Slashdot Mirror
Benetton Clothing to Carry RFID Tags
An anonymous reader writes "Clothing manufacturer Benetton has announced that they will begin embedding RFID tags in clothing for inventory control purposes. You can
read more about this at SF Gate." morcheeba adds more information: "EETimes is reporting that Benetton will be embedding a Philips RFID chip into the label of every new garment bearing the name of Benetton's core clothing brand, Sisley. The 15 million chips expected sold in 2003 will allow monitoring of garments from production to shipping, shelves and dressing rooms. The I.CODE chip (tech info) used in Benetton's labels will include 1,024 bits of EEPROM and operate at a distance of up to 1.5 meters. RFIDs look like they would be extremely uncomfortable in some Sisley clothes."
Ottenberg said such tags could be used for "customer loyalty" rewards that could earn consumers such benefits as frequent flyer miles, free music downloads or discount coupons.
Why, while I read this, did the phrase "bread and circuses, bread and circuses..." keep on looping through my brain?
Ah well, I suppose a majority of people will be quite happy to give away their right to privacy in return for some extra frequent-flyer miles, dragging the rest of us along by default.
How much longer before they start introducing niggling little irritations if you buy with cash, and/or larger incentives if you buy with a credit card?
A trick that the US Navy has used to for years as an electronic counter measure would work for this on a much smaller scale. The navy uses planes with high powered radio transmitters in the noses of them. They fly over and blast the target with high powered RF and fry the reciever, and pretty much everything else in it's path(light bulbs, FM radios, 2way radios, computers, etc). Well in your case you should just have to get close to a high powered transmitter such as a 1500 watt radio transmitter and put it REALLY close. It should fry out in a heart beat with the clothes none the worse for wear[pun intended].
SW
They should remove it for the same reason they remove those big bulky things that set off the alarms--they're selling you the _CLOTHING_, not the stuff they stick on it for their own benefit. I'd like to see what would happen if you went into a store an purchased a piece of clothing and demanded they give you that thing because it was _YOUR_ property because _YOU_ paid for it.
Do you really think boycotting Benetton will even cause them to give in a 15 minute thought? Benetton markets to non-geeks who have money to throw around. Most of these people don't know what rfid is and probably won't care if they also stuck a bluetooth device in every underwear. There are better solutions than a boycott coming from the slashdot crowd. A bunch of slashdot geeks boycotting Benetton is like a bunch of football players boycotting Transmeta.
Eh. I just hope that the video stores around here catch on with this RFID tagging... Have you ever phoned to reserve a movie, been told it's there, and spent an hour trying to locate the damned thing in a store with 10 thousand movies?
I see this as a major convenience.
The scanner supplies it in the form of microwave energy. The more primitive versions of this would rely on a coil, that recieved the microwave, turned it into just enough juice to power the transmitter and send data.
I think with this though, that they've managed to integrate it into a single piece of silicon though.
Ok, so are we gonna have a contest for the most fucked up thing to hack your clothes to scan as? Sextoys of one variety or another seem to obvious, though I bet you'd get the best faces when the security guard sees 27" Monster Double-headed Jackhammer Dildo pop up on the screen.