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Wal-Mart Cancels RFID Trial
EABird writes "CNet is reporting that Wal-mart has announced that they have canceled the RFID trial they were planning. Unfortunately, it looks like they are canceling it to focus on the use of the same technology in the warehouses and distribution centers instead, and waiting for the cost to come down before using the RFIDs in the stores."
I wanted to get a bunch of RFID tags and use them to track my pets.
Oh well, is Tesco still going to use them?
Why is it "Unfortunate" that they're using a new tool for their warehousing? It sounds like you want them to abandon RFIDs altogether. Why the fear? Hell, they would never need to TELL you they're using them. How would you know? At least they're talking about it, eh?
"In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'" -Dostoevsky
Most of retail theft is by employees, what is the problem of wal mart protecting their products?
now, can i have one attached to keys, watch, my glasses. Would make a perfect Rememberall for us muggles.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
What exactly is "unfortunate" about this? If it doesn't make it into a consumer product at the point of sale, what FSCKING harm is it doing? (as far as it goes, even if it DOES make it into a consumer product at the point of sale, if 1) they disclose that it's there and optionally 2) they make it removeable (part of packaging, on a removable tag, etc) I fail to see how this is a problem. If they disclose and don't make it removeable, I don't have to buy that product, do I?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I don't shop at Walmart ever anyway. Even as a college student.
-- taking over the world, we are.
I don't have a problem with them using RFID for their internal inventory tracking. Sure, we'll be facing this same argument all over again when the price does drop enough to deploy in stores, but it can wait until then.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
WalMart sells billions to non-techies, mulletheads and other trash who just don't realize what a bad thing RFID can be for privacy. They won't listen to a few thousand angry geeks, I'm afraid to say, even if every geek refused to buy a Lindows PC from them.
Trolling is a art,
IAALS.
It will happen eventually, the cost/benefit is just too great to be ignored. With the volume that Walmart handles, it will only be a matter of time before the upstart cost will be acceptable for Walmart. Once they say do it, you can guarantee that all the manufacturers will play along, and then every other store can take advantage.
On a related note, I work at a hospital that is starting a barcode initiative on drugs. We only just now had the power to convince the drug companies that they need to supply us their drugs in individual doses, prelabeled and barcoded.
--D
Unfortunately, it looks like they are canceling it to focus on the use of the same technology in the warehouses and distribution centers instead, and waiting for the cost to come down before using the RFIDs in the stores.
Personally, I think it's a much better idea to use the technology in warehouses and distribution first. Hell, I can't beileve they'd even consider moving to a full scale store deployment before a long bit of testing in warehouses.
I think this is a smart move by Walmart, regardless of the precieved failure that may come by such bold claims, and then a back down.
http://use.perl.org
I suspect the claim that this is a cost saving measure is, itself, actually a face-saving measure. I suspect that they are making the claim so that they don't have to admit that they were wrong.
www.wavefront-av.com
What's wrong with this?
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
It's too expensive. There's an article about what others are doing here
it wouldn't be too bad if they would put them on the product like a size sticker for jeans etc (right on the front so you can see). That way the consumer can still take them off true your tagged till ya get home.
;)
but blah if your that paraniod take them off before ya ditch the store
Didn't they start censoring their video games and pulling magazines because customers complained? How is that not listening?
In other RFID news today, Wired is reporting that the EU may implant RFID tags into the Euro, basically eliminating the anonymous cash transaction.
For now, the cost is too high to put in smaller denominations, but I'm guessing that with the huge numbers of bills, the cost will eventually no longer be a deciding factor.
You can check it out here.
"Chances of RHIC-induced Armageddon are exceedingly rare, but... you never know." - MIT Physicist Bob Jaffe
This is interesting, elegant technology. It doesn't require batteries! It uses bits (not decimal)! We should be excited about the technology. Technology is always a good thing--problems will get sorted out later.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Imagine, for instance, walking down the sidewalk and having a high-tech sexy girl humanoid flash her breasts at you because it recognized the hotdog in your pants.
Now That's the kind of future I'd like to see. Go RFID!
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/webstory/?sn=224 8777&cat=chips here is hoping we can control it's use here in the USA
I can't tell whether or not the poster was completely aware of this and joking about it, but you CAN track your pets with RFID tags (and it's been possible for many years). Most animal hospitals offer this service, which they refer to as "microchipping your pet."
Animal shelters scan incoming pets for microchips and contact the owner. It's an ID tag that is hard to lose. The American Kennel Club recommends the procedure.
See this article for more information.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
waiting for the cost to come down before using the RFIDs in the stores."
Let's see.. completely revamp and replace all your cash registers and portable readers and software to use a product that you now have to pay $$$ for each item you sell...
or stick with barcodes, your equipment already supports it and to put a barcode on a product is free (I.E. your products ALREADY comes with barcodes on them.)
It's just plain old smart business sense...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It surely depends entirely on exactly how they are used in the warehouse. If every product is individually tagged, then many of the potential problems that are postulated for retail use still occur, albeit less easily.
If, however, they are using them as an alternative to barcoding on each crate (which is what the article suggests), then there is nothing unfortunate about this, and it strikes me as a perfectly good use of a technology which is not inherently evil.
I know I'm burning some karma here, but seriously, folks, for every dubious project the US undertakes, I hear about five in Europe.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Heavily practicing censorship was just the beggining. It's sad that Walmart can get away with such and things and still be so profitable, because in the end, they are still the cheapest.
I'm not sure it is because they are the cheapest.
I don't shop there because of their practices. I avoid the place like the plague.
However, I bet there are many, many, many more people that go to Walmart because of that specific reason.
Because they are gung-ho $$$ grabbing with a heavy dose of Christinanity thrown in.
http://use.perl.org
"The cost" of deploying RFID on store shelves is incredibly high - not because of the cost of the technology, but because of the costs involved in fighting people like us who don't want to see it happen without adequate privacy safeguards.
Like most corporation decisions, the true cost of a change is incurred by the PR department, the legal department, the operations managers, and the people who train low-level workers - not by the actual cost of the technology itself.
We may not see RFID in our lifetimes if we have groups organized to mount a "big brother inside" style campaign at the slightest whiff of seeing the tags enter consumer products.
If its in the product in the warehouse, wouldn't it still be in the product when it hit store shelves? Doesn't this mean that just because they arent using them for tracking in the store that they won't still be in the products you buy?
Complain and fret all you want but that's the way it is. The benefits are too great for retailers to ignore:
- easy to inventory...no more midnight teams counting stock and taping notes to the shelves
- no more scanning trouble (dirty scan window or munged barcode)
- meta information can help keep stock fresh...embed an expiration date and have the product tell you when it's expired
- reduce loss from fraudulent returns - stores could tell if a product was purchased at that chain.
Those are just a few simple examples of the usefulness of tags. I do have some questions though...
- What's the range of scanners? What if I buy a candy bar in one store, stick it in my pocket, then go to another store. Will the scanner pick up what's in my pocket?
- People seem to be worried about being tracked. What will washing do to the tags?
I'm not sure why this is a "rights" issue. Is there a right to privacy written somewhere?
>>How that unfortunate? (Score:0, Flamebait)
>>by Weeb (69841) on Wednesday July 09, @03:56PM (#6402515)
Appearantly the wallmart greeters have mod points left.
Look at grocery store membership cards. They've been out for almost a decade now. Privacy pundits decried that the stores would know WAY TOO MUCH sensitive information by correlating users to their groceries.
I think I've received two mailings in the last four years that said: "Mr. Miller! Here are some wonderful coupons that are tailored to your unique shopping needs!"
Both times the results were laughable. Not a single coupon was for somethind I used, or wanted to use, or might have been persuaded to use, based on the data they've 'gathered'.
For the tinfoil hats out there, if my experience in Government is any indication, Big Brother doesn't have the resources or money or true knowledge to abuse this information the way you think they will.
When was the last time cookies were used to betray your privacy? They were a big hot nasty item in the near recient past too.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I'm surprised RFID hasn't made bigger (or perhaps more public) waves in the transport and logistics industry. Embedding RFID tags in con notes or container labels could potentially dramatically cut the cost of handling and tracking freight.
Further - being attached to something that's generally disposed after receipt - the technology doesn't raise the same level of privacy issues as it does when used for consumer/retail purposes.
a world in progress...
They pulled a couple of 'men's magazines', Maxim and Stuff because a few people complained.
They sell (unmarked) censored versions of music because the company find them morally wrong.
Consequently, I can't buy music there, since everything I buy has a 'parent advisory' on it.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Honest question. How is this any different (from a privacy perspective) from serial numbers on bills? I don't know about Euros, but US dollars have them, and nobody seems to think they're that much of a threat to privacy. When you spend a particular bill at a store, how can anyone down the line know that you once had it, or that you were the one that spent it there?
In other RFID news today, Wired is reporting that the EU may implant RFID tags into the Euro, basically eliminating the anonymous cash transaction.
To stop counterfeit bills, not to stop anonymous cash transactions. You honestly think someone is going to setup a database and link all of the bills against your CITIZEN.USER_PK1 unique ID number just to make sure you can't be anonymous?
Sometimes I just get utterly confused as to what you people expect. Why do you guys even leave the house? I got a news flash for you -- you still don't have anonymous cash transactions because people still see you! Yeah, you better go saw your face off as it's a way of identifying you.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
There's been a lot of talk here about RFIDs lately. Mostly (justifiably) negative talk. However, this is okay, for now, right? Does anyone here have a problem with the use of RFIDs in the warehouses (assuming they don't trickle down to the consumers)?
I do see the privacy problems with RFIDs, but I'm not really worried about it... yet. I don't care if they use RFIDs in their warehouses/stores, as long as any items I buy do not have an active RFID when I leave (not that I shop at, or have ever even seen, a Walmart). RFIDs do have legitimate (anti-theft) uses. They have a use for inventory tracking/control. They could be used in corporate offices to keep track of various items (laptops/desktops [maybe], other electronics, books, etc).
RFIDs also have other uses, outside the traditional business realm, such as in ecology and field biology. They can be used (theoretically) in some tasks in meteorology.
Yes, they have "immoral" uses, but so does P2P software. It should still be legal to manufacture and use RFIDs, just like it should be legal to write and use P2P code. Don't sound like a paranoid kook, be rational about all of this. Write to your local representative what's bad about RFIDs, and what sort of legislation would help curb the privacy invasion that will inevitably come along with widespread use. Better yet, try getting an appointment with any of your local representatives to discuss it in person (not too likely, but it can happen). Now is the time to get this taken care of, because it will soon be too late. Once something gets in motion, it's much much harder to legislate it out (again, this is similar to P2P).
Note: I didn't read the article.
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
It's only a matter of time before they start implanting RFIDs into Anonymous Cowards...
The local grocery chain store just opened at the end of June after extensive renovations... more health food, world-themed aisles, larger selections, and a cleaner overall store.
Soon after opening, yellow signs appeared on all registers stating that they were beginning to track inventory using a new technology. Items would have to be scanned before brought outside (otherwise security gates at the exit would go wild in some fashion, I guess), and the technology was "not harmful... comparable to FM radio signals". Given the choice of comparison, I imagine the switch is on to RFID tags on all products there. Either that, or it's a huge bluff; I saw some woman walk out of the store without stuff on the bottom of her cart scanned in and nothing happened.
I am not who I say you are.
...we won't need humans at all to retail.
Inventory, security, checkout... it seems every new tech that is supposed to help also intentionally takes jobs away from humans.
Who are the ones that are going to shop at Walmart when every low paying job is taken by more efficient, more cost effective technology such as this?
McDonalds is testing self-ordering kiosks, etc...
Dunno, but I sure see a future where the only good jobs will be in R&D and maintenance of these techs.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Note: if the tool itself also contains an RFID marker, you may need to buy two...
To be completely honest, they've been doing a good job of tracking us anyway over the past decade. Of course, this is a bad thing, so it's nice to know that we won't have an electronic bulls' eye stuck on our package of Sam's Peanut Butter Cups for the time being.
Still, keep in mind that everything we buy with that special discount card from your local grocery store is linked to your name, address, telephone number, date of birth, annual salary, previous purchases, purchase trends, purchase times, and favorite cashiers. I would mind heavily if they didn't pay me for mine - of course, that's because I work at Meijer for mine, and I now have an associates' degree, so the tracking can be more easily rectified by finding a new job and leaving the 10% discount behind.
I would recommend finding tinfoil bags for your groceries soon, however.
Nicholas Eckert
vidstudent
I know that sounds kind of far fetched, but aren't there steps that can be taken to effectively neutralize any threats to privacy resulting from RFID tags? Don't you think it would be fun for some big chain to throw lots of money into some technology like that to find that it can be trivialized easily by customers exercising their rights.
On the other hand, if I were kidnapped or lost in the wilderness my family and friends could find me easily. Think about it, that guy wouldn't have had to cut his leg off to get free from the boulder if he had been tagged.
I am sick of criminals fighting every advance that comes along because it will make their criminal behavior easier to trace. it is time the honest, god-fearing people stand up for OUR rights.
wait, people still pay for music? ;p
;]
joking aside, I think it's nice that a big company sells the censored versions (should be labeled as such though) because, beleive it or not, some people want the music without the filth. Course, when I purchase music, I just head over to my local music stores. It's good to support a local store and get uncensored music at the same time
YOU SUCK BALLS!
What exactly is "unfortunate" about this? If it doesn't make it into a consumer product at the point of sale, what FSCKING harm is it doing? (as far as it goes, even if it DOES make it into a consumer product at the point of sale, if 1) they disclose that it's there and optionally 2) they make it removeable (part of packaging, on a removable tag, etc) I fail to see how this is a problem. If they disclose and don't make it removeable, I don't have to buy that product, do I?
Do mods even read the article, the article summary, or the post they are moderating?
This was moderated as Insightful. Heavily moderated as Insightful.
The Summary was saying it was unfortunate that they are NOT deploying the new technology.
You are upset at the summary for dissing the new technology. They are not.
They are saying it's unfortunate that it isn't being deployed.
How did this get modded up so high?
http://use.perl.org
Is this time to take care of consumer opposition, such as that voiced by CASPIAN?
This was mentioned in a recent artice about confidential Autoidcenter documents on the web, where they planned to identify and eliminate opposition to 'green tags'.
No kidding, Christians you say? I'll never shop there again. What with their love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek. How can they face themselves?
And a business that's in it for the money. No wonder you hate them. And I thought all this Wal-mart bashing was irrational. Thanks for setting me straight.
To stop counterfeit bills, not to stop anonymous cash transactions. You honestly think someone is going to setup a database and link all of the bills against your CITIZEN.USER_PK1 unique ID number just to make sure you can't be anonymous?
If some marketing schmuck gets it into his head that he can make money by selling that data, I guarantee you that, yes, someone IS going to set up a database.
Regardless, suddenly it makes it very easy for government or stalkers or anyone else with an interest in you (healthy or not) to track your every move - and there's not a whole lot you can do about it!!!
The problem is that it's too easy to abuse and anyone who follows slashdot should know by now - "if it can be abused, it's guaranteed that some @$$hole is going to abuse it." And the corollary: "the bigger the ratio of profit-to-effort, the bigger the @$$hole who will use it without regard for the 'annoyance/danger to others' factor" (see spam, SCO, etc.).
--AC
Didn't they start censoring their video games and pulling magazines because customers complained? How is that not listening?
He meant listening to us.
http://use.perl.org
Wired is reporting that the EU may implant RFID tags into the Euro, basically eliminating the anonymous cash transaction.
How exactly does that "eliminate the anonymous cash transaction?" Newsflash: CURRENCY ALREADY HAS SERIAL NUMBERS ON IT. The fact that the bill has a number is useless unless they know the details of every transaction in which it was ever exchanged. If you lend me $20 and I spend it at Subway and get $10 back in change... how on earth would they ever track any of that? How would the Sub-lady know that it was me who bought that sub?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Personally, I was a little disappointed when I read it and found out that they weren't cancelling it due to consumer backlash. That would be the ultimate victory.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
the EU may implant RFID tags into the Euro, basically eliminating the anonymous cash transaction.
How does this stop anything being anonymous? Are people going to ask for ID every time you buy everything and enter it into a DB? What about the thousands of establishments that won't bother with the RFID reader as many currently don't bother with a UV lamp? There won't be a 'data trail' to follow back to the cash machine, and I doubt the cash machines would even scan the notes on the way out (after all, they already know they aren't fake).
Yes, but you can easily assume that the only person that sees you is the person you're doing the transaction with who is "trusted". I certainly expect governments to track bills of "suspects" which quickly becomes everyone when technology allows.
Personally I don't worry, because money is only used because people assign value to it. People can just as easily assign value to paper without RFID tags, or little glass beads. In the end people that want to make anonymous transactions will.
Also, contrary to this post's title, Wal-Mart still plans a major implementation of the technology in its distribution centers.
In other RFID news today, Wired is reporting that the EU may implant RFID tags into the Euro, basically eliminating the anonymous cash transaction.
Except for the fact that no stores actually check these tags. And for the information paranoid it's a lot easier to trade cash around (swap with a friend, get change from a street kiosk) than to swap credit cards with someone every time you make a purchace =P.
You're comment "How would you know?" points out a big part of the problem. RFID tags can be/are hidden very effectively (including manufactured INTO the soles of shoes). As it stands now, destroying the RFID tag (assuming you can find/get to it) is the only way you can be sure that it will not continue to allow you and your purchases to be tracked. (Microwaving doesn't work since it would cause the chip and your items to catch fire). Without clear legislation mandating the removability of RFID chips post-purchase, the marketplace (which is notably non-privacy minded) and what they think they can get away with will decide the continued usage of these tags. And that's unfortunate.
They *do* label edited music - it says "EDITED" in big letters on the UPC tag
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
Passive RFID has a much lower cost-per-unit and it's better in many other ways as well. It's perfect for currency as it cannot be duplicated.
I can't figure out why Walmart isn't jumping all over it.
To eliminate anonymous transactions they would first have to ask for ID before either giving change, or accepting cash. Identifying the bill doesn't identify the person who holds it (notice that all US notes carry a unique number as well; ooh! they are watching us!) If you want to theorize that the data could all be collected and used for central tracking of the flow of public money then you'll have to admit that the same thing is possible for any serially numbered printed bill (indeed serial numbers have been used in the US to trace criminal money laundering operations.) The EC just wants to make their bills harder to forge.
--
BitTorrent in C -- LibBT
http://www.sf.net/projects/libbt
"Are you just happy to see me or is that ..."
{SCANS PANTS - NO IEM FOUND}
"Oh you ARE just happy to see me!"
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
It's different because people can't scan you to see, how much money you carry at the moment with only serial numbers.
This use makes sense. If they can make their warehouse management and shipping more efficient, then I am all for it.
Would there even be any significant non-sinister benefits of leaving the RFID tag in after the customer has purchased the item?
It has been mentioned that it might make returns easier, but that is a benefit I am willing to live without.
I hope we do not see the day when returns are allowed only for RFID tag embedded products. Certainly legislation will be passed to prevent this as the potential draws nearer.
Are there any other potential non-sinister benefits of leaving the RFID tag in after purchase?
The sentinel tags have hit another wall, but it is only inevitable for them to break through the core of our society. Their armies are only growing in strength while we are forced to wait.
-
And the Angel said unto me, "These are the cries of the carrots! The cries of the carrots!"
Regardless, suddenly it makes it very easy for government or stalkers or anyone else with an interest in you (healthy or not) to track your every move - and there's not a whole lot you can do about it!!!
And tell me, how the in the hell is tracking money supposed to make this different? You think it's easier to setup RFID trackers (or break into the imaginary boogie-man database) than to just follow someone around?
The problem with the privacy nuts is they don't think past the "Ah, they get my information!" stage.
@$$hole
You fucking idiot.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
If you get into a dispute or a lawsuit, you may find that the other side has a lot of revealing information that it will try to use against you. When a shopper slipped and fell in a Von's supermarket, Von's used the records from his Von's Club card to try to show that he bought a lot of liquor and, by implication, was probably a drunk.
When was the last time cookies were used to betray your privacy? They were a big hot nasty item in the near recient past too.
Same page; search for "hotmail." Is it due to cookies alone? No - it's because of misuse and careless application of the technology. Never underestimate the incompetence and corruption of others.
Which isn't to say I've never had a "club card." I have - but it sure didn't have my name on it. And when I used it I paid in cash. And when I moved away it went in the trash.
Which is not to say I have the same irrational fear of RFID as many others. I don't sweat it because :
I always pay cash
and...
I own many hammers
regardless of what they are saying, it is not a cost issue.
Do you honestly think they didn't reun cost analysis before the first announcement was made?
This is the "pacification of the consumer" stage. they want people to be apathetic so they can control how they are used to manipulate the consumer, i.e. us. It is only a metter of time before we find ourselfs in a situation where we get marketed to in our homes, start seeing price adjustment based on what we are wearing.
once everybody is wearing them, it only make sense to put monitors in key places, just in case something goes wrong? right?
If you are a minority, you should be fghting for protections against RFID.
Ned I remind you we live at a time when the cost of an item may be dictated by what browser your using? or that 'harmless' cookies are used to track where you go and send you 'marketing advice'?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You can go to any vet and have your pet "chipped".
Null
Yes, but you can easily assume that the only person that sees you is the person you're doing the transaction with who is "trusted". I certainly expect governments to track bills of "suspects" which quickly becomes everyone when technology allows.
Never trust anybody that didn't give birth to you or gives birth to your children. It would be next to impossible to track bills, as people would setup laundering services instantaneously to get "clean" bills. It's ridiculous to think it's even remotely feasible to track people on cash.
We already have a unique identifier in each bill that could be easily fed into a computer: The serial number. Easy to scan using optical technology and track it.
It's just ridiculous that people think that RFIDs in freaking money is an attack on freedom. But if you do, send me all your money and for a low price of 10% I will send you guaranteed clean money not linked to you, with no records.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
I think the writer meant that it was unfortunate for the RFID industry that Walmart is backing down from the more ambitious plan; it's not exactly great PR any time a client downgrades their plans. Walmart was supposedly the main power behind UPC barcodes and hence their every move is watched...and if they're backing down and going for a less-ambitious implementation, it might be interpreted as a sort of warning flag to the business world that maybe RFID isn't quite ready for primetime.
It's not a terribly surprising move, and is pretty intelligent, honestly; this is sort of the retail equivalent of the "staging" concept in IT. Walmart's forging new ground, so they're taking it one step at a time. Warehousing operations are more centralized, there's fewer units of equipment than for a POS system change, and so on. It's also a little easier to keep it transparent to end users.
Please help metamoderate.
Why do you guys even leave the house?
;)
Telecommuting is a wonderful thing
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
It'll make this site: Track your dollars A lot easier run.
(Disclaimer: I am affiliated with the MIT Auto-ID Center.)
All these privacy concerns people bring up, about people tracking you down are really overrrated.
Why?
The stores (walmart and others) have the same concerns. They preferably just want their own scanners to recognize their own products. Why? If an average joe can create a reader that identifies the actual product, what's to stop their competitor from parking a van outside their store with a powerful reader? The last thing a store wants to do is let anyone else knows their inventory levels. They're practically on the same boat.
and why won't they have the incentive to kill the tags when you leave the store? If you're talking about Walmart, people that buy clothes from walmart most likely will go BACK to walmart at some point in the future wearing those clothes. The last thing they need is a line of 100 house-wifes lining up at the customer service center wondering why they were accused of stealing.
I worked there one summer in college, and when I was in electronics, I usually looked for the edited marks (they're on the top sticker as well) and would try to confirm that the customer understood that the music was edited, occasionally someone would decide not to buy, but most people didn't care.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I thought these chips could only be tracked from a few feet away? Either they implement a tracking network of scanners every five feet in all the aisles, or put more expensive transmitters in the products. I don't see how either way would be a cost effective method of security.
I beleive (and it is ambigous) that the article poster was saying 'It's unfortunate because Wal-Mart didn't kill the idea of the RFID completely'. The concept of the RFID is very much disfavored by the Slashdot crowd, and the poster was simply playing to that.
I honestly didn't read it that way at all.
If that's the case, sorry.
http://use.perl.org
(just in case someone catches my userid, yes, I'm not in the service now, now I'm in sales.)
I've been selling manufacturing equipment for boxes for about 6 years.
RFID tags have many, many uses in warehousing. The idea that an RFID will somehow automatically lead to an invasion of privacy is silly.
Sometimes RFID tags are used so the forklift operator knows what's on a pallet they're moving. The traditional way is to hang a piece of paper from the load. However, paper can and does fall off, get ripped, etc.
RFID can also be used on physical portals to measure traffic. A huge amount of savings can be made in a warehouse by knowing where the physical bottlenecks are. The most cost-effective and reliable way to do this is a system of non-invasive sensing and automatic data collection. Ever been in warehousing operations? There's a LOT going on and it's easy to lose stuff. I've had trouble finding a shipment at a customs depot that was only garage-sized. Everything is a different size, shape, and appearance.
Will the FUD never stop?
Ever buy something like a power tool, CD, or memory strip from a retailer? There's an inventory control strip in there, right? Duh.
Beyond that, do some investigation to the problems of bar codes. Betcha didn't know there's a very limited number of options there which are basically exhausted. Ever consider the sensing difference between barcodes and RFID? Hmm...maybe you could know what something is and what's INSIDE without having to physically touch the box.
Yes, I know there are barcode readers that work at a distance. They don't work THROUGH other boxes. How do you know what's inside a mixed pallet of boxes which is sealed with plastic wrap? How better to detect a discrepancy between shipping documents and the actual items than by non-invasively knowing AND COUNTING what's inside such a mixed pallet?
RFID and other non-invasive knowledge technologies don't automatically mean you are being spied on. It's far more likely a way to increase efficiency and lower costs. We DO live in a price-competitive society, don't we?
As far as the reply about tracking what you buy. Uh...ever hear of credit cards and so-called discount cards at retailers?
Using RFID's for warehousing and distribution is a good idea. streamlining the process of pawning off garbage on some jerk!!
If I leave my wad of 1$ bills in a bag, no one can track the movement of any individual bill.
However if I can scan the bill from a distance I can see where each bill is going.
An enterprising mugger could even stand on the corner with a scanner and pick out the richer people to mug!
Wired is reporting that the EU may implant RFID tags into the Euro, basically eliminating the anonymous cash transaction.
So previously, Euro bills did not have serial numbers?
RFIDs are nothing more than electronic serial numbers.
Nope. You don't mean that.
What you mean is that most shrink is caused by employees. This includes theft, but also includes things like cashiers failing to ring everything in a cart up, ringing up something cheap instead of a more expensive item, failing to detail recieve every item that is delivered, breaking an item and failing to report it as damaged, using an item in the store and failing to report it as store used, issuing too much money for a return, incorrectly pricing an item, etc.
Some shrink is caused by theft. Percentage wise, not a whole lot in high volume stores.
Most theft in high volume stores is from outsiders. Theft, however, is not nearly as important a number as shrink.
FYI, shrink is the total retail value of all items that should be in the store and sellable, minus the actual retail value of the items inventoried in the store. It's the difference between the value of the inventory the store thinks it should have, minus the value of the inventory it thinks it counted when it did an inventory.
Of course, there are many mistakes made during all of these processes for a high volume store such as Wal-Mart or Home Depot, resulting in a shrink number that can never be precise, due to so many errors in the inventory process.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Not only is your comment flaimbait, but your site doesn't work to boot!
-Valiss
There is some to a lot of talk about you may or may not be able to disable RFIDs, e.g. remove physically, jam, utterly fry/nuke/EMP them, scramble the tag ID.
If the last is possible (limited EMP), isn't the drive to come up with a disabler stronger? One could imagine walking into a Walmart or any other store with RFIDs and with a wand, pass over an entire stack of inventory, frying the stack. Little robotic checker comes along to do an inventory scan, and lo and behold, the stuff isn't there.
If they still have the bar codes, they could of course inventory by hand or do it the real way (count 'em), but this seems like one could wreck havoc throughout a store if they (intended to) depended heavily on RFIDs for general inventory checks.
The bar code equivalent would entail much more work, such as the entire removal of the product (shoplifting) or placing stickers or rubbing away the bar code, not easy to do to stacks of product.
Wal-Mart made a decision based solely on cost? What has this world come to?
My girlfriend has the misfortune of working retail as a result of the wonderful job market, and I am amazed at how many stories she has of people trying and steal stuff from the store - that they actually catch - and the amount of effort (read: cost) put into preventing theft. I bought a wallet at their store, and their security had hidden a security tag in it, and put so much effort into doing so, that it took four TSA agents a combined total of over 30 minutes to figure out what was making my wallet beep.
RFID means you don't have to pay the costs of the product that "walks" out the store or as much to cover the cost of the people who keep the product from "walking" out the store.
As for people knowing what you buy - newsflash, they already do, unless you pay with cash, and if you're paying with cash, they have no one to match the RFID data up to anyway. If you're not scared of barcodes there's no reason to be scared of RFID.
paintball
Given that a serial number is on every bill, it's not anonymous now if someone's willing to take the initiative.
Vote for Pedro
Funny you mention that. Mine isn't completely anonymous, but was given to me by my mother when I went off to college. So, the grocery store in question believes a menopausal woman living in a rich neighborhood has been buying nothing but alcohol, red bull, and top raman for the past few years.
Messing with their data is much more fun than simply being anonymous.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
I'm always wondering why doesn't people use Java for such large developments... If tomorrow RFID is declared illegal because of the Privacy implications (very unlikely though), you just reinstall FreeBSD and keep on going.
Multi-platform is an invaluable freedom on such projects where deployment and operating costs are so high
*.sig: No such file or directory
You thought wrong.
I don't care if they use RFID to track inventory. They can even do it in their stores if they want. It will be a good way to reduce theft and overhead concievably reducing prices for us all. However, what I don't want are RFID's that are imbedded in the product that I buy, and not just it's packaging. The nice thing about a UPC, aside from the lack of distant tracking, is that you can throw it away after you've purchased the product. If the same approach is used for RFIDs, throw it away after you buy it, then who cares.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
There's still the question of connecting the serial numbers to the consumer, so I agree that it's not a huge deal... yet. The next thing we know, driver's licenses will contain RFID chips.
There's also the concern that anyone with the right equipment would be able to tell how much cash you had on your person... imagine a mugger walking down the street with a handheld scanner, trying to find the most profitable mark.
Username taken, please choose another one.
Use a unique identifier RFID on piece of clothes-X to broadcast that number when exiting and entering the store...
It would be TRIVIAL to attach that Unique ID Number to the Credit Card Number or Bank Account Number of the person that bought the article of clothing. Cross reference that with all the other RFID tags on that same person and a VERY logical deduction could be made that the person in the store is you, the one that bought all that stuff...
Then, you nonchalantly walk about picking up this and picking up that and before you know it*, as you walk through the stores ads for all the items you "know and love" will start appearing on the screens that are right in front of you beamed cheerfully at you by the Wal-Mart TV Network... In time, those same ads could be calling out your name to entice you further...
The technology to do all of that exists today. The only thing keeping it from happening is that everyone is afraid to give it a go... Once one company does it and nobody complains... Another will do it, then another and another until it is everywhere. There wouldn't be any stopping it because there aren't any laws against it today and if you think that the average citizen will be able to lobby Congress against such a thing when nearly EVERY corporation benefits from such technology...
Well, you are living in a dreamworld.
(* The Before you Know it, is a flash-forward ten or so years...)
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
The big problem in retail stores is theft, because they let the public roam the aisles. Stuff on the shelves represents tied-up money, so store inventories are kept to a minimum, therefore keeping track of stuff in the stores is not that big a deal. They already use tags to deter theft of big-ticket items such as health and beauty aids. RFID will not help them with this problem any more than the existing tags, so there is not much incentive to use them there. No worries, at least yet.
I've seen quite a few responses, some from people ostensibly in the RFID biz, saying these are potentially a GoodThing. Help control inventory, keep costs down, far too much data to track, etc, etc.
All that may be well and good, but we do not know, nor can we predict, all the future uses and abuses of these things.
And I trust retailers to do the right thing even less than I trust the government.
10-20 years from now, how will retailers use all that data? Remember, they will have vastly more powerful databases by then, so that volume of data may well be trivial.
How will the person who cracks into that database use the data?(Not if, but when). Who will he sell it to? Knowledge of what clothes you buy is one thing. Who cares. What about all the other stuff you buy?
Tools, fertilizer, pen lasers, OMG! He's building a weapon!!
15 years ago, could we have predicted Echelon scanning all emails? Or abuses of your social security number, as regards to identity theft. Or wardriving?
Might we have made those tools stronger and put more restrictions on them from the start, instead of just dumping it on the public, and not contemplating how to harden them against future abuse.
Individual item RFID's may be a GoodThing for retailers, but I remain dubious as to their good intentions for me. Show me the benefits for me, and then let's discuss the possible drawbacks. Let's weigh ALL the factors before implementation. Any area found lacking, let's fix it.
Until I see some serious safeguards, I will fight tooth and nail against implementation.
To stop counterfeit bills, not to stop anonymous cash transactions.
Once a system is in place, it's relatively easy to make it do other things. If you're worried about governments having too much power, you start opposing the systems they are setting in place instead of just their intentions for those systems.
you still don't have anonymous cash transactions because people still see you!
And people can't inquire about my purchasing habits anonymously because they'll have to talk to people that saw me. That seems much different to me than running a database query.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Because the tool is invasive, silly. Using it in the warehouse first, where you get no use out of it, won't lessen your loss of privacy. It won't keep them from putting an ID machine under the counter or any other place where your ID can be matched with stuff on your body, like your shoes, wallet and belt. Hell, your new "smart" credit card could sing out too. By gradual phasing in, they are making the technology seem "inevitable".
Here are a few things I thought of you might not want others to know about. When you see concerns like that addressed in a meaningful way, such a system can be trusted. You won't, so it should not.
It's not inevitable. You can outlaw the practice and we should.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So, all of you anti-RFID people, who are opposing this cool technology because of its potential for misuse, please answer me this:
The RIAA, MPAA and others are opposed to P2P technology due to its potential for misuse. So how is your anti-RFID stance any different? From what I understand, there are plenty of very legitimate uses for RFID technology.
There is a way to track our bills.
Your credit card, shoes, belt, wallet, wedding ring, gold tooth, driver's license and PDA might all be singing at the same time. If all of them are linked to you, so is the cash. Don't think cash with or without RFIDs will give you privacy if RFIDs become widespread.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The Fourth Ammendment, re: unreasonable searches and seizures, was originally interpreted to be limitation only on the power of the federal government. It has subsequently been interpreted to also be a limitation on the power of state governments. This is referred to as the "state action requirement." It is *not* a limitation on power of private entities, such as Wallmart. Neither the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Fourth Ammendment, nor the Constitutional Right to Privacy inferred from Fourth Ammendment apply to this situation.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Recently, much work has been going into passive tags. Passive tags have very limited memory, a read range of a few inches, and no battery, but relatively cheap. The tags reflect energy from the reading device. The main challenge with passive tags is that they tend to step on each others' signal when read. In addition, the very limited range makes them (for now) about as useful as barcodes.
These obstacles will probably be overcome in time. A clear read range of about several feet,a memory of around 64 bytes, and a cost in cents would revolution transportation and distribution. The vision is to be able to walk into a store, throw your purchases into an intelligent cart, and walk out the door. The cart would keep track of your purchases and a door reader would read the inventory off the cart. Your identity would come from a smart card on your person. Your checking account would automatically debited and you are done.
Obviously there is much room for misuse of this technology. The main problem will be tying you to your purchases. However, if you make retail purchases now and pay with a credit card, there is a record somewhere of everything you have purchased. I pay for almost everything with cash now.
Passive tags will not be readable from any distance for the foreseeable future in my estimation. A simple "kill" box at the register or doorway is very possible, however. The only concern that I have now is the same as with barcodes. Paying for purchases with a credit card leaves an electronic record of everything that is bought.
A private company choosing not to sell something is NOT censorship. My local Best Buy doesn't carry german sheisse porn either.
The problem with it, is that it is open to abuse. Suppose a not so friendly government gets to run the country for a few years and does want to track the movement of cash.
It makes it a law that every store has to have a reader, which sends the information to the big government database and it also makes sure the cash machines register which notes they give out to who. Et voila, you can follow what most of the people in the country are doing with the money.
Besides, in general it's a bad idea. I don't like walking around with a big sign on me saying I've got 100 euro's in my pocket for everyone with a cute little scanner. I don't care wether they've got good or bad intentions.
Both times the results were laughable. Not a single coupon was for somethind I used, or wanted to use, or might have been persuaded to use, based on the data they've 'gathered'.
Yeah, my grocery receipts and direct mailings are always trying to get me to buy brands I think suck. So, like you, I get nothing out of them knowing my credit card and checking account numbers, prefered method of birth control, medications, brand and literature preferences. All RFID will add to this is the imposiblitiy of concealing private problems, habits and thougts. When the RFID's in my shoes link me to my cahs purchase of condoms and my wife's pill purchases, I'll have no idea why my insurance premiums have gone up. I don't even want to think of what drugstors will do with RU-84 purchase information.
No alarm here, I lead an open and honest life. I love Big Brother and know he will take care of me in the place that knows no darkness.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'm sure that consumer level RFID tag readers will be widely available, so you'd be able to scan your items to see if they have one. And if they don't you can put on one so you can find it once you lose track : P
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You honestly think someone is going to setup a database and link all of the bills against your CITIZEN.USER_PK1 unique ID number just to make sure you can't be anonymous?
Fuck yes I do! Ever hear of the Total Information Awareness project? The government and industry is investing a great deal of time and money for the implicit purpose of tracking people. Face recognition at the superbowl, traffic cameras, gait recognition software, black boxes in cars, GPS units in cars for taxation. And the documents from the RFID industries own website talk about meetings thay've had with Tom ridge.
RFID is a technology designed EXPLICITLY for tracking things. Do you believe they would go through all the trouble of putting them in the money supply without actually using them for their intended purpose?
They are mounted in the front of the unit, mostly commercial and I don't know of any company that really used them.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
The fear is that the serial numbers (presented with RFIDs) could be checked automatically without the holders knowledge (the bill could still be in your wallet).
But, of course, to actually track who used the bill you'd have to track where the bill was in relation to the holder, at all times.
The further fear is that if you also have RFIDs in all your clothes, the same scanner that scans the bills in your wallet could also scan the ones in your clothes and in most cases get a good picture of who was spending that bill.
Of course I buy almost every thing with my debit card, so *they*, whoever *they* are, can already track my spending history, just ask my bank.
p.s. THEY LIVE
i don't like my old sig.
I dont think so. I think you misread.
What you saying makes sense but I dont think there is a chance in hell that the story submitter was feeling bad for RFID companies when he called this situation unfortunate. Read the sentence again. He introduces the 'unfortunate' adjective with the idea that they are STILL using it.
And as for the parent.parent post: if you first reaction is "what is to fear from them using it in their warehouse?" then you obviously haven't given any thought as to what is to fear and thusly you are in no position to critisize those who have. I know it's hard but try and THINK before you post.
Actually, according to a little research, it's because there is so much under one roof. You can shop for quite a bit there without having to go to 4 different places.
The prices due to volume are also incentive, but by no means the only one.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
You don't HAVE to sign up for one of those grocery store club things... You HAVE to wear clothes in order to function in today's society...
Do you see where one is a choice and the other isn't? Do you see how one takes away your freedom to walk places anonymously and the other allows you to be anonymous?
I see the difference and I am not going to "get over it" because Scott McNealy says to. Who the hell is he to say whether or not our anonymous privacy of being able to go out in public in peace, alone and with no bothers (or people tracking everywhere we go) is something we should just give up?
I tell you what, if you want to worship and swear fealty be a serf of Scott McNealy, go right ahead. Personally, I rather enjoy being able to go into public anonymously, pay cash and still stay anonymous, if I feel like it. If I choose to identify myself with a purchase by writing a check, using a grocery club card, paying with credit or by telling the person behind the counter all of my contact information at the point of sale, that is my choice.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
If they really wanted to do that, they'd just burn every euro, and force people to use credit cards or bank cards or whatever. Now, putting RFID chips into money wouldn't stop the anon transfer of money, because how would they know if I gave a bill to some other person? They would be able to get an idea how the money flowed from place to place, but they would not know who had the money. (that is to say, unless they required everyone to carry an RFIDd ID card, which I doubt would be politically feasible, even in Europe.)
Otoh, what you could do would be to instantly count all the money you had in your wallit or whatever, which could be quite usefull. It would also cut down on counterfitting, and you could always just blast your bills in a microwave for a few seconds to kill the RFID...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Yes, but you can easily assume that the only person that sees you is the person you're doing the transaction with who is "trusted". I certainly expect governments to track bills of "suspects" which quickly becomes everyone when technology allows.
Or anyone who saw you transfer the money. It would be no different with RFID, the only people who would know about it would be those who had RFID receivers without a few feet of the transfer, and the RFID receivers wouldn't even tell you that it was transferred, only that it was there. You would also not know who was who unless you recognized one of the people.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Suppose a not so friendly government gets to run the country for a few years and does want to track the movement of cash.
Well, that's changing the goal posts, but two points - one, they'd have to do it Europe-wide, and secondly such an unscrupulous government could add the tags anyway, we just make it a little easier
I don't like walking around with a big sign on me saying I've got 100 euro's in my pocket for everyone with a cute little scanner.
Well, they'd have to get pretty damn close, but apart from that, this is a valid concern. It'll probably lead to people carrying less cash in pretty short order.
And people can't inquire about my purchasing habits anonymously because they'll have to talk to people that saw me.
They couldn't track you even if they did know the RFID number of the money they used, because there would be no way to correlate cash to individuals.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"Since there are a large number of legitimate privacy issues (even acknowledged by the organization behind RFIDs) that have not remotely addressed yet, further usage of RFIDs is in general a negative."
What are you, some kind of Luddite? Instead of trying to stop a useful logistics tool because you are afraid of privacy implications, why not see it as an opportunity. Someone needs to invent a scanner for the privacy conscious consumer that identifies and fries RFID chips. That way we can have our low retail prices and our privacy too.
Then you can invent a detector that detects your scanner and sell THAT to stores that want to prevent people from disabling RFIDs in the store and then shoplifting the items.
Walmart had very little impact on the UPC bar-code standard. In fact, it took until 1988 for 90% of Walmart's stores to use barcode/scanner technology. Many other chains at that point were 100% scanner driven.
IBM fought the UPC battle, but the industry as a whole was starving for it (everyone had their own standard up to that point). Kroger was the first large scale test of scanners in supermarkets, and a small store in Ohio I believe was the first to use the new UPC standard. A pack of gum was the first thing scanned.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
The difference is that you have to actually look at the bill to see the serial numbers. RFIDs can be read from a distance. So, theoretically, a store could have a scanner by the door that'll turn on a light somewhere when someone with a large amount of cash walks in so the salespeople can treat them extra nice.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
That would sure take a lot of the challenge out of WheresGeorge.
I hate carrying cards in my wallet, so it's nice that Safeway can use a phone number. And the only number I use is my friend's that was disconnected 4 years ago. So do all of our friends. Let's see what happens if I put it on slashdot.
If anyone wants the safeway club discounts, feel free to try this number:
503.626.3217
If they notice you're not the name on the receipt just say that's your roomate who owns the house. And if you're not in 503 arecode just say you're visiting or just moved there and have yet to get your own number. Or something.
J
Radio waves do not pass through conductors. Want to steal something from a radio enabled store? Just wrap it in aluminum foil. It'd stop those ping-tags too.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Revelation 13 Tomson
The time is coming! Be prepared!
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
Can't wait for RFID to be deployed (embedded) in everything. Can't wait to walk through my room and take an inventory of what the hell is in there.
Can't wait to grab what I want from a store, walk through a detector, slide in my credit card, and ok the purchase as I walk out.
Can't wait for sooooo many cool uses of the technology to come from it.
But most of all, I can't wait for it to be so widespread and accepted that it STOPS BEING PUT IN THE YRO COLUMN OF SLASHDOT!
Come on your wannabe geeks. This is cool technology. This is 10x more of an enabler than a privacy loss.
I don't want to remove the RFID tags in things I buy. I want to be able to track crap in my house like Walmart can in their warehouse. I don't care if I walk into a store and they know I bought the shirt i'm wearing at Banna Republic. The sales people could prolly guess that by the style anyhow. I want this in my tires, hell I want this stuff in every individual part of my car. If something breaks or screws up and I take it into the mechanic, I want ford to get a detail readout that says RFID:XXX-XX-XXXX-XXXXX was found on a hose clamp that gave way. Take that data and build a better hose clamp.
This technology will enable statistics that will make all industries more productive and efficent. It's mind boggling if you extrapolate this out. What a fountain of information.
I know that last paragraph scares the hell out of 50% of you, but you know what? Don't buy the stuff then. I want it, and I don't need you scaring the crap out innovators of cool technology like this. Get off _my_ liberty.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
would violate the DMCA (even for personal use) and would cause me to be declared a Luddite Terrrorist
Any "successful" use of RFID technology (even in the warehouse venue) will lead to an increasing likelyhood of their inclusion at the store level. Since there are a large number of legitimate privacy issues (even acknowledged by the organization behind RFIDs) that have not remotely addressed yet, further usage of RFIDs is in general a negative.
You can't possibly be serious. You're saying that placing RFIDs on pallets and warehouse-size boxes should be fought on the basis of privacy concerns? RFID tech is not inherently evil, and privacy concerns should be raised only for uses where there are actually privacy concerns.
I'm not for RFID tags in my sneakers either, but let's at least try to make arguments that make sense.
... for 2 reasons:
1. A typical large distribution warehouse receives product in case lot/batch/vat fashion. The RFID tags in this case would be attached to each crate of shoes rather than embedded in the shoe itself for example. That is precisely why Wal-mart is going to start with warehouses only--because far fewer RFID tags and readers will be required, costs will be lower and the negative impact of potential problems with them will be much lower than in a retail setting. You can take off your tinfoil hat for the time being because those RFID tags will be nowhere in sight once the merchandise is placed on retail store shelves.
2. Organisations involved in sales and distribution (such as those responsible for maintaining UPC codes) are very aware of consumer's concerns over privacy and assurances have been made that they will be easily disabled. In fact, one idea to prevent shoplifting was to disable the RF tag on ALL purchased merchandise at the cashier's counter and use the presence of an active tag as an indicator of theft. As for sharing information on disabling an RFID as contravening the DMCA, the argument is very weak. The DMCA is about COPYRIGHT--it arguably intrudes on property rights and fair use, but destroying the RFID tag embedded in your already-purchased Nikes does NOTHING to violate copyright--your shoes won't magically clone without the tag and the tag does not prevent a person from making cheap Nike knockoffs. The same holds true regarding State law, and local/municipal governments don't even have juristiction over copyright or theft prevention.
Incidentally, RFID and unique barcode tags are already used to track livestock. It is starting to prove to be a godsend to the industry as a way to track the health of the animals and our food supply. Unfortunately the practise started in Canada and the US AFTER the birth of the animal infected with mad cow that was found in Canada. At that time, record-keeping was sometimes apallingly lax in places.
Americans shouldn't feel all that smug about the health of ther beef supply either--not only were their tracking methods as lax as Canada's, they also tended to more often employ the use of animal-based protein feed and hormones in cattle production. Also, the Canadian case of Mad Cow did not make it into the food supply (it was destroyed as soon as disease was suspect but before it was confirmed) but the offspring of the infected animal were sold to Montana--and those animals DID make it into the US food supply. Because of lax record-keeping it can't be confirmed, but it is likely the infected cow was born in the US--and the possibility exists that it got the disease there too. So much for the validity of the US embargo on Canadian beef...but I digress. In this case, technology like RF tags, when used with the proper respect for human rights, could have prevented (and will prevent in the future) a public health scare and the resulting political manoevring and economic disruption.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/07/09/beamed.ba rcodes.ap/index.html reports about this wonderful new technology that will let the stores know of expired milk in the shelves.
Hmmm. I think CNN is 6 months behind?
True, but when you have market share like walmart does, particularly in the small towns and rural areas, it amounts to de facto censorship. It has become such that Walmart can dictate your range of cultural outlets by what it chooses to carry.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
RFID is a technology designed EXPLICITLY for tracking things
so is the printing of easy to read/scan unique serial numbers... whoops, money already has those.
Honest question deserves an honest answer.
One cannot see the serial numbers on the bills you have in your wallet while it's in your pocket. You have to take them out and show them.
With RFID tags in the bills, all you have to do is walk past a scanner, and they know how much cash you have on you.
You can bet that pickpockets will have scanners built/bought the day before RFID-tagged bills go in to circulation. (Then we'll get to enjoy a long series of laws trying to ban the ownership of RFID scanners).
and so I cannot comment on how much we sell. It would be a trade secret, and company policy prohibits me from telling you.
I can point out though that Home Depot has approximately 1500 stores, and did about 60 billion dollars in sales in 2002.
60 billion divided by 1500 stores is $40,000,000 per store per year. That's better than $100,000 per day per store, or $3.3 million dollars per month. Of course, that's sales -- not profit.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I'm super uncomfortable with the idea of considering Walmart a public utility for delivery of culture... ;)
oh and it's a damn shame your local best buy doesn't carry german sheisse porn. You really ought to write them a letter..
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
You obviously grossly overestimate the intelligence of your typical shoplifter.
paintball
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/07/09/beamed.ba rcodes.ap/index.html
One of the choice quotes from the National Grocer's Association:
"You do give up a bit of privacy but the benefit could be that you live"
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Didn't you get the memo? You can trust individuals, but not Evil Corporations(TM).
If you lend me $20 and I spend it at Subway and get $10 back in change... how on earth would they ever track any of that? How would the Sub-lady know that it was me who bought that sub?
,the bills didn't originate directly from your atm account, one could look up who it was issued to at it's last transaction. Or who's ATM account it was withdrawn from and then they would know who gave you the money and probably even guess when he gave it to you based on when it was withdrawn from the atm, or last transaction and when you bought your sandwich.
At the register, your shoes, socks, underwear, shorts, watch, cellphone, wallet, etc, would be cross referenced against credit card numbers to see if a valid ID could be obtained for you.
Money you give for the transaction would be scanned to see if it originated directly from your ATM account. If it, did the bills in question would be considered succesfully traced from start to finish. Any change you recieved would be associated with your account/database ID.
Since in your sandwich example
If your friend recieved it from someplace else that wasn't an ATM machine or a cash register, more effort would be required to track it. But every bill has to originate from somewhere trackable and end up somewhere trackable. Just a matter of working towards the center from both sides. But how often do you recieve money that was from a friends, friend?
It's trivial to track people and the flow of their money with RFID tags. Why? BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT RFID TAGS ARE FOR!
Is this what denial is all about? I think I've been seeing a lot of it with the RFID stuff.
"Oh, the range of them is only foot(which is false. Tests with legal power ranges have been in the range of one hundred feet with passive tags)"
"I'm a law abiding citizen, and therefore won't be subject to tracking."
"Our society is too moral to allow such things to actually happen."
It's happening folks. Right in front of your sleepy little faces.
denial ( P ) Pronunciation Key (d-nl)
n.
1.A refusal to comply with or satisfy a request.
2.
a.A refusal to grant the truth of a statement or allegation; a contradiction.
b.Law. The opposing by a defendant of an allegation of the plaintiff.
3.
a.A refusal to accept or believe something, such as a doctrine or belief.
b.Psychology. An unconscious defense mechanism characterized by refusal to acknowledge painful
realities, thoughts, or feelings.
4.The act of disowning or disavowing; repudiation.
5.Abstinence; self-denial.
What about buying a CD off the shelf, going home and putting it in your CD player, and discovering that all the potentially "naughty" words have been beeped or silenced? Then looking over the CD you just bought and finding no notice that it had been altered... would that be censorship? Cos it's what Wal Mart does.
This is off topic, but I can't keep quiet on this.
Check out the racist tripe this poster submits and, according to his username and homepage link, is apparently proud of. I won't repost it, but take a look if you want a glimpse into a very small mind, and a kind of ugliness that's fortunately no longer mainstream.
I'm glad this is an open forum where all types can voice their opinions. But when people with blatantly racist sigs, etc. get modded up, it feels almost like the slashdot community is saying they're comfortable with this kind of shit.
Will all of you Mulder's out there take some Valium and stop creating conspiracies out of everything???
My head was starting to get itchy inside the tinfoil hat!
Do you have ESP?
Perhaps a brain transplant might bring your IQ up to that of an idiot.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Well, that's changing the goal posts, but two points - one, they'd have to do it Europe-wide, and secondly such an unscrupulous government could add the tags anyway, we just make it a little easier
Yes, I know I changed the goal posts a bit. But it wouldn't be the first time a system is abused by a different government.
Europe-wide is not a problem. They'll just call it harmonisation, which seems to be the favourite word of European politicians lately anyway.
It's much easier to do it now, as almost noone will see a problem with the tags. When an unscrupulous government tries it, people will see the problems with it much faster.
"To eliminate anonymous transactions they would first have to ask for ID before either giving change, or accepting cash. Identifying the bill doesn't identify the person who holds it ...."
Not really. Where do you get your cash from? For most of us it is the bank, either an ATM or actual person. But all transactions are tied to your account and your name. If there was a system to automatically scan the bills given to me from my checking/savings account, and also to scan bills at the store, they would know what businesses get my money. Of course I may meet someone in an allyway and exchange five of my 'known' $20s for five 'unknown' $20s, but what's the chance of that?
I doubt this scenario will happen anytime soon. But it is not impossible, and is something to think about.
I've had friends who bought edited versions that weren't marked, and it made 'em mad...
:)
As long as the edited version is labeled, it's fine. I'm of the hard rock/metal persuasion, and you just can't buy many albums w/o profanity
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
so is the printing of easy to read/scan unique serial numbers... whoops, money already has those.
I don't follow your meaning. How does the presence of serial numbers justify the use of RFID tags?
Serial numbers are not "designed EXPLICITLY for tracking things", they are for validating uniqueness. They can be scanned and recorded for tracking, but the scanners are usually very obvious. People might not go to a store that scanned every bill they used, but with RFID, the scanner is located in the countertop or cash register, and will work automatically on any bills within a certain area.
Around here, all the supermarkets and a lot of other stores are beginning to install self-service checkout machines. They're popular with retail of course, since if they catch on it'll save them a lot on payroll costs. Consumers on the other hand seem a little iffy, mainly because the machines are royal pain in the ass to use -- they're very picky about how you move items from your basket, across the scanner, and into the shopping bag; things have to be done in a rigid order; mistakes are all too easy & very frustrating. Said one customer in a test conducted by the Boston Globe, "why am I doing all this work?"
RFID seems to me like a natural solution to at least part of this problem. If everything in Home Depot or CVS had an RFID tag, then I can picture a situation where a specially made checkout lane would allow me to simply push my cart or basket through the register, then present me with an inventory of what was accounted for. All I'd have to do would be to swipe my debit card & move the goods into a bag to bring home. The only place this seems to really break down is items like supermarket produce, where each individual item is unlikely to be tagged -- do you want to eat a tomato with a microchip in it? But still, it seems like for most products this would work, and in the worst case you'd have to manually enter part of your purchase into the machine, but most could be recorded automatically.
My hunch is that if such a system could be put into use, the increased convenience would be valuable enough to many people that they could accept the privacy tradeoff. My hunch is that improved inventory control will never be enough, by itself, to win over the public -- it's all stick, no carrot.
Am I missing something, or is this potential use of RFID never really mentioned?
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
As a holder of a small number of stocks in companies researching and devloping RFID tech, this is good news since I can now pick up more stock (cheap) as day traders will dump their stock since they won't see an immediate return. Walmart isn't giving up with it after all, they're just incorporating it into their backrooms. And when that leads to better and cheaper implementation, other companies will jump on board. Buy stock now. Enjoy your new BMW in 8 years.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
Can't wait for RFID to be deployed (embedded) in everything. Can't wait to walk through my room and take an inventory of what the hell is in there.
Can't wait to grab what I want from a store, walk through a detector, slide in my credit card, and ok the purchase as I walk out.
Can't wait to go to a bar or a strip club, and have that fact noted with time, location, and duration of stay on my permanent police file (or provided to my suspicious wife or SO). Can't wait to go to an antiwar/antigovernment protest and have my presence similarly noted, even if I don't get arrested.
Sure, there are loads of positive uses of RFID. If there weren't, it probably wouldn't have been invented. But not considering all the possible negative effects and trusting to the goodwill of the powers that be is just stupid. The government has already been shown to have bugged private citizens and kept dossiers on them for nebulous reasons, and there's no reason to blithely hand over another means of control to them. You speak of your liberty, well friend your liberty should not be allowed to infringe on my liberty.
-=+>txtracer<+=-
-Those who do not learn from history are doomed.
Go try to pacify someone else, assface.
To stop counterfeit bills, not to stop anonymous cash transactions. You honestly think someone is going to setup a database and link all
of the bills against your CITIZEN.USER_PK1 unique ID number just to make sure you can't be anonymous?
Fuck you.
So, theoretically, a store could have a scanner by the door that'll turn on a light somewhere when someone with a large amount of cash walks in so the salespeople can treat them extra nice.
As opposed to the way it works now, where a person working at a store uses devices called "eyeballs" to get an idea of how much money someone has by their "clothing" and "behavior"...
Still, I don't see what that has to do with (I quote parent poster) "anonymous cash transactions".
using rfid in warehouses to track bulk shipments can in no way be seen as a bad thing, got that? Figure it out:
you're complaining about unique identification, and putting a sticker outside a box which is later opened and discarded before the end user even sees it on a shelf cannot possibly be seen as uniquely identifying you.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
> How exactly does that "eliminate the anonymous cash transaction?"
I'm not actually with the conspiracy theorists here, but:
1. Walk past RFID sensors scanning for currency.
2. Camera snaps your picture, complete with RFID #'s of bills you're carrying.
There doesn't need to be a step #3 now, does there? Know what happens to people carrying large amounts of cash in the USA? They get stopped and searched and treated as drug dealing suspects. Their cash is usually confiscated, and they then have to prove that it's clean in order to get it back.
I suppose I'll have to work on a fanny pack with a faraday cage in it now...
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I won't say which, but I am sure this will be big news tomorrow. I do not work directly in the area of RFID, but I watch it pretty closely. I think I can say that it is a LONG way from being shelf ready. The article cites that privacy is not the biggest reason for wal-mart to remove stop the test. I would agree with that. Wal-mart, justifiably, doesn't see that the product is ready yet.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
All a bank would have to do is to grab RFIDs from bills given to you either by teller or via ATM when it records a payment to you, and once those numbers are in a governmental database, they can wait until the RFID reappears at someone's cash register.
While this doesn't necesarily work in a private cash transaction, nothing's perfect. Depends on what you spend money on. If "they" (a government, or a stalker who figured out who to bribe) are looking for you or want to track your activities, you'll leave a very nice trail of bread crumbs as you spend your "anonymous" cash. If they really want you, if they find that the person they're looking for isn't you, they'll try to find out who's paid him lately. Perhaps you believe that EU governments will only look for people for what you consider "good" reasons.
Though even allowing for private cash transactions, algorithms can probably be developed to assign probabilities to the the ID of a person who originates a transaction, e.g. if ID1-10 are given to a customer, if ID3-7 show up at a cash register As for anti-counterfeiting... what makes you think that RFID information is unforgeable? Or impossible to steal from somewhere in the supply chain? Or possibly, even purchase over the counter, given the other legitimate uses for them.
In any rate, when evaluating a possible threat, one evaluates the threat potential, not whether you think the other party has good intentions or not. A government that's well intentioned this year might not be next.
The USA exports a great many ideas, both good and bad. Perhaps a "anti-terrorist" citizen survelliance database is one of those ideas.
Perhaps an intense study of security might increase your paranoia level to the point where you might someday become an informed citizen.
Note that I actually favor the use of RFID in inventory tracking, and at the retail level, its use in removable packaging material to be disposed of by the end user, or retained for warranty reasons, but either way, subject to the choice of the customer.
RFID is a powerful technology, for good or evil purposes. Reducing our prices at the cash register is good. Using it as a police state enforcement tool is bad. Perhaps you disagree, but enjoy your right to express an opinion, however uninformed.
While you can.
Tech Public Policy stuff
according to this CNN story
. ba rcodes.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/07/09/beamed
stores are going to do away with barcodes in favor of RFIDs.
seriously, this technology is too tempting to distributors and retailers for them not to implement it. it's only a matter of time.
fred
The DMCA only deals with copyright and copyright protection. Once again, copyright and copyright protection. Nothing else.
Please, for the love of god, stop using 'ooh dmca violation!' in ridiculous contexts. You sound like a fool.
-
Mod parent up.
Sorry for not being part of the groupthink, but can someone explain to me in a calm and rational fashion what the big furry deal is here? By that, I don't mean just another "It's an invasion of privacy, stooooopid!" response, I mean actual scenarios where this can and will be used by Them against We, the People.
Specifically, I'd like to know why it matters that They can scan me and know what kind of underwear I are wearing. Who is going to do this? Why? To what end? What are they going to do with the information?
And if you are the sort of person who is worried by this, aren't you already paying for things with cash? When you walk through the hypothetical scanner, isn't it just going to bleep and spit out "Purchaser unknown" ten times?
Scenarios, please.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
1. If box has been externaly labeled by manufactuer skip to step 6.
2. Using a counterclockwise motion, remove cap from Sharpie brand permanent marker.
3. Hold marker at aprox 75 degree angle (a slight tilt is optional).
4. Utilize conventional english notation to denote attributes of contents; number, brand name, product.
5. Secure Sharpie brand marker cap with a "palm slap" or "thigh bump".
6. Refer to exterior notations when uptight auditors question poorly paid employees about inventory control.
7. Implement agressive "15, 10, 5, uh - zero?" backwards counting test during job interviews to insure inventory is tracked accurately.
Now, thanks to improved technology, you can even use Sharpie fineline markers to create even smaller tags thus allowing the $5.25/hr, "...just for a little extra Christmas money..." grandmothers to keep their (annoying as they might be) jobs checking reciepts at the Wal-mart check outs.
Obviously, RFID could have negative economic impacts. In all the "invasion of privacy" clamor, I think insightfulness is suffering. Any guesses about other economic impacts beside a decreased need for inventory control and auditing staff?
Come on, let's get out of the clearly labelled "invasion of privacy" box here...
Either from a bank or an ATM where you had to supply your id.
You are now associated with those bills. When you buy something, the cash register notes that it received bill A and gave bills X and Y as change. It becomes a simple game of connect the dots.
Hmm, business opportunity here:
Open a shop where people bring in their tagged money, it gets dumped in a large bin, shuffled together with everyone else's and redistributed. Charge a few percent for the service.
-- Aumaden
To stop counterfeit bills, not to stop anonymous cash transactions. You honestly think someone is going to setup a database and link all of the bills against your CITIZEN.USER_PK1 unique ID number just to make sure you can't be anonymous?
Why, yes, I do.
This would be called "helping the fight against money laundering by drug dealers and terrorists".
If each banknote got a cheaply readable unique ID (as opposed to the current serial numbers which are NOT cheaply readable) I would expect banks to keep a database of which bills were issued to which person and which bills came into which account. Law enforcement organizations would absolutely LOVE such a database. IRS would too, by the way.
Just think how juicy would data mining this database could be.
No, it's not good enough to trace your can of soda purchases. Your corner convenience store doesn't accept large bills, anyway. But it's good enough to trace significant chunks of cash moving around.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Most of retail theft is by employees.
>Nope. You don't mean that.
Yes, he DOES mean that.
According to the National Retail Security Survey, November 2002 conducted by the University of Florida:
Retail Shrinkage:
48.5% Employee Theft
31.7% Shoplifting
15.3% Administrative Error
05.4% Vendor Fraud
Total Inventory Shrinkage $31.3 billion, or $440 in higher prices as a result, per family per year. Source.
I am also a fraud investigator, and overall, the vast, vast majority of all white collar crime is by insiders. While this includes managerial fraud (financial statement fraud), nonetheless this is the fraud, and the dollar amounts of loss invovled are always much higher than from fraud perpetrated from people external to the company.
One of the choice quotes from the National Grocer's Association:
"You do give up a bit of privacy but the benefit could be that you live"
Wow. That's just about the most amazing one-line FUD I've ever read! That's even better than the usual "extended warranty" scam... you know, "buy this utterly reliable product, then buy the extended warranty because you never know when it will break."
In other words, the spokesman for the National Grocers Association is telling us that we are at risk of death every time we enter a grocery store. Thanks for the warning! I guess I'd better go back to raising my own meat rabbits.
Just for irony's sake, check out the NGA's Competing Against Supercenters page, which features "8 Ways to Beat Wal-Mart". Which, of course, is the company that started this whole topic.
On the plus side, I want that AP Photo of the ant among the chips for my desktop!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
People might not go to a store that scanned every bill they used, but with RFID, the scanner is located in the countertop or cash register, and will work automatically on any bills within a certain area.
Not that you'd still be reading this,
a) in your example, how would they tie you to the bill if the scanning system was hidden?
b) you're saying, people wouldn't go to a store where their bills were scanned, but they'd go to a store when their bills are scanned. No one, supposedly, would ever find out the RFID trackers were installed? If merchants could count on that kind of employee loyalty at the retail level, what makes you assume your bills aren't passed over a small optical reading strip right now, its just your not noticing?
forgot to see this, RFID, radio frequency identification, is used as a way to imbed a unique number in a product that is identifable by radio frequency scanning.
Serial Numbers are used as a way to imbed a unique number in a product that is identifable optically.
The ways you use this (tracking, validating) are all secondary. I always remember in movies at least, bank robbers and kidnappers wanting to be paid in non-sequntial ammounts so that the numbers couldn't be tracked. Hmmm...
I suppose I'll have to work on a fanny pack with a faraday cage in it now...
You raise a valid point. Carrying currency will become a security risk. One will be exposed to the interest of police and criminals.
Anonimity becomes freedom.
>>Re:How that unfortunate? (Score:0, Offtopic)
:(
>>by wo1verin3 (473094) on Wednesday July 09, @04:06PM (#6402609)
So does wallmart management
When you absolutely, positively, have to kill every motherfscking RFID tag in the store, accept no substitutes...
The Electromagnetic Bomb
The Electromagnetic Bomb
The Electromagnetic Bomb
High-Power Microwave Bomb
See http://www.adams1.com/pub/russadam/history.html for a history of UPC. Wal-Mart was just a tiny Arkansas general store when UPCs first appeared, and IBM won the design competition. Search for UPC on Google - there's lots of stuff.