The retail giant Wal-Mart will place radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on underwear, jeans and other consumer items, according to several news reports, including one today from the Wall Street Journal. Companies have long used such "smart tags" to keep track of the inventory of goods going through the supply chain, but the move by Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, to put them on individual consumer items marks a (not unexpected) shift toward something that privacy advocates have long feared....If the idea that corporations might want to use RFID tags to spy on individuals sounds far-fetched, it is worth considering an IBM patent filed in 2001 and granted in 2006. The patent describes exactly how the cards can be used for tracking and profiling even if access to official databases is unavailable or strictly limited. Entitled “Identification and Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged Items in Store Environments,” it chillingly details RFID’s potential for surveillance in a world where networked RFID readers called “person tracking units” would be incorporated virtually everywhere people go—in “shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, restrooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, [and] museums”—to closely monitor people’s movements.
According to the patent, here is how it would work in a retail environment: an “RFID tag scanner located [in the desired tracking location]... scans the RFID tags on [a] person.... As that person moves around the store, different RFID tag scanners located throughout the store can pick up radio signals from the RFID tags carried on that person and the movement of that person is tracked based on these detections.... The person tracking unit may keep records of different locations where the person has visited, as well as the visitation times.”
The fact that no personal data are stored in the RFID tag does not present a problem, IBM explains, because “the personal information will be obtained when the person uses his or her credit card, bank card, shopper card or the like.” The link between the unique RFID number of the tag and a person’s identity needs to be made only once for the card to serve as a proxy for the person thereafter.…
- Wal-Mart already scares the shit out of me for a variety of reasons, none the least being the clientele they attract, endearingly dubbed by me and my family as Wal-Martians.
- There are already dozens, perhaps hundreds of retailers that use RFID tags as anti-theft devices - you only have to cut out the tag after you've bought the garment. HOWEVER, I understand that Wal-Mart may just be creating RFID tags that are embedded in the seams, rather than obnoxiously sticking out, waiting to be cut.
- I certainly don't think that "privacy is dead" as many corporate douchebags do, but I almost never use cash, so i expect that to a certain extent my personal information is already being collected and aggregated. Probably more than I want to know.
Are we slowly becoming a society that resembles 1984? Possibly. Is allowing our personal information enabling the government and corporate interests to know more about us than we want them to know? Likely. But look at the technological advances that are also coming out of it. How nice is it that you can just tap your credit card on the little reader and your transaction is complete? Wouldn't it be cool if you could just walk through a scanner and complete your entire inventory checkout and payment transaction all within an instant? Right? Well that's RFID and related technologies. Am I crazy about the idea of being tracked and data collected about me everywhere I go? Of course not, but it's already happening, and I definitely appreciate the other conveniences this tracking affords me.
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