Ski-pass tracking: Is it Big Brother on the slopes?

Going skiing? You may be tracked. Resort operators have implanted tiny radio-frequency computer chips with antennas in lift tickets and season passes. They're installing more scanners on mountain slopes. The scanners automatically track skiers and snowboarders, recording their whereabouts in company databases. Some skiers and privacy advocates object. "Any kind of technology that creates an automatic tracking system by default violates people's general expectation — not just of privacy but of the world," said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the pro-privacy Electronic Frontier Foundation. "You are not expecting to be tracked." A Colorado ski instructor started producing aluminum "ski-pass defender" sheaths that block radio signals and is selling them at the rate of eight sheaths a day. All 89 lifts at Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone and Vail, and at Heavenly in California, will be outfitted with scanner portals able to read the chips as skiers and snowboarders pass through, Vail Resorts spokeswoman Kelly Ladyga said. Vail passes carry 900-megahertz tracking devices, which industry publications indicate can enable longer-distance reading, rather than the 13.56-MHz tags considered standard for ski passes...more

So now if a cattleman goes skiing...