THE other day I went with a friend and his seven-year-old son to a football game in a wealthy neighbourhood in London. We and about 15 fathers and a couple mums watched the kids play.My attention wandered and I noticed that some of the parents were madly talking on their cell phones. In fact one father got so involved in his conversation that he wandered on to the field and between the goal and a child who was being taught how to kick the ball into the net.

He just walked casually on to the field and didn't even notice, or apologise for his behaviour. The young coach was very patient and in fact just stopped the play briefly until the father wandered away, still talking.

When the training was over we started walking to the car. I and my friend, who thankfully had turned his phone off to concentrate on his children, were following another dad and his son.

The dad had his cell phone glued to his ear, while his son remained silent at his side. I noticed the contrast with my friend, a high-flying banker who doesn't have a lot of time at home. My friend and his son were chattering away about the training and football in general. The other dad was losing the moment with his son, preferring instead to talk about a business deal. I watched them disappear up the street, two strangers for the moment.

I relate this story not as a criticism of cell phones, but about how some of us get too tied into technologies and devices. Just because the means to communicate has become more easily, doesn't mean we have to use it all the time.

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Bermuda last week shot into the news in journals dealing with radio frequency identification technology (RFID). The technology will be used to find owners of unregistered vehicles on the island.

The Transport Control Department will employ roadside RFID interrogators to automatically check that its 25,000 cars and trucks bear valid registration stickers containing passive UHF tags. All registered cars will carry a label with an embedded RFID transponder. The tags will be read at the island's main traffic junctures, according to RFID Journal.

If a car arrives at an intersection and there is no responding signal from the RFID tag, the system will take a picture of the car's licence plate. Optical character recognition software will then input the vehicle's plate numbers into a database so a citation can be automatically issued.

The tags and the system were developed by 3M, which started working on it in April 2005, according to the journal. The system is expected to be operational by July 2008. RFID uses a wireless system that can track goods, things like parts, cars and planes, and humans. It is a relatively new technology, increasingly being used by retailers and others.

Transponders, or RFID tags, are attached to objects.

The tag can then be read or can transmit information on the object to a reader via radio frequency transmission.

Each RFID tag carries information on it such as a serial number, model number, colour, place of assembly or other types of data.

As previously brought up in this column the increasing use of the technology raises a number of privacy questions. Many of the RFID deployments around the world are being made without the corresponding privacy protection rights. For example, the Bermuda RFID deployment will be valuable in helping the government recover hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid fines. The system will also make it harder for thieves to steal a vehicle, as it will have been tracked by the RFID readers if driven through those points.

However, how about if the police decided they wanted to use the technology to spy on someone? Is there legislation in place requiring them to get a court order first before accessing the transport department's data?

This example might seem inconsequential given the benefits. However, as RFID becomes increasingly deployed around the island by government and retailers, it will become more and more important to control how that data is used, and by whom.

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