By Drog, Section News Posted on Mon May 31, 2004 at 09:00:31 AM PST
Welcome to a brave new world of shopping. Where you never need to check-out at a store, you just scan your bank card and walk out with your items. Where stores never need to conduct inventory. Where your clothes tell your washing machine what settings to use. It's all possible now thanks to Radio Frequency Identification, (RFID) technology--tiny digital chips that broadcast wireless signals. As Newsweek reports, RFID tags are already cheap and small enough to be disposable, and they're getting cheaper and smaller by the day. Retail stores are beginning to use them as glorified bar codes, putting them on cases of bananas or crates of Coke so they can keep track of their inventory. The technology has the potential to transform our relationship to the objects around us, but it also raises troubling questions about the invasion of privacy.
As news.com reported over a year ago, the privacy concerns arise if these RFID tags are not turned off after we leave the store. If they remain active, then they could easily be used to track us through our personal possessions. A store could link your sweater's RFID tag with the credit card you used to buy it and thus recognize you by name when you return. Grocery stores could flash ads on wall-sized screens based on your spending patterns, just like in the sci-fi film "Minority Report." Police and government would gain a trendy method of constant, cradle-to-grave surveillance.
And that's assuming we don't just start getting ourselves directly implanted with these chips. At Barcelona's Baja Beach Club, you can enjoy VIP status at by implanting the RFID chip (the size of a grain of rice) under the skin in your arm. Instead of queuing up behind velvet ropes, you can stroll right on in. When you want a drink, the bartender waves an electronic wand that deducts from the tab on your chip.
"Supermarket cards and retail surveillance devices are merely the opening volley," says Katherine Albrecht, founder of the U.S.- based privacy group CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering). "If consumers fail to oppose these practices now, our long-term prospects may look like something from a dystopian science-fiction novel." Proponents counter that RFID tags transmit for only a few meters, and the data can be encrypted or deactivated once a product leaves the store. Nevertheless, caspian and other watchdog groups have won concessions from retailers. Wal-Mart and Benetton will only use the tags on pallets, not on individual items, and Metro has gotten rid of RFID-enabled loyalty cards. Utah now requires clear labeling of an RFID-tagged product; a bill in California would ban retailers from using RFID to collect information about consumers.
For now, the cost of RFID tags is still too high--they will have to drop from 20 cents each to five cents or less if they're to grace trillions of consumer items. Also, the signal doesn't pass through liquid or metal, which makes it tough to tag a can of soda or a nine-volt battery. And people may not like the idea of being surrounded by tiny transmitters sending out electromagnetic radiation (although that's doubtful, given the growing use of wireless devices). Undaunted, RFID chipmaker VeriChip is looking for big banks and credit-card firms interested in offering RFID-based e-wallets.
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