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RFID Coming 'Whether You Like It Or Not'
VTBassMatt writes "According to an interview with Scott McGregor of Philips Semiconductor in BusinessWeek, RFID tags are coming whether we like it or not but of course won't affect our privacy. Choice quotes from the article include such gems as, '[P]rivacy concerns around RFID tags are a little like concerns about supermarket scanners years ago. When the laser scanners were coming out, everybody was saying, retailers are going to collect information about what you buy. And none of that happened.' Is that why I have two loyalty cards on my keyring and three more in my wallet?"
Walmart demanded barcodes from the manufacturers and now they are demanding rfid tags. Walmar now controls almost half the US retail sales. Can't really blame them. The ultimate in real-time inventory and the manhours saved will practically pay for the program. We'll all have to start wearing RFID blockers.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I refuse to participate. For the most part, I buy food from our local small business, but if I absolutely have to go to one of the megachains that practically require their "loyalty cards" to avoid being ripped off, I take the following precautions:
1. I pay in cash only.
2. I fill out a form for a new card (even if I don't need it) and then throw the card away as I'm leaving. I don't fill out any of the information.
3. If a clerk gives me a hassle, I just look at them, smile, and say: "This is a conversation between me and your employer. I am trying to leave you out of it. If you would like to involve yourself in the conversation, that's fine, but I think you would rather not."
Step three usually gets the occasional nag to shut up very quickly and let me do my thing.
I figure eventually this has to end up costing them something - if everybody did that, instead of doing the sheeple thing and sticking with one card, I think that the stores would eventually give up on those damn cards.
InThane
The real question is whether we'll actually see a benefit to the introduction of RFID-- ie, actually keeping things stocked that I *want*, particularly sale items. I could certainly see some potential disadvantages, like if sale items start selling faster than they expect. Maybe an alert will be flagged and they'll mysteriously pull the remaining stock off the shelves...
All in all, I guess I can't really see any huge problem with the technology, though, as far as privacy is concerned-- that is, as long as it stays on the products themselves. If they suddenly start requiring RFIDs in the shopper cards so they know when I enter or leave the store, then I might have a concern.
KappaStone
Hmmm... maybe I'm missing some point... Am I?
Over here in the US of A, I think the situation will be a little different. Walmart likes RFID. Their investment will be plenty to get the whole industry up and running pretty quickly. And that will also lower costs for smaller businesses to implement them.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
.. and using it against you. There's been tons of examples. The one that made the most press was about the guy who slipped and fell on some broken glass & liquit, and broke his hip. He sued the supermarket.
... Besides, why a discount card with a unique ID? What was so wrong with coupons? Why do they have to have a unique ID and log everything that you shop? You can't have the discount unless you tell us your name, address, phone, SS# or drivers license? Bullshit.
The supermarket pulled up the guys shopping records over the last year or so. It turned out that he bought only alcohol 90% of the time while in the story. They defense team implied that he was an alcoholic and was drunk at the time, and that was why he fell, not because of the glass & liquid on the floor.
That's just one example. There are many, many more.
What is your privacy worth to you? $0.30 off a 2 liter bottle of coke? Good for you. My privacy is much more valuable to me, which is why I avoid the discount cards.
WHY CAN'T I HAVE MY DISCOUNT WITHOUT YOU KNOWING WHO I AM?
Is that why I have two loyalty cards on my keyring and three more in my wallet?
Yeah, don't get me started on "rewards cards" -- I'm carrying two on my keyring as well. There's no reward to those cards. Basically, the supermarkets have decided that unless you become one of the sheep, and carry around their silly cards so they can track your purchases, they won't let you purchase anything on sale.
Which would be fine with me. I'd be happy to take my business elsewhere. Except there is no elsewhere when it comes to supermarkets. They all have "rewards cards" now. So it's either let them track all your purchases, or pay a steep penalty by being excluded from sale items. The same thing's gonna happen with RFID. There will be no place you can go to avoid them.
Except, that is, your local co-op, and similar small-scale businesses. I happen to buy most of my groceries at the co-op just because the prices are comparable, the food is grown closer to me, the politics are better, and I know I'm not getting tracked. Unfortunately, I doubt that enough people care about their privacy for an anti-RFID movement to emerge.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
RFID still has a potential to be used for tracking, and I think that's what will continue to make a lot of people nervous/paranoid.
With a UPC, there's a limited number (10^12) of possibilities, you can tell what information it contains and compare between things--even if the numbers aren't there, it's not too difficult to figure them out from the bar code pattern--and you can tell when it is being scanned.
With RFID, there's a potential for transmitting much more information, the information can't be read/compared without a scanner, and it's easy to scan without anyone knowing.
I think that if legislation was passed saying what uses of RFID should be legal and what should not, a lot less people would be worried about it.
Karma: Negative (Mostly affected by dorm trolling)
Store loyalty cards are used to track the purchases of the cardholder, but most stores only use the addresses on file to send snail-mail spam. The solution? Use a fake name and address. You get the discounts, and no one knows who you really are.
RFID can be implemented by retailers without affecting the customer's privacy.
The simple solution is not to embed the tag within the garment but for the tag takes the form of a label that is removed at the point of sale
The retailer gets full advantage of the tags within their stock chain.
The purchaser has no privacy issues.
Additionally the retailer also has the advantage that the tag can be reused.
slashnik
If you write checks, you give up your privacy anyway. Your check contains your name, address, phone number, bank name and routing number, your account number, your social security number (sometimes). If I had to pay by check, the last thing I'd be concerned about is the fact that someone could find out that I bought twinkies and milk at the same time.
the cards don't cost jack compared to the revenue generated by the information.
If the vast majority of consumers stopped using them- the loss in revenue might kill the program but not the cost of the cards. That's like thinking you can drive them out of business by grabbing and extra plastic bag with each visist.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
They are indeed coming and it really is just a matter of price..
WalMart, etc. cannot wait for these. And actually I think the military might be a prime driver of wide scale adoption. The real trick is to get the cost down to pennies.
The huge cost savings will be in inventory. Imagine either enough readers in your warehouse to scan every location, OR a robot that drives around at night pinging RFID tags. Imagine being able to just push your cart through a metal detector & have everything scanned in seconds.
Also some RFID will have non-volatile memory and be able to record events or travels or born-on dates. For an extra $5 you can have a tamper-proof record of a packages travel. Or for $20 maybe a gps chip on board to record the shipment so audit it when it gets to where it is going.
I think the first place we'll see them will be as a new shopper card. You'll get a keychain (like the gas pump thingy) that will identify you at upscale stores or maybe even print out a shopping list for you when you enter the grocery store. Stores will want this because they can secretly track who looks at what items and for how long. Then they sell that information back to producers and marketing folks.
I had an interview with a company that supplies Wal-Mart with baked goods, and the interviewer mentioned that they were going to have to get ready for RFID because of them. He said "When a gorilla like Wal-Mart says jump, you jump."
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Loyalty cards are your choice, and you can still buy stuff without them.
But it may be choice few low income families can afford.
If you are rich, you can afford to have privacy.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Sadly, Americans are pretty bad about voting their consciences with their dollars. That's why Wal-Mart does so well to begin with. They know, at least abstractly, that Wal-Mart is Bad and Wrong. But when they they want to buy a shower curtain they'd rather buy it for $7.95 at Wal-Mart than $12.99 at the local design store.
The problem, unfortunately, is pervasiveness. I don't think anybody much cares whether somebody is tracking their Aggressive Sports gear or not, so they buy it where it's cheap. They do care, in the abstract, about the idea that somebody is tracking _all_ of their purchases, but somehow that doesn't translate down to each individual action.
In addition, many people are of the mind that they're not doing anything wrong, so why not allow yourself to be tracked? They'd rather save a few bucks today than worry about an ill-defined threat in the future. Short-term thinking, I know, but it's really, really hard to stop.
Also, privacy concerns around RFID tags are a little like concerns about supermarket scanners years ago. When the laser scanners were coming out, everybody was saying, retailers are going to collect information about what you buy. And none of that happened. I think the situation with RFID is similar.
Retailers DO collect info about what you buy, corps like WalMart and Target have huge datamining efforts to figure out what they should place near other items in the store based on buying patterns
And coupons for things that they want you to start buying. Do you really think they're doing you a favour? There's no way they are making a loss on "sale" prices, so the more generous-looking the offer, the more they're screwing you by default.
If they have a similar product to something I'm already buying, I might check it out. I'm not going to buy it simply because I have a cupon for it. The only things I ever recall getting cupons for which I did not buy are gas discounts.
It doesn't take an Einstein to work out that the end result is to phase out the cheap, low margin, staples that the lower income bracket depend on in favour of Haagen-Daaz and Organic Cider.
It also doesn't take a huge database system and supermarket cards to implement what you are discussing here. And, if your theory was correct, every grocery store would have turned into a boutique, only offering quaint, premium-brand foods.
Almost everything I buy is FMV or Kroger brand (which isn't being phased out at all, at least not at the supermarket near my house), and I'm damn happy with it. C'mon, get with the program here.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
I agree - if this happens, I move to Tonga.
What bothers me is that the RFID tags are about the size of a flake of pepper. This makes it really easy for a less-than-honest business (and isn't the U.S. just doing a wonderful job of showing the world what "honest business" means nowadays . . .) to ignore the proposed RFID labelling law and bury the damn things inside the lining of a shirt. Short of carrying an RFID jammer everywhere - and I ain't seen any yet - there's little to no defense against the intrusion or tracking.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
If these RFID devices are designed to be disabled (as the current RF security tags are), then it should be an easy matter to disable thousands of tags at a pop.
The current RF security tags (RF, not magnetic or accoustic tags) work via a passive or sympathetic action. The security sensors at the store exits transmit a low power RF signal. The RF tag receives this signal, which is converted to a weak electrical charge, which in turn powers a small transmitter. If the security scanner detects a signal on the RF tag's output frequency then it sounds the alarm. To disable a tag, a signal is broadcast at the same frequency as the "input" frequency of the RF tag, except the signal strength is so strong it burns up the tag (or more specifically burns out a specific fuse-like weak link in the tag).
So my point is that RFID tags also have to be powered externally by an RF signal - they are the same as RF security tags except their output signal is modulated to include static data. If someone had equipment set up, say in their vehicle, to broadcast at a few hundred watts (or perhaps thousands of watts in a short burst), they could potentially burn out quite a few tags in the store.
I'm somewhat surprised no one is doing this currently with the RF security tags.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Some seem to think that you're jumping on a bandwagon of "smart" people.
Some think you're being presumptious by lumping yourself with "smart" people.
Some just get all mad when someone says they believe in God.
I think, though, that they are a little unnerved by the fact that all these great, objective, scientific minds arrived at the conclusion that a god exists. This either means they have to wonder what these "great minds" were smoking or what they themselves are smoking to not see it.
Disclaimer: I myself am in the "Everything I have seen leads me to believe in God" camp of thought. If you want to know more of how people can *gasp* actually arrive at this conclusion, I'm sure myself or Doesn't_Comment_Code will be happy to entertain any legitimate conversation.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
You know, I actually don't really have a problem with this ... except that because we're relying on information that's "in the computer," there's a risk that information will be categorized as somehow more "infallible" than other information in the eyes of a jury.
... it's the computer records being submitted and tagged into evidence. I can picture eldery jurors sitting there thinking: "Well, it's the computer. They've got all the records right there. It says he bought beer all these times. Must be true. Computer wouldn't lie -- it's a machine!" (Yet, as we all know ... lies, damn lies, and statistics, and all that.)
For example, this case would be no different if it were a small mom-and-pop grocery in a one-horse town somewhere. Except in that case, it would be the clerk who always sees the customer buying beer who gives the testimony in court. The jury would then have to decide: Is this accurate testimony? Is the witness biased? Is the testimony complete? Is he hiding other information?
In Safeway's case it's not an eyewitness giving spoken testimony on the stand
Breakfast served all day!
OK, so we know that stores are tracking your purchases. My question: So what?
On the pro side:
You get targetted coupons
Stores get superior inventory flow management. This allows them to cut costs. This may result in: lower cost product, higher wages to employees, higher bonuses to bigwigs. None of those are horrible things.
On the con side:
"They" are "watching" me.
Will someone explain to me why the hell a store cares how many bottles of preparation-H you buy, other than to make sure they stock enough to meet demand? To what nefarious purposes are they going to put this info?
I'm limiting this to barcodes/loyalty cards. I'm well aware of the Minority-Report-esque possibilities of RFID outside the store.
Walmart DOES abuse their powers. They require their suppliers to decrease cost each year or be cut out regardless of contract. They have locked in employees at night with no way to get out (managers have keys, but are not there). They have forced employees on salary to clock in and out, and then dock them pay for being gone and not pay overtime when they are there in excess of 40 hours...often at night. While they may not purposefully price things to force competition out, by being as large as they are and their actions with suppliers (remember they force lower prices from the suppliers), they are in effect the MicroSoft of retail. This is just a small list of their actions.