Depending on who’s talking, radio frequency identification, or RFID, chips could be a modern-miracle marketing-and-inventory tool or the absolute worst looming threat to your privacy.
The technology uses computer chips that broadcast radio signals. If you attach a chip to a product, companies can track items in warehouses and stores without having to pay employees to scan bar codes.
Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Inc. and other Northwest Arkansas-based giants, including Tyson Foods Inc. and J. B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., are major champions of RFID.
Wal-Mart in particular has been in the forefront, pushing all its suppliers to start using the chips. It required its top 100 suppliers to begin using RFID at certain locations at the beginning of 2005 and was expecting the next top 200 suppliers to begin tagging cases and pallets as of January 2006.
But the chips have a potentially more sinister use. Privacy advocates, some more fervent than others, warn that the scanners that are designed to track the movement of packages can just as easily track the movement of people.
U. S. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., raised an even bigger concern in the September 2005 Senate confirmation hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts: “Can a microscopic tag be implanted in a person’s body to track his every movement ? There’s actual discussion about that. You will rule on that — mark my words — before your tenure is over.”
“How would you like it if, for instance, one day you realized your underwear was reporting on your whereabouts ?” asked California Sen. Debra Bowen at a 2003 hearing.
“Now that shopper cards have whetted their appetite for data, marketers are no longer content to know who buys what, when, where and how,” says Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN ) and co-author of Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move With RFID, in an article that appears on the CASPIAN Web sites, www. nocards. org and www. spychips. com.
“As incredible as it may seem, they are now planning ways to monitor consumers’ use of products within their very homes. RFID tags coupled with indoor receivers installed in shelves, floors and doorways could provide a degree of omniscience about consumer behavior that staggers the imagination.”
An RFID system consists of a transponder, or tag; an integrated circuit containing the circuitry and information; and an antenna and a transceiver to read the radio frequency and transfer the information to a processing device.
That could be identification or location information or specifics about the product — for example, price, color or date of purchase.
(The technology is decades old. It’s similar to the transponder system the British invented in 1939 the Allies used during World War II to identify airplanes. )
You can tag almost anything using an RFID system, including individual articles of clothing and CDs; stores have been using RFID technology for years, including transponders in price tags as an anti-theft measure. The tags can go on the outside of the article where you can see them, or on the inside where you can’t.
Some smart credit cards embedded with RFID chips — the American Express Blue card, for example — can be used as electronic cash, to pay bridge and highway tolls or to pay fares in mass transit systems.
The European Union has been considering, and may have actually started, putting chips in Euro bank notes. The Internet has been buzzing with accounts that the U. S. Mint has already started including chips in the most recently redesigned $ 20 bills — in Andrew Jackson’s left eye, no less — that have set off anti-theft monitors and “explode when you try to microwave them.”
“There are no RFID features in any United States currency,” says Claudia Dickens, manager of the public affairs office of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, an agency of the U. S. Treasury Department responsible for printing paper money. ”
Some governments have started, and others are considering, using RFID chips in new biometric passports to make it easier to scan personal data.
Critics claim potential privacy and personal safety concerns, saying that the passports can be scanned, or “skimmed,” to target citizens of particular countries at airports or to steal identity information.
The U. S. State Department in November 2005 announced that as of October 2006, all U. S. passports will contain RFID chips with some security features, shielded to prevent “skimming” and including a type of personal identification number that must be typed into an RFID reader.
Pet owners have had veterinarians insert chips under pets’ skin containing information on the owner’s name and address.
Some companies are implanting chips under people’s skins, to replace ID tags in high-security situations, or as a way to store and access crucial medical records.
A Niagara Falls resort in Ontario, Canada, has started using RFID wristbands for customers to access rooms and pay for service during their stay.
That’s another cause of worry among privacy advocates. Industry officials have downplayed or pooh-poohed reports that RFID tags could be infected with computer viruses or opened up by hackers by claiming that the chips are too small and have too little memory to harbor a virus.
Albrecht has been fighting for a law in New Hampshire, where she’s based, requiring clear, easyto-read consumer-alert labeling for all items that contain RFID tags.
Albrecht and Spychips co-author Liz McIntyre of CASPIAN note that RFID tags affixed to products remain functional even after the products have been purchased and taken home, and even if you’ve discarded the chip with the packaging.
So it’s possible that some Orwellian someone could be scanning households and even your garbage with a high-gain antenna or that somebody is keeping track of the items you purchase or even your movements in a database.
She says CASPIAN has been fighting for no item-level tagging since 2003. “We don’t have a problem with tagging cases and pallets,” she says. “That’s fine with us.”
Albrecht notes that while she remains at odds with Wal-Mart on some RFID issues — most of them discussed in detail in Spychips — she praises Wal-Mart’s clearly defined RFID policy, included in its 2005 “RFID Guidelines and Requirements” for its suppliers, to clearly label all items that carry an RFID tag.
“To ensure we keep our customers informed at all times, the tag must carry a human readable logo of the EPC [Electronic Product Code ] (where the tag is too small to allow this then an additional label will need to be placed on the package ),” the policy reads.
“If an additional label is used, then this would need to be next to the tag so that the customer can easily identify the location of the tag.”
Albrecht also notes that Wal-Mart’s Web site assures consumers that all RFID-tagged merchandise sold in its stores will be clearly labeled.
“Wal-Mart is committed to protecting the privacy of its customers,” according to the site, www. walmartstores. com / Glo balWMStoresWeb / navigate. do ? catg = 339.
“We are charter members of EPCglobal, an organization that champions the highest standards for the use of EPC and RFID. RFID tags will not contain nor collect any consumer information. However, the choice of keeping the tag or throwing it away after you make a purchase is completely up to you.”
Albrecht notes, however, that within the past year, Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club warehouse stores have started carrying, with RDIF tags on the packaging, single-unit computer printers and televisions, and a CASPIAN check of individual stores has turned up no EPC labeling.
Wal-Mart spokesman Marty Heires says that Wal-Mart has no plans to tag individual store items with RDIF. However, he says, there are some instances — in particular, certain Hewlett-Packard computer printers and some televisions — “when the tagged item is the case the product is shipped in.” He says it continues to be Wal-Mart policy to identify such items as being RFID-tagged.
The Wal-Mart Web site does acknowledge the issue:
“There will be times when a case is also a product’s consumer packaging. This is primarily true for electronic products like TVs or computer printers. In these instances, when you could personally pick up packaging that has an RFID tag, you will see an EPCglobal symbol on the box itself. Wal-Mart will also put signage up on the shelf and / or the aisle where those products may be stocked.”
Albrecht says she was surprised to learn that Wal-Mart’s online store, www. walmart. com, carries not only Spychips but Albrecht’s more recent book, The Spychips Threat: Why Christians Should Resist RFID and Electronic Surveillance.
Albrecht says other real and potential RFID threats lurk. For example, a Web log on her www. spychips. com Web site documents attempts by RFID chip manufacturers to get around clear labeling policy, inserting chips in the rubber soles of boots.
“Imagine now that someone tracks you through your spychipped shoe via RFID readers hidden under floor tiles in your workplace or in public venues like shopping malls,” the Web log continues. “Philips Electronics has clearly been thinking about this possibility. In a sworn U. S. patent application, a Philips’ inventor observes that ‘the placement of [the RFID tag ] in [the ] shoe may be particularly advantageous where the [RFID ] interrogator is located in a floor.’”
Albrecht has also taken on Levi Strauss & Co., which has been conducting an RFID test at a site the company will not disclose.
Albrecht says Jeffrey Beckman, director of worldwide and U. S. communications for Levi Strauss, has confirmed that his company was engaged in a chip program involving “a retail customer... testing RFID at one location [in the U. S. ]... on a few of our larger-volume core men’s Levi’s jeans styles.”
“Out of respect for our customer’s wishes, we are not going to discuss any specifics about their test.”
Beckman told the magazine Advertising Age that the chips are being used on removable hang tags, that “there’s no intention whatsoever to embed these [RFID chips ] in products,” and that the focus is on inventory management, not customer tracking.
Albrecht says Beckman also confirmed the company is tagging Levi Strauss clothing products at two of its franchise locations in Mexico.
Albrecht also cites an IBM patent application for “Identification and Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged Items,” in which IBM inventors offer a method of tracking consumers for marketing and advertising purposes and detail how the government could use RFID tags to track people in public places like shopping malls, museums, libraries, sports arenas, elevators and even restrooms.
“All this is footnoted and documented in the book,” says Albrecht. “This didn’t come out of my head — this came out of IBM’s head.” Radio frequency identification
Retailers and manufacturers hope the use of radio frequency identification tags can accurately keep track of shipments of goods. Currently, workers manually scan bar codes printed on items to keep track of products, a process that retailers say is open to error. By using reader devices in factories, distribution centers and stores, retailers say they will be able to do away with manual scanning. By scouring the data produced by the tags, retailers hope to have products on the shelves when and where they are needed by shoppers. 1 At the factory, the radio frequency identification microchip is attached to the product. As new orders come in, manufacturers know an item’s destination as
soon as it is
ready to ship. 2 Warehouses and distribution centers
can route shipments more efficiently.
Warehouse inventory and individual
truck shipments are located easily.
Time of arrival and destination of
each shipment can be tracked. 3 When the product arrives at the
store, sensors automatically
update the store inventory. 4 Sensors detect the
product leaving
the shelf and can
automatically
order more from
the factory. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
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