RFID Tech Infiltrating a British Institution

An anonymous reader writes, "According to silicon.com, Marks & Spencer — a department store as quintessentially British as tea & cake — is so pleased with its trial of RFID clothes-tagging that it's planning to roll it out nationwide. Considering that the UK's Information Commissioner recently made a lot of noise around the RFID track and trace tech, warning that Britain is 'sleepwalking into a surveillance society', Marks & Sparks seems to be setting itself up as a tweed-clad Public Enemy Number One."

Comments

Not so bad

[RealSurreal]

Given that the RFID tags are on disposable paper tags I don't see the problem. If you're too dumb to take off the label before you wear your new clothes you deserve all you get.

Re:Not so bad

[Ramble]

"No, but you could be tracked all the way back to your house.

Or M&S could track you as you visit other stores, to build up a picture of your shopping habits"

Please tell me how M&S are going to build extremely powerful radio transcievers sensitive enough to pick out the signal from an RFID tag from several miles away in every single one of their stores and then triangulate your location without anyone noticing or M&S going bankrupt.

Re:Not so bad

[MartinG]

So it's okay for some random thieves standing in the doorway of the shop to scan my bags on my way out and know that I've just spend 900 quid on clothes, is it?

Come on, have some imagination. This is wide open to abuse.

Re:Not so bad

[Macthorpe]

This is obviously easier than them looking at you carrying bags full of clothes and deducing you've spent a lot of money on clothes, right?

I would say you need a far more active imagination to determine exactly how this is 'wide open to abuse', but to be honest you're paranoid enough for all of us already.

Re:Not so bad

[slashnik]

The tag only has an ID, (think MAC address) you require access to the backend database only then can know what is in the bag.

Re:Not so bad

[jb.hl.com]

Where I work, store cards aren't either, they get processed with other payment methods and then ignored forever...

Anyway, enough nitpicking, you're correct. RFID won't affect any of those things. All of this is FUD...if it helps reduce stock take time (stock take is where you count the stock of everything in the shop at once, which takes an ungodly amount of time-last I heard at my work it took them pretty much all night...) then I don't see how anyone (in retail at least) could NOT be in favour of an RFID system.

Re:Not so bad

[stunt_penguin]

This is not just surveilence, this is hand picked, organic, creamy devonshire survelince, served with only the finest cuts of succulent datamining tools, and wrapped in delicious, healthy cost savings

This is not just a police state, this is an M&S police state.

what?

[bunions]

They're just using RFID to prevent shoplifting. Buy the item, take the tag off - beats the hell out of those giant plastic things you see now. Can someone explain to me how this is bad? I mean, for people who aren't shoplifing.

Re:what?

[bunions]

> If you had bothered to RTFA instead of jerking your knee, you'd have read that they're using it for inventory control.

This is in fact true. Still, the point remains: how does this contribute to a surveillance society again?

It's removeable

[dafz1]

"The RFID tags are contained in throwaway paper labels attached to, but not embedded in" the clothing.

Buy garment, remove RFID tag. Hopefully, it will be on one of the easily removed tags that you cut off anyway.

Re:Spencer != Sparks

[RealSurreal]

It's like a nickname. Marks and Spencer is widely referred to as Marks and Sparks in the UK. Don't ask me why. It just is.

England has a widespread problem apparently

[EvanED]

From this article:

Considering that the UK's Information Commissioner recently made a lot of noise around the RFID track and trace tech, warning that Britain is 'sleepwalking into a surveillance society'

But just a couple hours ago, there was another article warning that

...the country's oversight agency now puts that figure at $24 billion, and two Members of Parliament say the project is "sleepwalking toward disaster"...

Perhaps someone should look into this sleepwalking. I'm sure there's some kind of treatment.

Typical head in the sand response

[Anonymous Coward]

Following your advice would allow the Marks & Spencer satellite to pinpint the exact location of your rubbish bin! No thank you, Mr. Big Brother apologist.

A British Geek writes...

[biglig2]

...all my clothes are from M&S... all UK geek's clothes are from there, except our batman t-shirts - because M&S is where British people shop when they want to buy a pair of nice trousers without actually knowing anything about fashion...frightened to move... can my corduroy trousers see what I'm typing.....erk.

Mod article -1 flamebait !!!

[GreenEggsAndHam]

The only slippery slope I'm seeing is Slashdot's growing tendency for alarmist article summaries.

What's the problem? Cameras not RFID.

[Anonymous Coward]

They are anti-theft tags. We've had those for years, you just remove them when you buy the thing.

The problem we have in Britain is with cameras, they are multiplying like a virus. One street in London
I am watching currently has 82 cameras (I counted them), when it reaches 100 I'm writing an article for the
newspaper. Some spots on the street are covered by up to 4 cameras. This is an ordinary public space.

I hope we become more like the French and people start going out with shotguns, rocks and paint to
vandalise and destroy these creepy nuicance devices which are proven not to reduce crime but lure
people into false security so that next time you get mugged or raped you merely get to have everyone see
it on YouTube.

Also they are a vast waste of taxpayers public money which is goung to line the pockets of these
so called "security companies". The money would be much better spent putting more police out on
the streets.

It isn't all so bad until you join up the data ...

[niks42]

RFID tags on my clothing wouldn't bother me. Tracking my mobile phone wouldn't bother me. Store cards that track my purchases wouldn't really bother me. Cameras that can recognise my face, my vehicle index .. well they kind of bother me. How about my car insurance company wanting to track my vehicle movements so they can gauge my risk?

(I would at some times welcome a way of having an ID card - have you tried opening a bank account lately, with having to prove you are who you say you are, and you live where you say you live ? Waiting two weeks while they run $DEITY knows what checks on you ?)

Having to go through a criminal records check to get a job as an IT architect in London .. that doesn't bother me that much. However, when all this data starts to join up - now I start to get scared. Maybe I have been watching too many movies, but the prospect of data being joined together is far more scary - the whole being much, much greater than the sum of the parts. The technology exists - all it would take is a bit more 'anti-terror' legislation and a good ETL and ta-da!

Add to that a little identity theft, the possibility of others' criminal activity corrupting your data; your digital footprint being messed up with cross-references and data duplicates that shouldn't be there; laws that assume guilt instead of proving it; laws that can put you away for two years for forgetting a password; and bugger me, it is time to leave the country.

The uses are clear

[91degrees]

These are handy for stock control.

The potential for abuse is a lot more abstract and hypothetical. They could work out that people are buying certain items together, but most superstores are already collecting that sort of information. These are largely anonymous so there's a complete lack of personal information. Exactly what they're spying on is a bit vague.

However, we do have some pretty competent privacy legislation in this country. If RFID tags do become a problem I'd imagine the legislation will be expanded.