Today I received an e-mail message about RFID chips being inserted in consumer products. This is the first I have heard of this technology. Does someone have the latest Straight Dope on RFID chips?
For starters, here’s
one of many sites I got from putting “rfid solutions” into Google. Most of this stuff seems to be oriented towards businesses putting little tags on the stuff in stores and using them as a quick way to inventory the whole store in real-time, as well as prevent shoplifting. Look around the site for some of the things they claim they can do: maps of every item in the store on a computer screen in real time, etc… The technology is definitely here, it’s just too expensive right now for stores to make use of it in anything but the most expensive multi-hundred-dollar-plus items.
Of course, some thieves are already taking to RF shielding their naughty bits (sixth story down) and sneaking stuff out past RFID scanners that way. Yes, wearing aluminium foil underwear really is a crime in Colorado. Only in my state…
-Ben
Go to Slashdot and search for “RFID” for some pointers to recent articles.
RFID does have some legit. uses. Inventory control and tracking would be made much easier. That includes theft control in particular. (Remember, most store thefts are done by employees.)
But, what if the tags are inserted into things so the consumer cannot easily remove them at home? E.g., inside of devices so removal would void the warranty or damage the product.
Realize that anyone, I mean anyone then could drive down your street and find out what you have in your house. From the model of your TV set (guess who would like that info) to what brands of cereals are on your shelf. Furthermore, the tags are unique. Someone could track you via the RFID tags inside your tires.
We need legislation to make is simple for consumers to remove the tags (clear labels and location) after we purchase them. Or else we have a privacy nightmare on our hands. We really don’t need them inside our tires after they’ve been mounted.
Thanks for the info. The e-mail I got was rather alarmist in nature - the author claims that Bennetton and Gilette have been putting the chips in their products for some time now. And, as you say, ftg, the chips could conceivably be used for all kinds of insidious things.
RFID doesn’t necessarily need to identify the product; suppose it just carried a unique numeric ID; the store could capture these IDs at Goods Inward, assigning them to a product in the company’s private database, this would enable them to be tracked in the store, but once they are in your home, there would be no incentive for a potential thief to detect them without the database that describes the product ID/item associations.
And every time you walk within a couple of meters of one of their scanners, their loudspeaker can blare out “hey Mangetout, need another pair of those khaki pants?”
Benetton could send marketers prowling the streets scanning for their tags and handing out coupons. Tearing a page from the telemarketer’s excuse book, this would not be invasive because they have a pre-existing relationship with you as indicated by the tag in your undies broadcasting that you wear tidy whites in a size 86. It’s one thing to have a guy on the corner handing coupons to everyone that passes, but it’s a little creepy if that guy knows the size and brand of every product on your person and can tailor his pitch accordingly.
You’re quite right that these tags would be very little use to burglars, but there are plenty of other reasons I don’t want my stuff talking to the world. I install firewalls to make sure my computers don’t “phone home” to their various manufacturers. How do I firewall my pants?
RFID tags are certainly nothing new. I put them on coal trucks when I worked at a power plant some 15 years ago. They are put on cattle, shipping containers, and assemblies in factories. If you ever are on a toll road and see an EZ-PASS sign, that’s an RFID system. At work we have access badges with RFID tags. If you want to open the door to an area, you wave your badge in front of the reader (or your wallet with the badge inside, or maybe you have the badge in your pocket in which case you slam your body up against the wall which looks rather cute) and voila, the door unlocks.
They basically come in two types, “beam powered” and “battery powered.” Battery powered, obviously, has a battery. Beam powered ones use radio energy from the incoming signal to charge up a capacitor, which is then used to power the device. The advantage of battery powered ones is that they have longer range. The advantage of beam powered ones is that you never have to replace a battery and you can make them smaller. Whether its beam powered or battery powered, once it receives an incoming signal, it transmits its own coded sequence of RF pulses to generate a unique ID number.
I have to admit all of the evil uses mentioned above really gave me a good chuckle. The small beam powered tags have a range of only a few inches. You aren’t going to be able to read them from outside your house, but if you do see someone driving right beside you with a big radio antenna pointed at your tire, you might be in trouble.
The ones used by Benetton are cited as having a range of 1.5 meters, which is more than adequate for the uses I described. From the description and pictures in the news items, I assume these are beam powered because they are very small and embedded in the product label in what Benetton describes as “imperceptible to the consumer.”
Note that I also never used the word “evil”. I believe that companies have every right to do this. But I have every right to make buying decisions based on this and to take every measure available to thwart it. I’ve worked extensively in manufacturing and distribution supply chains, so I understand the benefits, but I’ll still want a firewall for my pants.
I used to manage full stocktakes in gift shops; it would be wonderful if I could just press a button and have the system identify the whereabouts of every item of stock.
RFID technology is not far from this. MIT is currently working on RFID checkout and product recieving systems. Some of the rather cool and “non threatening” aspects involv RFID tagging of cases and or pallets of products. RFID tags allow a warehouse or store to move things into inventory literally as the pallet comes off the truck. This allows zero lag from recieve to “in stock” status and allows people on the sales floor to give minute to minute accurate status of available product.
In the world of heavy inventory, which is often a morass of paperwork, things like this are dreams come true.
Although it would be most cool if RFID tags in our clothing would light up a small LED or something on the shelf or rack where our size was placed. Granted some kind of nightmare like in Minority Report is probably more likely