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RFID Tags on Mach3 Razorblades Snap Your Photo
peteo writes "Think RFID tags are harmless? Look at how they are being used in the UK: "At the Tesco Cambridge store, a camera trained on the Gillette blade shelf, and triggered by RFID tags, captures a photo of each customer who removes a Mach3 pack. Another photo is taken at the checkout and security staff compare the two images to ensure they always have a pair"
According to the spokesman,"there are certainly not any privacy concerns" in relation to these tags. He adds that there is plenty of in-store signage indicating the supermarket's use of CCTV cameras. ""
Last week I asked why. The cashier said it's because kids go in and steal them a lot, then come back the next day and ask for the money back (a pack of 8 is rather expensive, and they are easy to slip into pockets). So Waitrose watch the blades carefully and always check reciepts.
...than plain old CCTV? Alright, so it's a little unsettling to think of someone with a photo of you taking something off the shelf comparing it with other photos to see if you bought the thing... but odds are if there's a CCTV camera then they're watching you as you take things off the shelf then, too.
Hmm. Doing this without telling people, however, is certainly cause for objection... there should be a sign of some sort, I suppose...
I would imagine that legally it doesn't require anything more than 'CCTV in use on these premesis', since the camera would have been there anyway...?
Last time i bought some replacement electric razor blades (little round blades and screens) it cost $25.
Phibz
These RF tags are perfect for tagging clothes, as the blurb pointed out. But an even more sinister use than tagging clothes is tagging the people who wear the clothes. And I'm especially referring to a certain kind of person:
Slavery is alive and well in this country, and I'm not referring merely to rhetorical or political slavery, but actual slavery. Women from foreign countries, particularly southeast-Asian countries are flown to America and promised low-paying but normal jobs performing menial labor or housecleaning services, but when they arrive, they discover to their horror that the real purpose is to prostitute themselves for the financial benefit of their masters. These women (and even children) are trapped, since they don't speak English, don't have the money to fly home, and don't have the physical or mental stamina to escape their tormentors after so much abuse.
How is this relevant to RF tags? Think of how much easier it would be to kidnap people from airports if all you needed to do was wander around with a small device, picking up the signals from the tags embedded in clothing given to the erstwhile immigrants back in their home countries. No longer would there have to be complicated networks of international communication -- they'd just have to agree on a certain range of serial numbers (of which there are trillions, as the article points out), hand out "free" clothes to people boarding the plane at departure, and sit back while agents at the US airports haul in the "goods".
This never would've been possible if we'd stuck to normal barcodes -- it's simply impossible to read barcodes surreptitiously. And since criminals are always the first to adopt new technologies for these devious purposes, it's only a matter of time before it comes to an airport near you, Thirteenth Amendment be damned.
What happens now?
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
You have to wonder why they don't just put them behind the counter, as with cigarettes.
Is it some kind of subtle lure? Do they fear the drop in sales resulting from the less control of POS presentation? How would that stack up against the losses from shoplifting?
Pack of four costs me US$8, pack of eight costs US$12.
When they're in stock. And they *are* placed at the checkout lines (though at the Ralph's where I shop, they're out so you don't have to ask for them, provided there are any left in stock), which has reduced shoplifting but the damned things are so popular that I've taken to shopping for the eight packs when I can and looking for replacements when I start in on the second cartridge of four.
The Mach3 has got to be one of the best examples of taking a common product and making a seemingly simple change that makes the product indispensible overnight. I picked one up a few months after they came out, and I can't believe I used to put up with other razors. Now if I use a normal two-blade razor, even one of the better ones, I tend to see shaving nicks all over the place. I know of a lot of women that use the Mach3 (or its successor for women, the Venus3) as well because it's less likely to leave nicks on their legs and under their arms.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I was gonna say that too.
If they wanted to test it for the supply chain side, they would put them tags in a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk. Something high volume that would let them track some real sales and put their system through its paces. not some gimmicky, expensive razor blades that maybe a couple people per day purchase.
I can see the press conferences now...
Shop Spokesman: We are not using these RFID tags for security purposes. It is just pure coincidence that we happen to pick the "most shoplifted" item in Britain to test these on. A very important link in our supply chain entails comparing photos of who picked up an item and who is exiting the store with that item. We are not interested in testing this technology to track the location of something like a case of these razor blades in our warehouse.
CCTV is used very widely in the United Kingdom and it is fairly well posted on signage going into to stores. But even outside of shop fronts in the United Kingdom entire high towns can be under CCTV. The debate was fought awhile ago here in the United Kingdom and because of IRA threats and a constant belief in any culture that crime is always worse than it used to be, people generally supported the idea of CCTV and recorded imagery used for security and police use.
But RFID adds so many issues, the fact is the rfid is unique and can be followed back to your residence if you have the right scanners so you now have a photo an item if this information is gathered elsewhere you can follow individuals and some facial recognition elsewhere and tie down a persons where abouts with other rfid purchases that may be worn, in theory at least. How close is that theory from reality and should the philosophical and political issued be discuessed now or later. I personally believe if this debate is not stated more clearly and in a broder context of these few products we see on the market the later systems we fear will be in place before we have a voice to do anything about them. But who knows the future is unwritten.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
...is that they can be "scanned" from a distance away.
I don't see why a picture is necessary. If someone has an RFID'ed item (say in their pocket), it should get scanned and charged for just like an item being held in the hands or resting in the cart. RFID SHOULD potentially eliminate shoplifting, with NO privacy concerns.
Imagine going into walmart and instead of each item being scanned separately, the cashier just aims the scanner at your cart, then you, and instantly everything is added to the total. No questions about what you may have slipped into your pockets because it just get's added. The scanner makes no value judgement.
RFID can be used to make life simpler, as long as we don't start using it to invade privacy.
- Pick-up some blades, making sure you are snapped by the camera.
- Move outside of the camera range
- Dump the razor blades somewhere else in the store
- Pass at the cash
- When you are stopped by store security, insist that they call the police to search you - only the police has the right to search you
- When the police has found nothing at all, sue the store for false arrest (the manager will perhaps make a counter-offer for free merchandise - I have an aunt to got herself a free mink coat this way after she was arrested by store detectives at Eaton's [Macy's equivalent])
- ????
- profit!
After 10-20 people do that trick, mabye the store will reconsider it's policy...Razor Blades, in my mind, fall somewhere around cigarettes and crack. I asked for a pack as a stocking stuffer last Christmas and was promptly told that things that sell for $25 deserve their own box.
100% Crunchier
Or what happens when a family are shopping and adult A picks up the razor blades, decides they don't want them and gets child B to return them. Then they get to the checkout and realise they do need them, so they get child C to fetch a new pack - and finally adult D pays for the goods.
That's really going to screw up any "photographic auditing" system!
London uses CCTV to impose a congestion charge on you whenever you drive into downtown London. The camera photographs your car and you get a bill for driving in the city. The idea is to reduce traffic to a manageable level and provide revenues for the bus system.
The tax is politically unusual in that Milton Friedman, a conservative economist at the University of Chicago, came up with the idea and Ken Livingston, a socialist, implemented it.
Well, I'm pretty sure I know at least a dozen other /. readers in Cambridge besides myself. ;-)
It's a shame Tesco shut five minutes ago. Might have been fun to print out this article and the various comments posted on it, and go have a word with their manager...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
RFID works on frequencies and power levels that are perfctly legal to receive and re-broadcast. Imaging walking around with a tiny device that constantly listens for RFID codes and randomly rebroadcasts the last 5,000 codes it's stored.
Another cute device but trickier to make might listen for RFID codes to start and jump in in the middle drowning out the last half of the code with random garbage.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Not that I recommend doing such a thing - but just to highlight
why this is a silly idea...
1) Go to the razor blade stand - pick up a pack of blades - get
photo taken.
2) Hand pack of blades to your wife as she's buying cornflakes in
the next aisle. Say "Honey - please pay for these - I have to go
to the store next door."
3) Leave store.
4) When they stop you leaving the store and accuse you of not paying for
the blades you picked up - tell them that you left the blades in the
Cornflakes aisle. Let them strip-search you - you don't have
the blades. Make a terrible fuss.
5) They let you go with profuse apologies.
6) Your wife then leaves the store - with pack of blades in her pocket
'forgetting' to pay for them. Nobody bats an eyelid because her photo
didn't get taken at the razor blade shelf.
So why don't they simply correlate the RFID tags that they detect going
through the exit of the store with an RFID tag on the till reciept and
directly check that every tag that they detect as marked as being in the
store's inventory is also in the database as having been sold against
that reciept?
Nobody's privacy is invaded - it's all perfectly anonymous.
I don't see the need for all the photography and consequent invasion of
privacy.
www.sjbaker.org
Imagine this scenario:
- I grab a mach3 pack
- The thingy takes my picture
- I put it back
- I grab another mach3 pack
- The thingy takes my picture
- I put it back
- I grab another mach3 pack
- The thingy takes my picture
- I put it back
- repeat several more times...
- walk out the store
- come back next day and do it again. Tell your friends, let them do that too
Isn't civil disobedience grand?Have you or anyone you know personally ever been accused of shoplifting? Two friends of mine were in an upscale grocery store not that long ago, the one who was doing the shopping was hungry so she picked up a piece of focacia bread and ate it as she shopped. By the time they got to check-out an hour later they had forgotten about the bread. An off-duty cop who was acting as a security guard came down from the camera room and started yelling at them, rifling through their things and generally making a big scene. Eventually he led them up to an interogation room where they spent several hours being repeatedly searched and berated for being criminal scum. All because this one guy watched one of them eat a piece of bread on the store's CCTV and then forget to pay for it an hour later when they checked-out. It would of been much easier to just ask her to pay for it. Even though only one of them was actually shopping and she was the one who ate the bread and forgot to pay for it, they are now both banned from the store. If either of them are spotted in it again (or even in the parking lot) they will be arrested.
My point is that crime is often defined by the individual responsible for stopping it, and if that person is an asshole they can do whatever they want. Adding these kinds of technologies into the mix is problamatic because it seems there are serious flaws (e.g. the involvement of a third-party), combine this with the arbitrary and absolute power often given to the enforcers of security and you have a recipe for even more honest mistakes being treated as crimes, and more false positives. Ultimately these sorts of things are bad for business, not to mention the civil liberty implications of having databases out there which contain detailed purchase records. I have no doubt at all that these databases would be prime targets for governments with an unhealthy interest in the details of their citizens lives. It's bad enough private entities have this sort of information, I certainly don't want governments to have it.
What I am alleging is that the shaving companies have a conspiracy and setup a nice and neat monopoly.
No, what you are referring to is not a monopoly, but a cartel, where competitors collude to fix prices and, sometimes supply.
I kinda doubt this is happening, but I do agree the prices are exorbitant. But damn, how ironclad are the patents on the Mach series blades? Why doesn't somebody reverse-engineer these baddies and put up some competition? I did try a storebrand work-alike of the older Gillette line (it was a Sensor generic designed for the Sensor stick) and it was AWFUL. Bloody mess.
Margins on razorblades are actually pretty darn good for the manufacturors. Just think about it: why do you think Warren Buffet holds big stake in Gillette? Why do you think those blades can be manufactured in USA and not china? Another thing: blade market is not monopoly but it is oligapoly and I wouldn't be surprised if they are fixing price somehow.
Its that price that makes them stolen so much. If someone steals a couple boxes of razors and sells them at a flea market they can make a few hundred dollars very qickly.
I read that Gilette is buying 500 million RFID tags and will start putting them in their razor packages. At that quanitity its sitll cheap but reduces losses. Up to 20% of their razors are stolen in a year so its worth it for them to o something.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Buy RFID-tagged products! Keep the tags! Spread them around!
I think I will push Mach 3 RFID tags into, oh, a bunch of banannas. Or a loaf of bread. Drop it into a shampoo bottle. And if WalMart starts RFIDing underwear, it will be even more fun...
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
What if somebody picked up a pack of razors then decided not to buy them later on while still shopping. Rather than returning to the razor isle, he sets them down right there. Later somebody else see's them sitting there and picks them up.
Now the store saw him pick them up, but didn't notice the remainder of the interaction with that particular pack of razor blades. Now you've just tweaked the system.
So if I don't set them back down in the same isle I could get searched as I walk out because I didn't purchase razor blades?