Even consumers unfamiliar with the technology are probably already using it on a daily basis.

The commuter who zips by a toll booth while other motorists wait to pay; the music lover struggling to remove a paper-thin, copper-colored circuit from his just-purchased DVD; the employee waving her ID badge near a magic spot on the wall to access a secured area; the traveller whose passport is swiped when he enters a country -- all are carrying tiny chips read by invisible scanners that extract information about identity, consumer habits and even personal movements.

And that is just the beginning.

"My dog has an RFID-enhanced tag embedded behind his ear," explained Alastair McArthur, Chief Technical Officer of Australia-based Tagsys, one of the leading manufacturers of radio-frequency technology in the world.

McArthur, whose company also operates in Europe, was presenting his wares in Paris at the inaugural European Exhibition of Research and Innovation, running until June 6.

The tag, he continued, can trigger an alarm if Fido -- or a small child with a wrist band - crosses a transceiver-equipped threshold, such a doorway or garden gate. Or it can identify the runaway pooch at the pound.

"We are just now starting to use RFID tags for everyday, mass-market items," McArthur said, adding that usage would soon jump from "millions to billions" of units.

Worldwide sales of RFID technology is expected to triple over the next five years, exceeding six billion dollars (5.6 billion euros) in 2010, according to a study released last week by NY-based Datamonitor.

Over 40 percent of that market will be in North America, with a third in Europe and a quarter in Asia, the study says.

Basic radio frequency identification is neither new nor complex, and consists of three parts: a silicon chip, a built-in antenna -- both combined in a unit that can be as small as few millimetres in diameter -- and a remote transceiver to read the information. Scanners can read the data from a distance of a few centimetres (inches) up to four or five meters (yards), depending on the frequency used.

"It's like a scanner reading a barcode, except that you don't need light or a human operator to read it, and many tags can be read at once," explained Hans Christoph Donges, director of RFID strategy at Siemens AG in Nuremburg, also on hand at the exhibition.

To date, relatively high cost has restricted use mainly to industrial applications, on the one hand, and theft-prevention for expensive retail items such as books, fashion garments and DVDs, on the other.

But as tags drop in cost toward 5-10 cents each -- they are currently 2-3 times that -- they could become almost as common as barcode. Using polymer electronics, for example, Siemens is developing a technology that would make it possible to print the kind of circuits used in RFID tags the same way ink is printed on paper.

"We will see pilots within two years for printed polymer chips," Donges said.

As it is, major retail chains such as Walmart in the United States, Tesco in Britain and Metro in Germany have served notice to their suppliers that they intend to use RFID technology to manage stock and reduce related sales losses.

In the United States, the Pentagon has done the same, and the Food and Drug Administration is considering requiring pharmaceutical companies to put RFID tags on medicines sold in the US to prevent fraud.

Elevator manufacturer Otis is already using smart labels to monitor the maintenance status of its elevators -- as well as the work schedules of their employees.

And that, according to civil rights and privacy advocates, could be a problem.

"There is an obvious potential for abuse," noted Yann Lehegarat, an expert from France's national commission for the protection of privacy related to information technology. "The process of gathering information is invisible, is done remotely and can be read without anyone noticing."

Citing privacy concerns, the California state senate in late May banned the use of RFID in any state-issued documents, including driver's licenses, student ID cards and health insurance cards. The new law also made unauthorized "skimming" of information from RDIF tags containing personal information a crime.

But chances are still high that before too long you will be able to walk out of a supermarket with a cart full of groceries without breaking your stride, while a scanner tallies up your bill and tells a computer to debit your bank account.

All rights reserved. � 2004 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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