privacy

I think the point is, they are scraping any possible data points they can over any tech/frequency/etc. NFC is unlikely unless that is pushed alongside BTLE, BT, or WiFi.

FWIW, businesses deploy tech that does this too, just for pure greed purposes, rather than mass surveillance.

You "can" read nfc from further away, the couple of cm limit is it's designed operation.

You need an emitter with enough field strength to power the remote chip that is also sensitive enough to read the modulation on the signal. You can buy commercial devices that go about a meter. You can get all hacky and push way past that, but you need antennas that are much larger than what would fit in a flock box

I questioned that too. Didn't get a satisfactory response. It was a in a presentation for mainly law enforcement to a generally non-technical audience. But I include it in my 'notification' anyway because those bastards are sneaky. The main push of the presentation is that if it emits a signal, it's leaving digital exhaust that can be tracked and correlated.