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Walmart to Push RFID
bravehamster writes "According to this article over at MSNBC, Walmart is going to push its suppliers to start using RFID to track inventory by 2005. The article goes on to mention how it was Walmart who helped jumpstart widespread adoption of barcodes. The report also points out some of the barriers in the way of RFID acceptance, but never once mentions consumer privacy concerns. Guess that kind of stuff just isn't important anymore."
most everyone discussing these devices are concerned about the privacy issues--that they need to be fully deactivated after the purchase. big brother inside?
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http://www.hellection.com
I was talking with a friend about these things recently and he had some good ideas about practical uses for RFID tags. For one, a simple keychain sensor device could be programmed to keep track of your posessions. Wallets, cellphones, sunglasses, could be coded with these tags. If these items were to leave your direct vicinity, the sensor could inform you you're forgetting something. Or being robbed as the case may be.
Truth be told, I fail to see the privacy issues the adoption of these things would raise. I assume that, once you've brought your item home, you're free to remove the offending tag. Or, if you want to mess with the system, switch 'em around.
I want the fire back.
From the article:
Inventory management technology that uses wireless signals to track products from the factory to store shelves is set to win a major new ally next week: Wal-Mart.
Only "track products from the factory to store shelves," eh?
This is why we don't want the media controlled by large corporations. The idea that RFID's can be used beyond "the store shelves" can be suppressed if the media speaks with one voice.
Walmart poses the same kind of question as Microsoft not so many years ago. Are they pushing innovation or are they simply doing whatever they can to be a bigger and more profitable company for their shareholders? I think we can guess which is more likely. Money and power obscure all concerns about their consumers' privacy. Walmart, on the other hand, does do much to keep its consumers happy. The Maxim discontinuation and the obscuring of women's magazines covers is in response to the family atmosphere that they seek to promote. It is not, as some flame-baiters maintain, an attempt to be repressive and just part of the Bible-belt mentality. They are reacting to their own market research that shows that most families (which it is families that shop at Walmart mostly, not hip 16 year olds who'd rather be at Abercrombie) would rather those things not be visible to their young children. Thus Walmart's policies put them in better light with the communities they overtake. If the communities don't want to have RFID tags and they make that known to Walmart, I wouldn't be one bit surprised if Walmart retracted this idea. Walmart knows very well that its money comes not from streamlined inventory but from the happy families that shop there.
OK, I can understand the privacy concern, but don't let it get out of hand. It is very unlikly these devices will come with a power supply that lasts much longer than the expected shelf life of the item being sold. Also, in order to comply with FCC regulations, they couldn't transmit huge amounts of power or the total field strength in the walmart (where thousands of such devices would constantly be in operation) would exceed safty limits. This basicly means that they won't be able to track you far or long. Far enough to catch a shoplifter, possibly, far enough to keep track of you by a chip in your shirt you purchased at walmart? Probably, but the equiptment to do so would be way to expensive to do routinely, and face it, if the situation is beyond routine, "they" have much better ways of tracking people that don't rely on a chip that can be sent to a different continint via airmail. Most importantly though, with a scale of operations the size of walmart, does anyone think that they intend to spy on everyone there (more than they already can with a security camera every other step)? Inside the store possibly, but the logistics of setting up a grid that can track the transmitters outside of walmart would be extremly impractical. This will probably be what it is supposed to be, a way track not people but merchandise, which has no right to privacy anyway, and to catch people who want to get away with some of it. The only simi-paranoid-rallying use for this that they MIGHT be able to collect aggragate patterns to organize the walmarts for maximum impulse shopping success. But doesn't Kroger and many other grocery stores (with "discout" cards) do this already, yes, there was some minor outrage at first, but has anybody's rights to privacy been significantly damaged by these peaces of plastic? I doubt it.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
... this is going to be a huge boost for RFID's. I don't think most realize the huge amount of sway that Wal-Mart has in both the American economy and the World economy in general. They are a huge company: the first retailer to ever become the biggest company in the world. They should change the old saying to "As goes Wal-Mart, so goes the world..."
Forget the whales - save the babies.
I'm no gun control proponet, but I wonder if anyone has ever considered mandating these things inside handguns. ALthough there'd be a ton of black-market guns, guns built before the law, guns built outside of the us, etc around, the ones including an RFID would be awfully easy to detect in situations where security is paramount.
...
Not saying its a good idea, but I just wonder if its floating out there
A friend and I were walking through walmart to get some engine coolant(minor emergency, no choice), and I expressed my distaste for walmart. She asked, "Why? Where else could you get all these wonderful things?"(points to grocery section, hardware, etc.)
My answer was rather simple. "Well, before Walmart, the center of my town- the local town hardware store, the local grocery store, and so on. But thanks to Home Depot and Walmart running all the local businesses out, now you can't get anything without driving 20+ minutes". So now, for the $2 in savings, I've got to burn $2 in gas just to get there. I've got to spend 5 minutes finding a parking space, 5 walking from the lot into the store, another 5 trying to find the section and get there, another 5-10 waiting in line...so on etc. That's 'better'?
All because the only thing consumers value these days is the pricetag- not all the other benefits that come from giving your business to a small, locally owned business...or the hidden costs(your time, travel expenses, etc). Lost your reciept? Walmart tells you to go fuck yourself,m you shoplifting scum! Joe at Joe's Hardware remembers selling you that door hinge a few days ago- so the answer is "hey, no problem, here's your money." Not to mention, Joe knows what he's talking about when you ask him a question about doors, instead of some PFY who blankly stares at you because you asked something other than "what aisle is ___ in?"
You know what? It's not the only thing that bugs me about Walmart- their people are downright sleazy. It's stuff like the stories about Walmart managers taking donated items out of charity dropboxes in the stores that were not in walmart bags, and restocking them onto the shelves. Why? Walmart claimed it was to prevent shoplifting(or, in this case, 'shopdonating'), and items not in Walmart bags must not have been legitimate purchases. The donation box was AFTER the registers, not before. Further- ever been in a Walmart? There's more security cameras than you can count- yet a)items were supposedly shoplifted, yet not caught on tape and b)supposedly walmart didn't have any security cameras covering the area where the donation box was. Uh huh. Oh, and don't get me started on Walmart's union-busting...
It's so frustrating to see these giant box stores pop up. A big part of the local economy shifts over to that one store- all the mom+pops die off, and everyone that worked for mom+pop end up working for Walmart, they get nice clean blue uniforms, and all is(mostly) good. What happens when Walmart goes the way of K-mart, Caldoors, Bradlees, etc...or decides that store isn't quite profitable enough? Oops. Smallville's unemployment just went to %50.
Please help metamoderate.
Maybe not.
The problem with the Benetton plan was that the RFIDs were suppose to be embedded in the clothing itself. No one has ever said Walmart is asking for this.
Certainly, for non-clothing products, I doubt the RFID will be embedded in the product itself. That would be far too costly a change for the manufacturing process. Rather, it will probably be embedded in the packaging itself (like UPCs).
Even for clothes, I imagine (in Walmart's case) the RFID will be in the clothing tags or packages. I can't imagine Walmart convincing Fruit of the Loom to embed RFIDs in every pair of briefs.
I think the article does not mention privacy concerns because, frankly, unless the RFID is somehow permanently associated with the product, there are no privacy concerns.
I've been reading the comments and watching the moderation of this story for the past ten minutes.
I'm really amazed by all of the posts belittling the potential danger of RFID's. Also, many comments talking about RFID abuses, or even asking sane questions about them, have been moderated down. Then comments like this one are moderated up.
I find that odd.
Can anyone actually provide evidence that it is technologically possible (not just theoretically, but practically in terms of present or near-future capabilities) to achieve this level of monitoring? You have to walk between a pair of very obvious posts just to activate a simple anti-theft tag. Is there any basis for the concern that someone can scan these weak transmitters from an effective distance, particularly among the babble of a few thousand of them in a concentrated space where I can't even pick up a cell phone signal?
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
i mean, if all wal-mart does is implement this system and guarantees that the tags will be disabled, i think that's all fine and well, but this should be monitored closely so that we don't end up with an orwellian big brother checking over our shoulders seeing what we bought.
i heard on off the hook how those member discount cards at grocery stores are monitored so feds can see if your buying large amounts of precursor chemicals for drugs (sudafed was one example). well, great, they're trying to stop the production of drugs, but they're doing it at the expense of the everyday citizen who may now be subject to investigation and hassles that may damage their reputation and/or career just because for some legitimate reason they needed a large amount of sudafed!
also, supposedly they are now implementing a massive government database to track all these purchases and scan the data looking for potential terrorist buying habits (lol!).
that's what i have . . . innocent until proven guilty; why should the government monitor citizens until it has legitimate grounds to?
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"I agree, in this case the privacy concerns are probably unfounded. The debate is healthy though, because by the time they try to tag your children at birth, it may be too late to stop it."
"They" will not have to because a lot of parents will do it under the misbegotten belief that it's good for the child.
Sometimes the best friend is an enemy, and the best enemy is a friend.
Now, instead of paranoid worries, I hope people start focusing on the promise of RFIDs: instant checkouts, instant inventories, instant customer feedback to the retailer (meaning better product choices by the stores) and much better inventory management (meaning lower prices!). Never mind trackable warranties, potential theft prevention/insurance, etc, etc, etc...
Uh, what? If you have a problem with them tracking every item you purchase then you need to stop paying for everything with credit or cheques. I buy stuff all the time even with (shudder!) a Kroger savings card and ya know what? Kroger don't know a damn thing about me. It's not like they take your driver's license number to fill out one of those stupid things; it's not like you can't lie.
It really amazes me how so many people tie themselves intimately to corporations and then bitch about the loss of privacy. If you value your privacy, tell'em to go to hell. Shop with the local merchants while they still exist; stop using plastic every time you buy a damn pack of gum and you won't have to worry about it - or open a numbered swiss account and get a debit card drawn on it.
I think the idea was that people could track what you purchased after you left the store, which is a bit more insidious.
Apparently the notion of removing the damn tag is completely alien to the tinfoil hat crowd.
The RFID chip itself would not have to be deactivated upon checkout--only the ID in the store database would need to be deactivated.
Now, instead of paranoid worries, I hope people start focusing on the promise of RFIDs: instant checkouts, instant inventories, instant customer feedback to the retailer (meaning better product choices by the stores) and much better inventory management (meaning lower prices!). Never mind trackable warranties, potential theft prevention/insurance, etc, etc, etc...
Nevermind job cuts...
Of course, since you have your bread and butter, you don't see that as a big loss do you? I mean afterall, cashiers are unskilled workers anyway, right? The store is better off without them, no?
I know I was rather horrified to see when a grocery store down the street to me shut down and reopened just up the road. The new store had half the cashiers, but was twice as big. In the place of half of the cashiers were "self-checkout" counters, with one person watching all of them (about 10 in all).
With RFIDs, now they can get rid of ALL of them, and just pay one thug to wait by the door to beat up on someone who tries to walk out without paying.
The RFID chip itself would not have to be deactivated upon checkout--only the ID in the store database would need to be deactivated.
This would not solve the very real "camping" problem he mentioned.
As long as the RFID chips are placed on products in the same manner as bar codes, privacy is a non-issue. I don't have a single non-food product I walk around with that still has a barcode attached. As for the the food products, those are only around for a few days so it's still not an issue. Get over it and enter the future.
The world is becoming a small place indeed.
what sig?
Do you wave a pass card at the door at work? That's RFID. Do you drive through the quick lane at the toll booth? More RFID. I used to pay at the pump with my key chain. I cut it open after I cancelled the card and found a TI Tiris RFID tube inside. Similar to what they inject into a dog's neck so they can find it if lost. The one used in the Mobil SpeedPass that I had is the one on the right in this picture:
TI Tiris
Actual size is about 2cm and about 4mm in diameter.
I suppose we shouldn't have invented telecommunications either... it put the Pony Express riders out of work...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Are you sure that it isn't an inventory control (anti-shoplifting) tag? A RFID tag is going to need a silicon chip.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
From everything I have read either every tag is a different number or it will be impossible to accurately track people ever.
If so how big is the number that an RFID tag stores?
If it is unique per tag then no matter what it will run out bloody quickly, an astronomical number of products are sold every year. If the tag is not unique, ie it is the same as the barcode system and all products of the same type have the same ID then it is impossible to track people!!!
Also would it not be trivially easy to create a fake RFID generator so you could overload the senor equipment and make it useless??
37 - what does it stand for really...
An important thing to realise about targeted ads is that the number of ads won't change - you won't be suddenly blitzed with many more ads. The difference is that the ads you'll see will more frequently be relevant to you.
Less dross. More stuff you're interested in. Sounds good?
If anything, the total number of ads will tend to decrease as advertisers won't need to plaster every damned product to make sure they're all seen by the target market. Further, I would expect that each targeting site would be much more expensive than a static site (but probably cheaper than all the static sites they'd need to cover all the product lines).
Both of these will tend to make the RoI calculation come out in favour of few advertising sites, each with many potential ads they can show.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
The wheel did the same thing. By increasing efficiency, it led to the loss of particular jobs. Of course, it also improved the efficiency of the overall economy, but why consider such things. Okay, let's get rid of those job-killing wheels.
Now, can you think of any reasons why RFIDs would be integrated into clothing in such a manner? If so, can you think of any reasons why the tags might have a design which allows them to survive the total immersion in water and intense heat of a wash-dry cycle? If not, can you name any items where the tag probably would be integrated in such a manner?
You guys fail to realize that you have HUGE freaking logo and brand names on your shirts, pants and caps.
/. morons I swear. You wouldn't know privacy if you were bit in the ass by it.
If you're afraid of people knowing what you buy and where what's up with the HILFIGIER or GAP or [etc]. across your chest?
Fucking
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
There are a lot of people crying out about personal rights etc. on this, but I have to say I really don't see what the problem is.
At all.
So the store knows more about what you buy, can much more accurately track your purchasing habits, sees which things you like, and which you don't, knows how much you spend every month in the store etc.
What's the big-ass problem for crying out loud?
I *want* the stores to know my buying habits so that they can do a better jobs of providing me with more of the things I like!
Ask yourselves WHY the store wants to know this? It's so that they can tailor themselves to YOU, to give YOU a better service and more of the things you want to spend your money on. Why on Earth would Walmart put money into something that would frustrate, irritate or otherwise turn away customers?!?
I say bring it on! I say, yeah, let's see my tastes and purchasing history take their place in the big database so that I become a future dynamic of the store!
All these privacy advocates going nuts are well off the mark... get some common sense in your head... these people don't want to take away your life... they're not like the common fictional evil genius with a mad plot to eradicate privacy from the face of the world (muhahaha).
I genuinely see this as a *service*, cannot wait for it to be implemented and have absolutely NO worries about the scheme at all. Stop watching too much X-Files!
-Nex
This sig has been deprecated.
Just one more example of the rampant ignorance that is becoming more pervasive in our society. No matter how many times it is pointed out that RFID tags have a very small range and nobody can drive by your house and scan everything you own, people continue to rant against RFID tags.
While it may be FUD only, this technology being used to track ALL that you buy is the concern. RFID will eventually be "mainstreamed" and many people such as yourself won't see a problem with it being in money or in credit cards. Again, no FUD just fact, the FBI has already planned an investigation about RFID in money Why is this a privacy concern? What I'm about to say may be an ethical issue but it is seen different ways by different people. What if I want to buy some marijuana with that note? What if I want to pay the kid down the down the street to cut my lawn? What if that same kid does drugs? Now, I am suspect for being in "drug ring" if they can trace all those RFIDs.
Same with purchases from Walmart. What if I happen to purchase a combination of items unknowingly, that the average drug user purchases. Will I be profiled for that buying habit too?
I am with you, it's coming no matter what. It will be hard to stop. But, there are legitimate concerns.
I will hope that Walmart will adopt the Philips chip that you can turn off if the customer so wills to.
You would be amazed at what your grocery store bonus card data holds about you! Returns, complaints to the store, not just sales data. Again, what if something with an RFID or something trackable has your fingerprints on it, are you suspect when the "bad guy" buys it from Goodwill or steals it? Not only do we need Walmart to understand that before they make this step that we want on off switches, but we would also like disassociation capability. IE, erasure of your association with an RFID. Also, yearly reports by email or mail on what your RFID info holds and what data they truly are keeping about you would be nice.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny