- The following is an excerpt from the article, "Supermarket
Cards: Tip of the Retail Surveillance Iceberg," accepted for Publication
in the Denver University Law Review, June 2002
-
- "In 5-10 years, whole new ways of doing things will
emerge and gradually become commonplace. Expect big changes." - MIT's
Auto-ID Center
-
- Supermarket cards and other retail surveillance devices
are merely the opening volley of the marketers' war against consumers.
If consumers fail to oppose these practices now, our long term prospects
may look like something from a dystopian science fiction novel.
-
- A new consumer goods tracking system called Auto-ID is
poised to enter all of our lives, with profound implications for consumer
privacy. Auto-ID couples radio frequency (RF) identification technology
with highly miniaturized computers that enable products to be identified
and tracked at any point along the supply chain.
-
- The system could be applied to almost any physical item,
from ballpoint pens to toothpaste, which would carry their own unique information
in the form of an embedded chip. The chip sends out an identification signal
allowing it to communicate with reader devices and other products embedded
with similar chips.
-
- Analysts envision a time when the system will be used
to identify and track every item produced on the planet.
-
- A number for every Item on the planet
-
- Auto-ID employs a numbering scheme called ePC (for "electronic
product code") which can provide a unique ID for any physical object
in the world. The ePC is intended to replace the UPC bar code used on products
today.
-
- Unlike the bar code, however, the ePC goes beyond identifying
product categories -- it actually assigns a unique number to every single
item that rolls off a manufacturing line. For example, each pack of cigarettes,
individual can of soda, light bulb or package of razor blades produced
would be uniquely identifiable through its own ePC number.
-
- Once assigned, this number is transmitted by a radio
frequency ID tag (RFID) in or on the product. These tiny tags, predicted
by some to cost less than 1 cent each by 2004, are "somewhere between
the size of a grain of sand and a speck of dust." They are to be built
directly into food, clothes, drugs, or auto-parts during the manufacturing
process.
-
- Receiver or reader devices are used to pick up the signal
transmitted by the RFID tag. Proponents envision a pervasive global network
of millions of receivers along the entire supply chain -- in airports,
seaports, highways, distribution centers, warehouses, retail stores, and
in the home. This would allow for seamless, continuous identification and
tracking of physical items as they move from one place to another, enabling
companies to determine the whereabouts of all their products at all times.
-
- Steven Van Fleet, an executive at International Paper,
looks forward to the prospect. "We'll put a radio frequency ID tag
on everything that moves in the North American supply chain," he enthused
recently.
-
- The ultimate goal is for Auto-ID to create a "physically
linked world" in which every item on the planet is numbered, identified,
catalogued, and tracked. And the technology exists to make this a reality.
Described as "a political rather than a technological problem,"
creating a global system "would . . . involve negotiation between,
and consensus among, different countries." Supporters are aiming for
worldwide acceptance of the technologies needed to build the infrastructure
within the next few years.
-
- The implications of Auto-ID
-
- "Theft will be drastically reduced because items
will report when they are stolen, their smart tags also serving as a homing
device toward their exact location." - MIT's Auto-ID Center
-
- Since the Auto-ID Center's founding at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1999, it has moved forward at remarkable
speed. The center has attracted funding from some of the largest consumer
goods manufacturers in the world, and even counts the Department of Defense
among its sponsors. In a mid-2001 pilot test with Gillette, Philip Morris,
Procter & Gamble, and Wal-Mart, the center wired the entire city of
Tulsa, Oklahoma with radio-frequency equipment to verify its ability to
track Auto-ID equipped packages.
-
- Though many Auto-ID proponents appear focused on inventory
and supply chain efficiency, others are developing financial and consumer
applications that, if adopted, will have chilling effects on consumers'
ability to escape the oppressive surveillance of manufacturers, retailers,
and marketers. Of course, government and law enforcement will be quick
to use the technology to keep tabs on citizens, as well.
-
- The European Central Bank is quietly working to embed
RFID tags in the fibers of Euro bank notes by 2005. The tag would allow
money to carry its own history by recording information about where it
has been, thus giving governments and law enforcement agencies a means
to literally "follow the money" in every transaction. If and
when RFID devices are embedded in banknotes, the anonymity that cash affords
in consumer transactions will be eliminated.
-
- Hitachi Europe wants to supply the tags. The company
has developed a smart tag chip that -- at just 0.3mm square and as thin
as a human hair -- can easily fit inside of a banknote. Mass-production
of the new chip will start within a year.
-
- Consumer marketing applications will decimate privacy
-
- "Radio frequency is another technology that supermarkets
are already using in a number of places throughout the store. We now envision
a day where consumers will walk into a store, select products whose packages
are embedded with small radio frequency UPC codes, and exit the store without
ever going through a checkout line or signing their name on a dotted line."
-
- Jacki Snyder, Manager of Electronic Payments for Supervalu
(Supermarkets), Inc., and Chair, Food Marketing Institute Electronic Payments
Committee
-
- Auto-ID would expand marketers' ability to monitor individuals'
behavior to undreamt of extremes. With corporate sponsors like Wal-Mart,
Target, the Food Marketing Institute, Home Depot, and British supermarket
chain Tesco, as well as some of the world's largest consumer goods manufacturers
including Proctor and Gamble, Phillip Morris, and Coca Cola it may not
be long before Auto-ID-based surveillance tags begin appearing in every
store-bought item in a consumer's home.
-
- According to a video tour of the "Home of the Future"
and "Store of the Future" sponsored by Proctor and Gamble, applications
could include shopping carts that automatically bill consumer's accounts
(cards would no longer be needed to link purchases to individuals), refrigerators
that report their contents to the supermarket for re-ordering, and interactive
televisions that select commercials based on the contents of a home's refrigerator.
-
- Now that shopper cards have whetted their appetite for
data, marketers are no longer content to know who buys what, when, where,
and how. As incredible as it may seem, they are now planning ways to monitor
consumers' use of products within their very homes. Auto-ID tags coupled
with indoor receivers installed in shelves, floors, and doorways, could
provide a degree of omniscience about consumer behavior that staggers the
imagination.
-
- Consider the following statements by John Stermer, Senior
Vice President of eBusiness Market Development at ACNielsen:
-
- "[After bar codes] [t]he next 'big thing' [was]
[f]requent shopper cards. While these did a better job of linking consumers
and their purchases, loyalty cards were severely limited...consider the
usage, consumer demographic, psychographic and economic blind spots of
tracking data.... [S]omething more integrated and holistic was needed to
provide a ubiquitous understanding of on- and off-line consumer purchase
behavior, attitudes and product usage. The answer: RFID (radio frequency
identification) technology.... In an industry first, RFID enables the linking
of all this product information with a specific consumer identified by
key demographic and psychographic markers....Where once we collected purchase
information, now we can correlate multiple points of consumer product purchase
with consumption specifics such as the how, when and who of product use."
-
- Marketers aren't the only ones who want to watch what
you do in your home. Enter again the health surveillance connection. Some
have suggested that pill bottles in medicine cabinets be tagged with Auto-ID
devices to allow doctors to remotely monitor patient compliance with prescriptions.
-
- While developers claim that Auto-ID technology will create
"order and balance" in a chaotic world, even the center's executive
director, Kevin Ashton, acknowledges there's a "Brave New World"
feel to the technology. He admits, for example, that people might balk
at the thought of police using Auto-ID to scan the contents of a car's
trunk without needing to open it. The Center's co-director, Sanjay E. Sarma,
has already begun planning strategies to counter the public backlash he
expects the system will encounter.
-
- http://www.nocards.org/AutoID/overview.shtml
|
