Tracking Chip Concerns Privacy Advocates

NBC5.com ^ | 7/30/03 | NBC5 Staff

[Pro-Bush]

Tracking Chip Concerns Privacy Advocates
Good For Retailers, Questionable Merit For Consumers

CHICAGO -- If your cereal box could talk -- or your batteries or shoes or any consumer good you take from the store to your home -- what would it mean to you and your privacy?

Lisa Parker reported that "it's coming to a store near you." She presented a new type of technology, to help manufacturers "track" their items.

Parker posed the question: how far can they take it? Maybe right into your living room, meaning that the tracker could be really convenient or really invasive.

"Bar codes, move over," Parker said, because a tiny device the size of a grain of salt could be the next big thing for consumers and retailers alike. A radio transmitter tag that would basically "talk" to its manufacturer or retailer, telling it helpful information about product, but possibly very personal information about consumers.

In the friendly skies, it could help track your luggage. Delta Airlines is testing it. Tire maker Michelin is putting it in tires to help combat car theft.

The radio frequency identification tag, known as RF-ID, is tiny in size, but already big on controversy.

When RF-ID goes into a product, that item could then be tracked by radio signal wherever it goes.

The lists of pros and cons is growing, Parker said.

On the pro side, tracking inventory would become a snap for retailers.

"It actually allows us to track and trace the product around the globe," said Ralph Henderer (pictured, left), of chip manufacturer Entegris Corp.

Consumers who buy a big ticket item could easily learn its history, Parker said; where it's been or if it was used. Even on the grocery level, a store could know the instant a tube of toothpaste leaves the shelf.

It's great for inventory, but would they then track it inside your home, turning a radio chip into a virtual spy chip? It's an ominous question, Parker said.

Research indicates that the tags could be turned off before consumers leave the store, but the mere possibility they might be left on has privacy advocates on guard here.

The good news is that there's time to iron out the kinks. The tags now cost 30 cents a piece and would reportedly not make it onto mainstream items until they cost a penny a piece.

[sinkspur]

These tags will be "killed" at the check-out stands. No tracking after they leave the retailer.

RFID is a supply chain implement and nothing more, conspiracists notwithstanding.

[Pro-Bush]

Yeah, right!

[TheDon]

Agreed. If you can do it, someone will do it, i.e. gov't.

I doubt it would take much to make a nice gadget to burn out, or otherwise disable, such devices.

[Pro-Bush]

MOO

UK's Tesco found using `spy chips'

THE GUARDIAN Sunday, Jul 20, 2003,Page 11 The UK supermarket chain Tesco has admitted testing controversial technology that tracks customers buying certain products through its stores. Anyone picking up Gillette Mach3 razor blades at its store in Cambridge, in the east of England will have his or her picture taken.

The London-based Guardian newspaper, alerted by Katherine Albrecht, director of US-based Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy and Invasion and Numbering, to the use of the smart electronic tags, has found that tags in the razor blades trigger a CCTV camera when a packet is removed from the shelf.

A second camera takes a picture at the checkout and security staff then compare the two images, raising the possibility that they could be used to prevent theft.

[Pro-Bush]

Thanks for the vote of confidence!

[Dixielander]

For more information on RFID and its potential/ probable abuses see: Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasian and Numbering (CASPIAN)

[Pro-Bush]

Bump!

[sinkspur]

Katherine Albrecht is a first-class lunatic. Totally unbelieveable.

What happens if I pick up a Mach 3, then put it on another shelf in the store? Am I targeted as a thief?

Oh, and what genuises are going to compare these thousands of pictures? The minimum-wage mensas we have working security today?

Don't be a sap.

[Pro-Bush]

Who is the sap, you are just ignorant.

[sinkspur]

Who is the sap, you are just ignorant.

Don't tell me you actually BELIEVE that some tiny camera is going to take pictures of guys picking up a package of razor blades. A five dollar purchase is going to be tracked more than the diamond ring purchases of $500?

Tell me. Who's ignorant?

[Dixielander]

Re your remark: "Katherine Albrecht is a first-class lunatic. Totally unbelieveable." You question Albrecht's sanity. I suggest that you are naive--very naive. While RFID may be innocuous in the beginning, it will become invasive in time. That is reality. Ever thought about the gradualistic approach to undermining our freedoms and how successful it has been?

[Pro-Bush]

Look, you are in some database somewhere, they know what you buy, your buying patterns, and how much you spend. I am sorry, but when I pick up a product at a grocerey store, I don't expect to have my picture taken. If you don't have a problem with that, then you're lame. I for one, expect to have my privacy protected. Don't you know about CRM? tracking your buying influences and buying buhavior. How would you like if your health insurance provider knew how many twinkies or beer you purchased and held it against you by stating you did it to yourself. RFID tags amounts to a de facto personal locator system that are used to track a person's movements, behavior, and purchase preferences.

[ccmay]

I doubt it would take much to make a nice gadget to burn out, or otherwise disable, such devices.

Definitely not.

-ccm

[nunya bidness]

These tags will be "killed" at the check-out stands. No tracking after they leave the retailer.

RFID is a supply chain implement and nothing more, conspiracists notwithstanding.

Sure they will. Just like all the other data collection systems.

Ever read "A Scanner Darkly?"

Now would be a good time to pick it up before someone, other than Speilberg, options it.

Slippery slopes, notwithstanding.

[blackbirdphleps]

What happens if I pick up a Mach 3, then put it on another shelf in the store? Am I targeted as a thief?

My understanding a person has to walk out of the store without paying for an item for it to be classified as shop lifting.

Don't be a sap.

When you go to a store how do you pay for your items?
Have you ever been asked by a cashier for your id, phone #, social securtiy #? Why do they need all that info?
Do you own one of those cars that if it gets stolen it can be tracked?

Inventions are nice they improve our life style, But how often does an invention fall into someone's hands that see it as a means to gain power over others?

Look at the atomic bomb, the inventor never intended it to be used as an weapon.

[backhoe]

Ever read "A Scanner Darkly?"

Yes, I did, friend-- many, many years ago, and I have pulled many a hard mile down some dark & lonesome roads since then... but I remember.
PKD was one of my favourite authors.

[nunya bidness]

I knew you did, hence the flag to you.

Scary how much a dystopian/paranoid fantasy has become reality. Equally scary the end of that book. I'll try to find the quote at the end, but I'm sure you'll understand.

Take care neighbor.

[backhoe]

I'll try to find the quote at the end, but I'm sure you'll understand.

I'd be interested to read that again- I still have the book, somewhere in my pile of stuff, but retrieving it would probably wake my small household, and I'd rather not do that at this unGodly hour.

[nunya bidness]

From a review of the book:

Through his last bit of consciousness, we see another plot twist: the drugs are supplied by the rehab clinics, using the patients as farmers.

I'm still searching for the quote...

More reviews.... "That's one of the ultimate ironies: the dope burns the agent's brain out. In A Scanner Darkly, I just tried to see how far you could push the terrible tragedies of the dope world: the hero's a narc who's reporting on himself and he's too burnt-out to know the difference anymore."