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| | Spying on your Shopping Bag |
| | 21 Jul 2004 |
raiting (-19/25) |
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 Grass-roots consumer group Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), which is fighting retail surveillance schemes, says that Wal-Mart's decision to tag individual items on its store floor using radio frequency identification or RFID violates a call for a moratorium issued last November by 40 privacy and civil liberties organisations.
Wal-Mart began item-level RFID tagging of consumer goods last week as part of a trial in Texas. Shoppers at seven Dallas-Fort Worth area Wal-Mart stores can walk into the consumer electronics department and find Hewlett-Packard products for sale with RFID tags attached.
What is RFID
RFID stands for Radio Frequency IDentification, a technology that uses tiny computer chips smaller than a grain of sand to track items at a distance. RFID "spy chips" have been hidden in the packaging of Gillette razor products and in other products you might buy at a local Wal-Mart, Target, or Tesco - and they are already being used to spy on people.
Each tiny chip is hooked up to an antenna that picks up electromagnetic energy beamed at it from a reader device. When it picks up the energy, the chip sends back its unique identification number to the reader device, allowing the item to be remotely identified. Spy chips can beam back information anywhere from a couple of inches to up to 20 or 30 feet away.
Unlike a bar code, these chips can be read from a distance, right through your clothes, wallet, backpack or purse -- without your knowledge or consent -- by anybody with the right reader device. In a way, it gives strangers x-ray vision powers to spy on you, to identify both you and the things you're wearing and carrying.
Wal-Mart spin
Wal-Mart says that RFID tags in its stores are harmless since they contain nothing more than identification numbers. "While technically that's true, Wal-Mart fails to explain what it means for items to carry remote-readable unique ID numbers," says Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of CASPIAN. "It's like saying someone's social security number is 'only' a number, so sharing it with perfect strangers should be of no concern."
Albrecht explains that many major retailers routinely link shoppers' identity information from credit, ATM and "loyalty" cards with product bar code numbers to record individuals' purchases over time. The same will happen with RFID numbers on products, she claims. This means that if retailers can read an RFID tag on a product they previously sold, they can immediately identify the customer as he or she enters the store.
"Wal-Mart is blatantly ignoring the research and recommendations of dozens of privacy experts," says Albrecht. "When the world's largest retailer adopts a technology with chilling societal implications, and does so irresponsibly, we should all be deeply concerned."
In addition to violating the call for a moratorium on RFID-tagged items in stores, Wal-Mart has begun a consumer education campaign that CASPIAN is calling unethical.
The most publicised trial of item-level RFID tagging to date, Metro-AG's "Future Store" in Rheinberg, Germany, met with some public outcry earlier this year, culminating in a small protest outside the store. So far consumer revolt against RFID remains marginal.
Cream-Cheese Confidential
Whatever the motivation, it's clear that industry is finally getting the message: RFID is fine for pallets of goods in a warehouse, but not for people. In an age of ubiquitous surveillance cameras, government tracking systems, and biometrics, consumers dislike the idea that they can be tracked via packages of cream cheese, razor blades, and shampoo.
State legislators share this dislike, too. On Feb. 24, the Utah House of Representatives passed a bill mandating clear labeling of any product in which an RFID chip is embedded. A bill introduced on Feb. 27 in the California Senate goes further, arguing that retailers should need consumers' permission.
While consumers are left with choice to either accept the technology or join the opposition, RSA Security recently announced RFID Blocker Tag - device designed to prevent readers from performing unwanted scanning and tracking of people or goods, without any disruption to normal RFID operation.
Other sources of information:
* RFID journal
* RFID technology |
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Source: http://www.nocards.org/
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