Wal-Mart spy chips
p2p news / p2pnet: Speaking of RFID, more than 70 Texans converged on a Dallas Wal-Mart Supercenter last weekend to protest the store’s RFID tagging of consumer products.
“Armed with anti-RFID signs and singing “We don’t like the looks of spychips sittin’ in this Wal-Mart store,” says CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering)
The group worked the sidewalk adjacent to the store’s parking lot, handing out literature to passersby and waving to drivers who honked their support.
Target and Wal-Mart are sharing Electronic Product Code (EPC) data with 13 manufacturers as part of a pilot, says the RFID Journal.
Data are being transmitted in a standardized format via a Net-based electronic data interchange called applicability statement 2 (AS2).
“The manufacturers have requested anonymity, but they include some of the largest consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers supplying Wal-Mart and Target,” says the RFID Journal.
CASPIAN says its demo was sparked by Wal-Mart’s use of RFID tags on Hewlett-Packard printer/scanners being sold in its stores.
“Placing RFID tags on individual consumer items, a practice known as ‘item-level tagging,’ has been widely condemned by privacy experts since 2003,” it says.
“Wal-Mart’s item-level RFID tagging initiative is dangerous and irresponsible,” says organization founder Katherine Albrecht, going on, “And it’s especially worrisome when you consider who Wal-Mart’s business partners are.
The companies are working with Wal-Mart to place RFID tags into all consumer products and, “This will make objects – and the people wearing and carrying them – remotely trackable.”
Sweden is now using e-passports with spy chips encoded with the personal details normally included in a passport – height, hair and eye color, and so forth – and with a digital photograph of the owner.
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
RFID – iRiver to use spy chips, October 10, 2005
RFID Journal – Target, Wal-Mart Share EPC Data, October 17, 2005
e-passports – Swedish passport spy chips, October 20, 2005
October 21st, 2005 at 4:52 pm
another good reason not to shop walmart. unfortunatly the majority of the mass consumers will swollow this like a hungry bass swollowing a hook. only when it’s too late will they wiggle and fight but it’ll be a loosing battle by then. don’t mean to sound pessimistic but whenever big business wants something, they usually get it.
October 21st, 2005 at 5:19 pm
how is this any different than the current security tags Sears puts on its pants? O_o…. its just another simple security tag that will prevent even more people from walking out with items.
October 21st, 2005 at 10:09 pm
it’s not just a thing that buzzes the security at the door – it’s a *unique* tag that can later be probed from a (small) distance without the consumers knowledge – possibly identifing the consumer if their purchase was tied to their identity…
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:00 am
RFID tags respond with a specific radio code transmission they have been designed to produce, whenever they recieve a signal on a specific radio frequency. The tag is a simple solid-state circuit that actually derrives it’s transmission power from the “query” radio signal, giving them a limitless lifespan.
Reception of the response signal, and decoding of it, takes about as much computer power as a hand-held calculator; and the RF-capacity of a $10 walkie-talkie. POF using these two items (and some know-how) you can build a RFID-decoder that will tell you the distance and information in any RFID tag within 500 feet. Use two and you can triangulate.
And every doubling of RF-capacity inproves the traking distance by 100%. This means that somebody who wnats to blow about $2,000 and has the know-how can hook up an RFID query radio strong enough to locate and ID any RFID tag in about a 5-mile radius.
Now consider that RFID tags are about 1/16th of an inch square, and weigh less than a fly fart.
This isn’t a new “anti-theft technology”, this is a BIG-BROTHER CITIZEN TRACKING technology. THAT is what is bad with it!
October 22nd, 2005 at 6:23 am
You can’t take them off the product after you’ve left the store, they’re built into it. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it rapidly (if it’s not already) became illegal to tamper with or remove the rfid tags on products you’ve already purchased and taken home.