"[1] Numerous articles have been written about wireless identity theft and broadcast television has produced several investigations of this phenomenon.
[7] Upon capturing (or ‘harvesting’) this data, one is then able to program other cards to respond in an identical fashion (‘cloning’).
[1][11] Additionally, a number of completely unencrypted card designs were converted to encrypted data systems.
[1][11] Among the findings of the 2006 research study "Vulnerabilities in First-Generation RFID-Enabled Credit Cards", and in reports by other white-hat hackers: In a related issue, privacy groups and individuals have also raised "Big Brother" concerns, where there is a threat to individuals from their aggregated information and even tracking of their movements by either card issuing agencies, other third party entities, and even by governments.
Although the RFID identifier number associated with each document is not supposed to include personal identification information, "...numbers evolve over time, and uses evolve over time, and eventually these things can reveal more information than we initially expect" stated Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant professor of computer science, at University of Washington who participated in a study of such government issued documents.