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NYT on RFID Tags
indros13 writes "The NY Times is running a story on the radio tagging of merchandise. Companies like Gillette want to make sure their razors are in stock and stores like Wal-Mart want to make sure you can find your paisley panties, size 10. But what happens to privacy when everything you buy can be tracked from store floor to door?"
Checkpoint is the leader in the industry. They have been at this the longest and have developed a very system for handling all the backend as well.
... not so much for loss prevention, but for availability and auditing of book inventory.
Many of their early success stories have been libraries. Having been a customer of a library that uses this it's very cool
How in the world can that be true? Sometimes I go into a Gap store just to use the bathroom. Other times I walk through it just to get to the other side of the mall. What if I'm with a group of friends, and only one of us makes a purchase? What about my poor boyfriends of yesteryear who were just there to hold my bags ;-)?
I suspect "shoppers" specifically means people in the gap for the purpose of purchasing something. Walkthroughs and chain-gang shopping are probably not counted. It is meant, I suspect, to highlight the fact that they can FIND what you want. Even if your 36-34 pants are mixed into the womens jeans on the other side of the store, a single RFID query going "where the hell are you" would locate the one they _know_ they have in stock, but some jerk put on the wrong shelf.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
or http://tinyurl.com/6ffr>
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
You scan all the items yourself and you can even pay by cash if you want, the machine has a bill acceptor. The checkout stands even have the sensormatic deal, so you can cancel an items tendancy to set off the "I'm Stealing" beep at the door.
Here's a pic of one, with an article I havent read
Never having to worry about losing things like remote controls, car keys, and pets (wearing a collar with an RFID of course).
Yesterdays "tech of tomorrow" (I think) had an interesting segment on how they are using "smart chips" in horses these days. Specifically, thoroughbred racing horses that can be easily confused for one another at sales. (they had two who were sold under the wrong names, and then proceeded to run under crossed names for at least five races before anyone figured it out).
This is kind of a neat technology, because if it is applied here as it is being applied in the UK, it makes it DAMN hard to steal horses. As of now, you have to wave the "reader" right over the chip to get the unique identifier from the horse, but I could see where this could be amplified to find, say, stolen horses.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Wal-Mart, for example, has a database TWICE the size of all the U.S. Government, combined.
EVERY purchase you have ever made with a credit card is tracked right down to you. All your preferences are known, right down to your favorite deodorant.
Wal-Mart, however you might think of it, is a brilliant company. Did you know that most of the products on the Wal-Mart shelf have NOT been bought by Wal-Mart? No, the manufacturer sends the products to Wal-Mart and waits until the item is actually run through the checkout scanner before it receives a check. The manufacturer is responsible for sending more products for Wal-Mart to stock. In return, they get access to that titanic-sized wealth of marketing data.
This is where the radio tags come in. If you know exactly where any product is in your store, you can see what products sell better in what location -- in real time, across the country. And yes, shoplifting will become far more difficult for the petty theives -- I doubt the pros will be stopped by this technology.
RFID tags aren't about big brother -- they're about big bucks.
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
I do have a right to privacy when patronizing their store. They can't strip search me, they can't search through my property, they can't search my bags from other stores even if they put up signs saying they can. Such signs are unenforceable and serve no purpose other than to dupe the ignorant into thinking the store has a right to treat them like cattle. Rights, you see, are largely things which someone in the past has had the backbone to stand up for and insist upon.
The folks at the AutoID Center at MIT have already gotten plenty of feedback on this. The current proposed standard has a KILL command that disables the tag; the assumption is that as soon as you check out, the tag is killed and becomes inert.
The EPC spec has all those bits so the instances of objects can be tracked. An EPC is broken down into four sections:
- WH -002.pdfT -AUTOID-WH -008.pdf
bits 00-07 = header
bits 08-35 = manufacturer (EPC Manager)
bits 36-59 = Object Class
bits 60-95 = Serial Number
There's another EPC, the Compact EPC, that's only 64 bits long, because the longer bit length translates into higher-cost tags.
So saying that RFID tags are -not- instance specific is incorrect. They can be (and the EPC is designed to be) instance specific, but it's up to the manufacturer.
http://www.autoidcenter.org/research/MIT-AUTOID
http://www.autoidcenter.org/research/MI