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."

Comments

the biggest concerns

[double_plus_ungod]

most everyone discussing these devices are concerned about the privacy issues--that they need to be fully deactivated after the purchase. big brother inside?

Re:the biggest concerns

[UpLateDrinkingCoffee]

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.

Re:the biggest concerns

[alphax45]

Do you honestly buy EVERTHING an ad tells you to? they are never forcing you to buy things. When you run out of money STOP! Do what I do; allot say 15% of your paycheque for "mad money" and when it's gone; no more frills (dvds, video games, new speakers, ect) I don't care if a company knows I shop at best buy for almost 40% of the stuff I buy. Or that I like Metallica and Terminator movies. I like the idea of targeted ads, no more tampon commericals durring junkyard wars! Seriously, think about this; you buy things off thinkgeek and walk into radio shack, they are going to know what kind of customer you are; and probably leave you alone.

Re:the biggest concerns

[Rick the Red]

That's not the point. Suppose I buy some underwear at Wallmart. What if:

Someone makes a mistake and the RFID for my underwear somehow shows up in JCPenney's inventory computer, and I'm arrested for shoplifting when I go to JCPenney? (the RFID tags aren't turned off, they just mark that ID "sold" in their inventory so they don't arrest you when you take them out the door)

Someone makes a mistake and the ID for my underwear isn't updated in the master Wallmart database. I wear them to another Wallmart, where I'm arrested for shoplifting. (with those magnetic tags I can see them and remove them myself when I get home)

I'm suspected of a crime, and the cops get my shopping records from Wallmart then put out an APB to all retailers to be on the lookout for my underwear's RFID? (note: this could be a good thing, but it could be abused, too)

I'm not paranoid. I have no objection if they put RFIDs in the packaging, like they do now with the magnetic markers. I object to putting the RFIDs in the product, which is what the retailers want because they're afraid I'll just unwrap it before I try to walk out with it.

Perhaps that's the real problem here: they treat us all like shoplifters instead of customers and thus assume we have no rights. This is just another reason to not shop at Wallmart (as if I needed yet another).

Recent conversation

[Daikiki]

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.

The thing to realize is...

[M.C. Hampster]

... 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..."

gun control

[Wordsmith]

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 ...

Re:gun control

[Jason Earl]

The problem with this is that guns are not difficult to manufacture. Heck, many popular models still in use to day are simple variations on guns built before electricity. Not to mention the fact that their are literally millions of weapons currently in existence.

The firearms cat has been out of the bag for several hundred years. Pretending that you can keep firearms out of the hands of criminals (especially criminals that want to get past a security checkpoint) is ridiculous. Worst comes to worse the criminals could simply make their own weapons.

Re:gun control

[utahjazz]

I suspect you don't understand how easy this is. When I was in elementary school, me and my friends made guns, in school, during recess. A teacher caught us shooting 22 rounds on the playgound and made us stop, gave us some stern words. We thought she was totally overreacting by scolding us.

If guns were banned here (U.S.), there really would be an undergound gun making establishment, and the guns would be pretty good. (We are Americans after all). The 'No RFID' feature would make them all the more desirable.

Walmart = sleaze

[SuperBanana]

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.

Re:Walmart = sleaze

[Imperator]

I also hate the way they ask me for a receipt as I walk out the store. My response is always "I've bought this merchandise, so you have no right to stop or search me." More than once they've threatened to call security/police/whatever. To this I point out that if they so much as attempt to restrain me from leaving without good cause, they'll be liable for civil and criminal charges. Just keep walking out and drive away. So long as you have indeed purchased the items you're taking with you, the worst they can legally do to you is ask you not to return.

Re:Walmart = sleaze

[Polyphemis]

Actually, small note, not all of those ARE security cameras. In the SuperCenter I used to work in, I found out that only a THIRD of the little black domes were actually cameras. The rest were decoys.

The anti-union crap Wal-Mart puts out is hilarious. Almost half of my training (two weeks) involved watching videos and taking computerized tests agreeing with Wal-Mart on how unions are bad and Wal-Mart is good and that I should never join a union because they'll never help me and Wal-Mart is such a dandy place to work that I'll never want to work anywhere else ever again, or join one of those sleazy unions!

Between that mindwash and the near-deification of Sam Walton (I'm not joking), the whole training session made me feel like I was joining a cult.

Back on the subject, the RFIDs and such better have a really simple implementation and there had better be some damned good training for removal, because NONE of the 40+ cashiers at the store I worked at knew how to fully deactivate the existing tags!!

I attended one of the cashier team meetings and, when asked, NO one had any idea how to do it right. The proper way is to KEEP SWIPING across the little demangetizer until the 'bing' sound stops. How hard is that? With the extreme emphasis on training the people there, you'd think that more people would know that, but they don't. I hope the RFID deactivation methods they employ are FAR simpler than this, because I honestly don't think that that lowest common denominator could handle it if not.

Re:Walmart = sleaze

[micromoog]

If my Post Office didn't have to pay someone $20/hr, plus full benefits and a month of vacation, to sort mail the postage rates would be a lot lower; you could get a high school kid to do this for minimum wage.

1. Postage rates are really low as it is. Is there any other way to send a letter to anywhere in the country for less than $0.40? Not even close.
2. Minimum wage is a fucking joke. The only people willing to work for that are high school students because they don't have to pay the rent. Nobody can actually live off of minimum wage.

Re:RFID abuse is almost certain

[NoData]

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.

Re:Waaa waaaa "privacy concerns"

[sixdotoh]

you know, i used to think about the same thing of the privacy zealots. i thought, if you're not doing anything wrong, than why should you worry about it. the fact is though, in America we're supposedly innocent until proven guilty. a lot of these privacy issues seem to make the everyday citizen out to be guilty without having the proper legal procedures in place.

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?

Re:2 questions...

[costas]

You're assuming that it's to the interest of the retailer to leave the RFID active after you leave the store. That's just not the case. Let me clear up some RFID myths (and I am a retail systems consultant, BTW, this is my bread-and-butter):

1. RFIDs allow stores to track instances of products; i.e. a specific can of Coke (serial # so-and-so, part of case such-and-such that was shipped by Joe Q. Supplier) instead of the current UPC "class identifier", i.e. "this is just a can of Coke". Now, people read this and they just jump ahead and assume that a retailer, however big, is ready to pay millions and millions of dollars for infrastructure in their warehouses, distribution centers and ultimately stores, to track trillions of product instances. Wake-up call: no they're not, and no they will never be. At most they might track some informative 'class-attributes' to borrow an OOP term: things like supplier or lot number. The whole RFID-allows-instance-tracking is only useful for items whose management cost is much higher than its physical cost: think auto or airplane parts, drugs, etc; not Gap shirts. This will not go away for decades, even allowing for Moore's law to keep going and for lower associated IT costs following that same trend.
   
   
2. One added side-benefit of RFIDs is controling shrinkage, i.e. shoplifting. For that to actually work, and assuming instance-tracking is out of the question (see above) paid-off items have to be de-activated by the store itself upon checkout. Your questions are thus moot.
   
   
3. Besides shrinkage, lemme tell you a little secret: retailers are very, very, very competitive. Suppose they don't de-activate paid-off RFIDs and let the chips keep on responding to query signals. You know what will happen within a week of that being rolled out by someone like Wal-Mart? Target will set up a truck in a Wal-Mart parking lot and start measuring their sales. Do you think Wal-Mart will let that happen? And AFAIK there's no way to stop that from happening unless RFIDs come with built-in Public/Private Key infrastructure, which will only increase their managerial costs (a lot; just think of all the suppliers Wal-Mart and Target share!) re-inforcing my first point.
   

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...

let's don our foil hats

[poptones]

Well, yes... If you don't count that fact that stores keep track of every item you ever purchase, then no, there was no loss of privacy at all.

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.

Re:2 questions...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

RFID is here to stay

[Stonent1]

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.

Give it a break...

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

I suppose we shouldn't have invented telecommunications either... it put the Pony Express riders out of work...

Tim

Re:New way to advertise

[MartinB]

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.

What problem...

[Nexum]

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

Re:What problem...here it is

[adzoox]

Apparently, in your "enlightenment & understanding" you haven't read others concerns about RFID.

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.