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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?"
RFID may be coming, but its not exactly bursting out at least in the UK.
I investigated RFID for implementation within my company, but came up with
next to no suppliers, apart from one company who after several phone calls
'forgot' about the samples and paperwork they were meant to send. And I simply don't have the
time to implement from electronics up.
IMHO if someone wants to make some money on this, set up a company now, as no-one
else seems to have their act together with customer relations or advertising (yet).
I actually *wanted* to implement this, so imagine the chance someone who's indifferent,
or uninterested in this technology has of being persuaded to implement it in industry.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
At my grocery store they spit out coupons based on what you buy and hand that to you in addition to your receipt. I know they track because the coupons from one trip correspond to previous trips. For example if I buy baby formula I get diaper coupons. On another trip for milk and eggs I get another round of diaper coupons while the little old lady gets coupons for Depends.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Loyalty cards are your choice, and you can still buy stuff without them. I don't see how that relates to RFID.
It's simple... just switch out loyalty cards with someone you know (the farther away they live the better) every three to six months or so. This should render all of the personalized collected data pretty useless: "He moved twelve times in the past two year and went from a vegan diet and vitamins to red meat and beer"
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
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
Yep, you sure can.... you don't need the card at all. It's just rather nice, imo.
And you know what, I don't care at all if they track my purchases. This is because:
- I get coupons for items I frequently buy
- I didn't have to give out my name or address to get the card, so it's anonymous data
- The data from my purchases helps them run their store better, so everyone's happy
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Hmmm... maybe I'm missing some point... Am I?
.. 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?
Also, if there is no associated discount I don't use the card unless I am buying something particularly weird and out of the ordinary.
Perhaps it makes no real difference, but in some small corner of my mind I feel like I'm sticking it to the man. . .
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
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.
Me: "I fancy a fish finger sandwich"
Fridge: "Your fish fingers are 3 days out of date."
Me: "Why won't the microwave open?"
Microwave: "Those fish fingers are 3 days out of date. I'm not having them in here"
Me: "Open the microwave door, HAL..."
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Well it will sooner or later come around that your buying records will become a public Police Record (As with the books you buy under the patriot act).
Already been done - I don't have the time to track down examples, but you can google them up if you're really interested. A grocery chain, Safeway, I think, used a guy's purchasing history based on his loyalty card to defend themselves against a personal injury claim when he slipped on a wet floor in the store. They claimed since he regularly bought beer and wine with the card, that he was a drunkard and didn't fall down because of their wet floors - it was his alcoholic equilibrium at fault. Dunno how it turned out, but it made it into court.
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
The supermarket card is the perfect example of what can happen with RFID gone bad. Obviously, supermarket cards collect individual buying habits of customers. This really isn't in dispute or something to hide. The scary part is what can be done with that data that goes well beyond just marketing information.
There have already been two cases (that I'm aware of) in which data collected by supermarket cards has been used in court. The first was a case where the info was used to show that a man had a habit of buying very expensive wines, and was successfully used to argue that he could therefore afford more in allimony than he was initially supposed to pay. The second case involves a man suing the grocery store for slipping while shopping. The store attempted to use the man's buying history to show that he was likely an alcoholic.
Scared yet?
How about RFIDs? How can they be miss-used? Well, just look at EZPass, the toll-booth system that uses RFIDs to automatically charge motorists. That info, in the state of IL, has been supoenaed 11 times already. In one case to prove infidelity in a divorce case.
Now imagine how many places will use RFIDs. Every store. Public places. EVERYWHERE. Compile and cross-reference this data and you can assemble a complete picture of a person.
This is not "tin foil hat" material. It IS happening and it WILL continue if you don't do something.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
I was in Austin last week for the second largest music festival in the US, South by Southwest (sxsw). RFID tags were embedded in the wrist bands that fesitval goers had to wear for the duration of the multi-day event. Most venues I went to scanned these (checking for counterfeit wristbands) using equipment that has the ability to store the info on the RFID tag to upload into a database. With plans to link personal information such as birthdate (for 21+ verification to purchase alcohol at events) and the ability to add money and use the wristband as a sxsw debit card, I see many privacy issues on the horizon for future sxsw goers. Approximately 7,000
Q: A lot of people worry that RFID will infringe on their privacy. Is that a valid concern?
...except when the RFID tag isn't on the tag, or there is more than one RFID tag.
...At the low end, the primary differentiator is price. At the high end, it's more about features, such as security, encryption, protection from evildoers.
...except the evildoers the system trusts, who can use RFID for their activities.
A: There's a theoretical risk. But we have safeguards, and more are coming. Our tags have a kill function that will destroy the tag in case of tampering.
Destruction in case of tampering is to protect the retailer, not the customer.
There are ways to simply erase the information on the tag. There are also less high-tech ways to deal with this: When I buy a garment, one of the first things I do when I get it home is cut off the tags. You can cut off RFID tags the same way.
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.
Exactly that happened: retailers gather data on customers, made possible by barcodes. RFID is like a barcode which can be scanned as you walk past the scanner, even if it's in a pocket or inside the sole of a shoe:
And for a lot of makers of sports shoes, RFID provides added benefit to customers. The average life of a sports-shoe model is about three months. Say that when your shoes wear out, you want a similar pair. It's incredibly difficult today for the retailer to tell a customer which new model corresponds to the old one. But we could fix that with RFID. That's a great sales tool.
As if current shoes couldn't have their model number printed on the inside. And what was that above about removing the RFID tag? How do you do that when it's embedded in the shoe? What better place to put a unique serial number than in a person's shoes, to be read by floor-based scanners under doorways.
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.