Spychipped Levi's Brand Jeans Hit The U.S.

Spychips.com & Computer Power User ^ | April 27,2006 | Katherine Albrecht

[MissAmericanPie]

SPYCHIPPED LEVI'S BRAND JEANS HIT THE U.S. Levi Strauss Confirms RFID Test, Refuses to Disclose Location

It may be time to ditch your Dockers and lay off the Levi's, say privacy activists Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre. New information confirms that Levi Strauss & Co. is violating a call for a moratorium on item-level RFID by spychipping its clothing. What's more, the company is refusing to disclose the location of its U.S. test.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a controversial technology that uses tiny microchips to track items from a distance. These RFID microchips have earned the nickname "spychips" because each contains a unique identification number, like a Social Security number for things, that can be read silently and invisibly by radio waves. Over 40 of the world's leading privacy and civil liberties organizations have called for a moratorium on chipping individual consumer items because the technology can be used to track people without their knowledge or consent.

Jeffrey Beckman, Director of Worldwide and U.S. Communications for Levi Strauss, confirmed his company's chipping program in an email exhange with McIntyre, saying "a retail customer is testing RFID at one location [in the U.S.]...on a few of our larger-volume core men's Levi's jeans styles." However, he refused to name the location.

"Out of respect for our customer's wishes, we are not going to discuss any specifics about their test," he said. Beckman also confirmed the company is tagging Levi Strauss clothing products, including Dockers brand pants, at two of its franchise locations in Mexico.

McIntyre was tipped off to the activity by a mention in an industry publication. The article indicated Levi Strauss was looking for additional RFID "test partners."

Albrecht believes the companies are keeping mum about the U.S. test location in order to prevent a consumer backlash. Clothing retailer Benetton was hit hard by a consumer boycott led by Albrecht in 2003 when the company announced plans to embed RFID tags in its Sisley line of women's clothing. The resulting consumer outcry forced the company to retreat from its plans and disclaim its intentions.

Levi Strauss can little afford similar problems with consumers. It is one of the world's largest brand-name apparel marketers with a presence in more than 110 countries, but has suffered through several years of declining sales as younger consumers gravitate to new brands. The company has also been hurt by Wal-Mart's decision to cut back on inventory in a bid to shore up its own declining sales.

While Levi Strauss reports that its current RFID trials use external RFID "hang tags" that can be clipped from the clothes and the focus is on inventory management, not customer tracking, the company isn't guaranteeing how it will use RFID in the future.

"Companies like Levi Strauss are painting their RFID trials as innocuous," observes Albrecht. "But this technology is extraordinarily dangerous. There is a reason why we have asked companies not to spychip clothing. Few things are more intimately connected with an individual than the clothes they wear."

"Once clothing manufacturers begin applying RFID to hang tags, the floodgates will open and we'll soon find these things sewn into the hem of our jeans," Albrecht adds. "The problem with RFID is that it is tracking technology, plain and simple."

Albrecht and McIntyre point out that tracking people through the things they wear and carry is more than mere speculation. In their book "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID," they reveal sworn patent documents that describe ways to link the unique serial numbers on RFID-tagged items with the people who purchase them.

One of the most graphic examples is IBM's "Identification and Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged Items." In that patent application, IBM inventors suggest tracking consumers for marketing and advertising purposes.

"That's enough to steam most consumers," says McIntyre."But IBM's proposal that the government track people through RFID tags on the things they wear and carry should send a cold chill down our spines."

IBM inventors 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.

"Make no mistake," McIntyre adds. "Today's RFID inventory tags could evolve into embedded homing beacons. Unchecked, this technology could become a Big Brother bonanza and a civil liberties nightmare."Technically Speaking An Interview With Katherine Albrecht, Author & RFID Watchdog

Katherine Albrecht has been called the Erin Brockovich of RFID. She defines a consumer privacy expert, however, as “someone who pays attention to the risks that consumers run when they go about their regular business.” Albrecht’s actions would seem to back up her words. She’s the founder and director of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), a consumer watchdog group that has more than 12,000 subscribers to its Web site (www.nocards.org) and representatives in all 50 states and 30 countries. Albrecht, who’s finishing up a doctorate degree in consumer education at Harvard University, is also the co-author of “Spychips: How Major Corporations And Government Plan To Track Your Every Move With RFID.”

by Barry Brenesal

CPU: What is your main concern about RFID technology?

Albrecht: It’s an incredibly powerful technology that easily lends itself to abuse. RFID readers can be placed invisibly in the environment. RFID tags can be placed on clothes and in people’s belongings. And maybe the most worrisome part is that the companies that are aiming to put the readers in the environment and the tags into people’s belongings have spelled out some pretty frightening plans for how they hope to abuse the technology—literally to use it to spy on people.

CPU: What could RFID tagging track, for example?

Albrecht: Probably the best example is a patent from IBM called “Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items.” They filed it a few years back. IBM has been in on the RFID/EPC (Electronic Prod....

[MissAmericanPie]

I would be tempted to leave the tag in the restroom of a topless joint, along with penning the phone number of the CEO of the company, saying, "For a good time call XXX".

[RinaseaofDs]

Fabulous. Prove to consumers the chip doesn't work after point of sale and I'll stop opposing it. I work in competitive intelligence and am an EE, so while I agree that RFID is amazing technology, I also agree the potential for abuse is appalling.

[hadit2here]

There are probably many ways, but disabling every pacemaker and other electronic device within a 100 yard radius may not be appreciated...

Not a problem. Go to Radio Shack (ugh!) and buy a bulk tape eraser. It's just a large electromagnet. Run that over any item of clothing you buy and bye bye any RFID sewn into, or tagged or attached to them.

Since audio cassette tapes have started to become extinct, the bulk erasers may not still be available a lot, but it's not difficult at all to make a simple electomagnet.

[VRing]

"Where did you buy them?"

The local Fleet Farm.

[VRing]

I told you the wrong brand. They were Carhartt's, not Dickie's.

[Publius6961]

http://www.rfidgazette.org/2006/02/global_rfid_pas.html

LOL!

[ThinkDifferent]

...and we're not interested in what you're doing at home. We care only about the movement of material from point of make to point of sale.

Which makes perfect sense. But what I don't understand is that this entire issue could be defused if the tags were deactivated when the product is purchsed by the customer, and nobody seems interested in doing that.

[ccmay]

Don't forget, there's not one of these little chips that can survive a direct blow from a hammer against a hard surface.

Free the Britches!

-ccm

[The Red Zone]

There's the gnarly issue of how returns are handled. This would require chip reactivation, or insertion of new chip.

[clyde asbury]

David Letterman's World Wide Pants now make sense.

[MissAmericanPie]

This may be perfectly true at this point, but here is a scenario. I buy the pants put them in my shopping bag. At come future point some marketing sales exec is going to say, this is a good way to track people's shopping habits.

So after my Levi purchase I leave the store and I walk into Marshal Fields and my chip is automatically registered as I enter, not only there but every store I visit. That is invading my privacy. Just because you sold me pants doesn't entitle some marketing company to follow me through the mall registering what shops I favor.