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Subject: "Track this!" Tell-all RFID book flies off of shelves
Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 10:08:26 -0400

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 3, 2005

Contact: Christopher A. Roslan
Dera, Roslan & Campion
O: (212) 966-4600, Cell: (917) 538-5629


SPYCHIPS HITS AMAZON BESTSELLER LIST TWO DAYS BEFORE RELEASE
Scathing Expose of Corporate and Government Plans for RFID Abuse Flies off Shelves

Two days before its official October 4 release date, Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID stunned the world with its meteoric rise on the bestseller charts. On Sunday, the book hit #6 on Amazon's nonfiction bestseller list, and #15 overall.

While it was great news for publisher Nelson Current, it was very bad news for IBM, Procter & Gamble, NCR and many other global corporations who take a beating in the book for their scandalous plans to watch consumers through RFID microchips embedded in their belongings.

Backers of RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) technology have long denied their intentions to track people, claiming their interest in the technology is solely for supply chain applications. But in "Spychips," authors Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre reveal companies' patented plans to use RFID to watch consumers everywhere they go and bombard them with unwanted advertising.

PR departments of some of the world’s largest organizations will soon be working overtime to answer embarrassing questions about patent pending devices like IBM's "Person Tracking Unit" that monitors people as they innocently roam through shopping malls, elevators, sports arenas, libraries, theatres, museums, and even restrooms. Such revelations will undoubtedly undermine IBM's recent efforts to position itself as an RFID "privacy consultant."

Procter & Gamble will be hard pressed to explain why it holds a patent titled "Systems and Methods for Tracking Consumers in a Store Environment" that uses tagged items to follow and watch customers as they walk around a store, and why P&G says its RFID plans will be lucrative for itself but "useless" to consumers. And NCR, the company that supplies cash registers and scanners to retailers around the world, including Wal-Mart, will have to explain its plans for shelves designed to change the price of products depending on who's standing in front of them.

Dozens of other companies, unprincipled inventors, and public officials dabbling in the world of "spychips" have their day of reckoning in the book, as Albrecht and McIntyre's determined investigation exposes them all. One particularly haunting chapter even reveals a plan to imbed human RFID implants deep in the organs of prisoners, the mentally ill, and "employees within an enterprise campus" that can track people's movements, electroshock them, and even broadcast their conversations remotely.

"Spychips" has already drawn rave reviews and was honored with the November 2005 Lysander Spooner Award for Advancing the Literature of Liberty. "We had a feeling the book would do well when it hit several online bestseller lists months before its official release,” says Albrecht. “But even we were surprised at how eager the public is to learn this information. They're buying this book because they can't find these facts anywhere else."

SPYCHIPS: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID

Nelson Current • October 4, 2005 • Nonfiction • Political Science

Hardcover • 270 Pages • $24.99 • ISBN: 1-5955-5020-8

“It’s like watching Big Brother come home and get a rolling pin broken over his head by Mrs. Big Brother, who knows that, even though he thinks he’s everybody’s daddy, he’s a stalker, and a voyeur, and a crook, and a cheat, and a drunk on his own ego, and a handwashing, sniveling deadbeat who out to be ashamed of himself.”

– From the foreword by Bruce Sterling, best-selling author, Wired commentator,
  and RFID "Visionary in Residence," Art Center College of Design

“Brilliantly written—so scary and depressing I want to put it down, so full of fascinating vignettes and facts that I can't put it down.”

– Freedom activist and author Claire Wolfe

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Contact: Christopher A. Roslan
President & Managing Partner
Dera, Roslan & Campion Inc. Public Relations
Office: (212) 966-4600
Cell: (917) 538-5629