LuminousVoid

CISCO is offering a new RFID based wireless security solution: the Wireless Location Appliance 2700. It’s a server that can use your wireless network to track the location of all wi-fi equipment and active RFID chips within your network. The server can store the data and provide “trend” data for how stuff moves around. The launch touted the use of the server to monitor the movement of medical equipment in a hospital.

With the Cisco Wireless Location Appliance, doctors, nurses, and support staff can spend less time searching for equipment and more time providing patient care. High-end medical equipment scheduled for routine maintenance can now also be located in minutes not days

The privacy problem? This can pretty easily be used to track employees in the workplace, once they are given RFID-tagged badges. Trend analysis will tell us who is spending too much time in the bathroom, or with other employees. Historical data will let an employer track who has been in the same room as the pro-union members of their workforce.

Retailing for 15K ought to slow the deployment of this technology as an employee tracker. But these prices won’t last, and to some employers, 15K might be worth it to monitor several hundred employees.