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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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-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
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.
Before someone walks past an advertisement display, the display reads the RFID tags the person is carying, figures out things & brands the person might be interested in, and displays a targeted ad.
Mark this post. With RFID tags, this will happen. Just not right away, admittedly.
"Luncheon meats make the sawdust in your stomach explode."
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.
RFID tags need no power supply. They are powered by the reader. (From the radio waves emitted by it.)
From this page:
An RFID system consists of an antenna or coil, a transceiver and a transponder or tag. A radio signal emitted by the antenna activates the tag allowing it to be read and in some instances have data written to it.
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.
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Not saying its a good idea, but I just wonder if its floating out there
Just wrap your entire house in alunimum foil.
I don't see what the big deal is?
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
If anyone can get the ball rolling on RFID it is Wally World. They have lots of experience putting pressure on manufacturers and distributors. They will just tell the distributors NO RFID=No Wal-Mart. They have so much buying power they can always find someone to sell cheaper, or in this case someone cooperate w/ the RFID rollout. Check out this AlterNet article about Wal-Mart's questionable business and employment practices. It is titled How Wal-Mart is Remaking our World: Bullying people from your town to China
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
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.
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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Two things bugging me about these posts.
About drive-by scanning: I believe that you need an antenna that's the
square of the distance to read a tag. That's why there's a little plate reader
or handheld at the checkout and those walkthrus at the door are huge.
To read it from 5 feet, you need 25 sq feet of antenna.
The other thing is that the tag itself won't be zapped or deactivated.
Each will hold a key that IDs the product (all 10oz cans of peaches from
DelMonte will have that same key, like a barcode, probably that same UPC
number) and it will also have a key that's unique to the tag itself.
It won't be zapped, it will just change the status record of that item from
"stocked" to "sold" (or "missing from inventory but not sold").
Shoplift a sweater, and even if you get it out of the store, if you wear it
to the store a year later, you could get pinged.
As much as I hate the idea, you can't blame them for implementing it.
It opens up a huge world of possibilities and won't cost them that much.
With Wal-Mart's clout, it will be up to the vendor to eat the cost of the tag,
WM just has to implement the system and specs the tag. No doubt the tag
supplier will be a WM subsidiary.
Don't want to put in the tag in your product Mr. Vendor?
Sorry, we'll find someone else that will.
no, i think it's the fact that the issue i bring up is that if your purchases retain the rfid function upon leaving the store, they become useful to the entity that decides to listen and track them: wal-mart's clothing aisle that insists that this pair of pants will match that shirt your wearing...
Welcome to the future: DRM'ed clothing. Wear a non-matching shirt and pair of pants and you go to jail.
Fashion police! Come out with your khakis up!
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I suppose we shouldn't have invented telecommunications either... it put the Pony Express riders out of work...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.