraught with potential problems: an imperfect communications network across chips (a success rate of 80%), a dramatic increase in high-frequency electromagnetic radiation (with possible health effects like decreased immune systems and increased cancers), and a massive infringement of privacy rights and civil liberties (even if RFID does work).

Worldwide consumer surveys show considerable public opposition to RFID--more than three-to-one opposed in some surveys.

Tuesday's protest was organized by CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), a national consumer-rights organization. CASPIAN activists intended to enter McCormick Place to protest the Symposium itself, but were informed by McCormick Place security a week before Tuesday's protest that doing so was not allowed.

CASPIAN then called upon the Illinois ACLU, which then filed a First Amendment complaint against McCormick Place. Ultimately, the activists won the right to attend the Symposium, provided they pay a $75 per-person fee for a day-pass. (This victory may become a positive bellwether for future protests at McCormick Place.)

RFID is on the cusp of becoming a major story in the corporate media. CASPIAN founder Katherine Albrecht has been interviewed on NPR and has noted a forthcoming story on RFID in Newsweek magazine. Tuesday's protest also saw a camera crew from CBS as well as a journalist crew from Europe.

Another controversy threatened to impact the morning protest for an entirely different reason: one anti-RFID protester wore an Armageddon Security cap, much to the chagrin of a Symposium attendee who worked for Armageddon. Police attempted to convince the protester to remove his hat. In the end, the attendee agreed to buy the hat from the protester for twenty dollars.