Wal-Mart Expands RFID Mandate

RFID Journal ^ | 8-17-03

[PatrioticCowboy]

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[PatrioticCowboy]

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[PatrioticCowboy]

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[PatrioticCowboy]

Any folks at this forum who are very knowledgable on this subject?

I have heard a lot about RFID in the news recently, but I am not quite sure what it is.

[STARWISE]

This from RFID Journal will give you an idea.

"RFID Journal is an independent, online daily devoted to one thing: educating business people about radio frequency identification and its many business applications."

[sinkspur]

I have heard a lot about RFID in the news recently, but I am not quite sure what it is.

Microchips that can be read by a remote scanner. The technology has been around for a while; a small plastci credit-card affixed to a windshield with one of these chips installed allows motorists to pass toll stations without stopping; a scanner reads the card and charges the customer's account.

They've been installed on large shipping containers on docks and read by scanners on fork lifts; the chip identifies the container number, and the number is attached to the inventory of the shipping container. So these devices make it easy to know everything that's on a dock.

Wal-Mart wants all its suppliers to put these RFID's (Remote-Frequency Identification Devices) on pallets so that it can track inventory from the minute it leaves its warehouses to the time it is unloaded.

With chip technology costs continuing the decline, the next step will be to put RFID's on all products, so that they can be tracked all the way to purchase.

Inventory carrying costs are high, so Wal-Mart wants to know exactly what it has on hand, at all times.

Contrary to some here, these devices can be "killed" by a scanner at the last point of contact, so they're not going to be used to track what consumers buy.

[geologist]

"Contrary to some here, these devices can be "killed" by a scanner at the last point of contact, so they're not going to be used to track what consumers buy."

Want to bet ...? It will be frequently forgotten or missed or fall throught the cracks for awhile and then the information will be sold or used in the case of divorces, health insurances, trials etc. Wait and see.

[Guillermo]

It's all about more efficient supply chain management, which equals monetary savings.

[sinkspur]

It will be frequently forgotten or missed or fall throught the cracks for awhile and then the information will be sold or used in the case of divorces, health insurances, trials etc. Wait and see.

The chips are being designed to be killed, or to "die" within a certain number of cycles ("reads") precisely to prevent what you have described. Retailers are VERY sensitive to the concerns of consumers.

[LiveFreeOr..]

I've written driver software for RFID tags used by the Semiconductor industry.

RFID tags stands for Radio Frequency IDentification.

They're comprised of an Antenna, a radio transceiver and a small amount of memory. The latter two are part of a tiny semiconductor chip.

The memory can be read/write so the device can be written to and read from. Sometimes it’s read only. Depends on the application. The more memory, the more power the device would need. The devices I use had less than 1000 bytes of memory. Since the memory is a flash type, power is only needed during read or write operations.

The device is powered by rectifying the radio frequency signal sent by the scanner device. It’s not much power (micro watts or less) but it’s enough for the task. The scanner must obviously be very close as power drops off at one over the square of the distance between the sender and receiver and the device only gets a very small portion of that transmitted signal. For the ones I used the scanning head and what we called the 'pill' had to be less than an inch away.

These devices are very small, smaller than a pill, but larger than a pinhead. The largest part is the Antenna, which is a small coil of wire, though in principal it could be circular traces on the chip. The ones I used had small coils of wire wrapped around the chip assembly then enclosed in a plastic form; the same shape as but slightly smaller than a cylindrical pill. Using a coil of wire allowed the device to pick up more power from the scanner.

Some people fear these devices could be used to monitor you. I have my doubts for general applications. The problem is in order to be small, it would have to be self powered as I describe. The power of the transmitter would have to be phenomenally high to send over great distances, power the device and then have enough power to transmit back to the remote scanner. Mostly, it would probably be used at the checkout counter where the device and the scanner are in close proximity and possibly for inventory operations at night where someone could just walk down the isle with a small but powerful scanner.

They could and probably will be imbedded in credit cards or passports things like that.

[Apple Pan Dowdy]

There is a lot of material on www.nocards.org about the RFID. The above organization leads the protests about this and other abuses of our personal and private information, like grocery store loyalty cards.

[Timesink]

nocards.org is not an "organization." It is a single obsessed woman.

[Orange1998]

Here is a website talking about it.

http://www.boycottgillette.com/spychips.html

Qutoed....."The tracking system uses sensors hidden under Gillette shelves to detect when products are picked up.

Whenever a shopper picks up a packet of razor blades from a spy shelf, SNAP! A hidden camera secretly takes a closeup photo of the shopper's face. (And a second photo is snapped at the cash register to make sure the product is paid for!)"

[rockfish59]

Big BrotheRFID?

[sinkspur]

Exactly. CASPIAN couldn't get any traction with the grocery loyalty cards, so Katherine Albrecht has seized on RFID as the next boogeyman.

Paranoia is profitable.

[sinkspur]

Whenever a shopper picks up a packet of razor blades from a spy shelf, SNAP! A hidden camera secretly takes a closeup photo of the shopper's face. (And a second photo is snapped at the cash register to make sure the product is paid for!)"

This is CASPIAN bullshit! There are no hidden cameras on shelves nor at check-out stands.

Think about it for a minute. Why would Gillette spend this kind of money to track a $5.00 package of razor blades? Besides, who's going to look at these pictures? Some minimum wage security guard? And why is he going to look at them?

And what if the shopper picks up the blades, but decides not to buy them and sets them on a shelf in automotive? He didn't pay for them, but he doesn't have them, either

This is paranoid, Area 51-contrail garbage, and anybody with a brain in his head knows it is.

But you're just the kind of dupe that Katherine Albrecht is targeting with her hysteria.

[FourPeas]

Whenever a shopper picks up a packet of razor blades from a spy shelf....

Oooooh, I love it! When Mr. FourPeas and I are on vacation we "look" for these types on shortwave radio. I never considered that it would be so much fun on the web, too.

[Orange1998]

Who said I believed it. I only posted the it to show the BS about RFID. "But you're just the kind of dupe"...Don't call me a Dupe!

[geologist]

The cards grocers (etc.), give members to be eligible for whatever the in store items are on sale each day has already been used to track information of purchases.

Information that might be twisted to prove that a person buys wine weekly or monthly ... thus can be cast as an alcoholic (as in a parental hearing), or as the reason for a customer falling down in the store, and so on ... the possibilities are multitudous.

As with most things the possibility of misuse is present. Unintended consequences. It is not a good idea to be individually identified.

Insurance companies can claim eating junk is what created illness or overweight and refuse to pay claims, since it was self caused. Think about it.