I was reading an article this morning on the new American Airlines luggage charge (THAT’s gonna go over well), and noticed an aside starting on page 3…Las Vegas is using RFIDs in outgoing luggage tags now to help move bags more efficiently.

Now, I’m not saying I’m even completely against this, used correctly…but I had no idea that it was occuring. THAT I don’t like…especially since I have a bag sitting in the hallway that just came back from Vegas! Checking…nope, no I’m an arphid note on it.

But oh yeah…it’s there:

Nice, eh? And I carried this around (out of airport, past who knows what kind of scanner, on transit, etc.) without knowing about it. And of course, they’re all already sync’d with a person’s ID directly. Hrrrmmmm.

And as for slippery slope…from the article: This new system “won’t solve every problem, but it’s certainly played a part in allowing this airport to operate efficiently,” she said, “and it’s got the potential to do even more once it’s rolled out [on] a wider basis.”

I bet it does.

UPDATE: to clarify, I changed “…in outgoing luggage now…” to “…in outgoing luggage tags now…” above, after the post made it onto boingboing (woot!). It was a typo, and the photos make it clear what I’m talking about, but apparently people thought it worth mentioning. *grin* Sorry for any confusion.