Abstract This paper examines the privacy impacts of using RFID to tag information goods such as books, music, and video. Information goods have qualities which make surveillance uniquely invasive. Individuals have strong expectations of personal privacy in their choice of information goods which are reinforced in social norms, public policy, and law. We examine the normative, policy, and legal connection between privacy, the First Amendment, and information goods. We describe the treatment of information goods in the retail and library settings and describe the technical differences between tags and readers used in each setting. Next we discuss the threats to privacy created by the introduction of RFID into these settings. We conclude with best-practice and technical suggestions to make current RFID systems more privacy conscious. 1.0 Introduction At its current stage of deployment, Radio Frequency Identification is generally used to tag goods at the pallet-level during shipping and warehousing. Already, however, more than 130 libraries in North America have also begun to tag their holdings, including books, music, and video at the item level.