- It may be time to ditch your Dockers
and lay off the Levi's, say privacy activists Katherine Albrecht and Liz
McIntyre. New information confirms that Levi Strauss & Co. is violating
a call for a moratorium on item-level RFID by spychipping its clothing.
What's more, the company is refusing to disclose the location of its U.S.
test.
-
- Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
is a controversial technology that uses tiny microchips to track items
from a distance. These RFID microchips have earned the nickname "spychips"
because each contains a unique identification number, like a Social Security
number for things, that can be read silently and invisibly by radio waves.
Over 40 of the world's leading privacy and civil liberties organizations
have called for a moratorium on chipping individual consumer items because
the technology can be used to track people without their knowledge or consent.
-
- Jeffrey Beckman, Director of Worldwide
and U.S. Communications for Levi Strauss, confirmed his company's chipping
program in an email exhange with McIntyre, saying "a retail customer
is testing RFID at one location [in the U.S.]...on a few of our larger-volume
core men's Levi's jeans styles." However, he refused to name the location.
-
- "Out of respect for our customer's
wishes, we are not going to discuss any specifics about their test,"
he said. Beckman also confirmed the company is tagging Levi Strauss clothing
products, including Dockers brand pants, at two of its franchise locations
in Mexico.
-
- McIntyre was tipped off to the activity
by a mention in an industry publication. The article indicated Levi Strauss
was looking for additional RFID "test partners."
-
- Albrecht believes the companies are keeping
mum about the U.S. test location in order to prevent a consumer backlash.
Clothing retailer Benetton was hit hard by a consumer boycott led by Albrecht
in 2003 when the company announced plans to embed RFID tags in its Sisley
line of women's clothing. The resulting consumer outcry forced the company
to retreat from its plans and disclaim its intentions.
-
- Levi Strauss can little afford similar
problems with consumers. It is one of the world's largest brand-name apparel
marketers with a presence in more than 110 countries, but has suffered
through several years of declining sales as younger consumers gravitate
to new brands. The company has also been hurt by Wal-Mart's decision to
cut back on inventory in a bid to shore up its own declining sales.
-
- While Levi Strauss reports that its current
RFID trials use external RFID "hang tags" that can be clipped
from the clothes and the focus is on inventory management, not customer
tracking, the company isn't guaranteeing how it will use RFID in the future.
-
- "Companies like Levi Strauss are
painting their RFID trials as innocuous," observes Albrecht. "But
this technology is extraordinarily dangerous. There is a reason why we
have asked companies not to spychip clothing. Few things are more intimately
connected with an individual than the clothes they wear."
-
- "Once clothing manufacturers begin
applying RFID to hang tags, the floodgates will open and we'll soon find
these things sewn into the hem of our jeans," Albrecht adds. "The
problem with RFID is that it is tracking technology, plain and simple."
-
- Albrecht and McIntyre point out that
tracking people through the things they wear and carry is more than mere
speculation. In their book "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government
Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID," they reveal sworn patent
documents that describe ways to link the unique serial numbers on RFID-tagged
items with the people who purchase them.
-
- One of the most graphic examples is IBM's
"Identification and Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged Items."
In that patent application, IBM inventors suggest tracking consumers for
marketing and advertising purposes.
-
- "That's enough to steam most consumers,"
says McIntyre."But IBM's proposal that the government track people
through RFID tags on the things they wear and carry should send a cold
chill down our spines."
-
- IBM inventors detail how the government
could use RFID tags to track people in public places like shopping malls,
museums, libraries, sports arenas, elevators, and even restrooms.
-
- "Make no mistake," McIntyre
adds. "Today's RFID inventory tags could evolve into embedded homing
beacons. Unchecked, this technology could become a Big Brother bonanza
and a civil liberties nightmare."
-
- ======
-
- ABOUT THE BOOK
-
- "Spychips: How Major Corporations
and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID" (Nelson Current)
was released in October 2005. Already in its fifth printing, "Spychips"
is the winner of the 2006 Lysander Spooner Award for Advancing the Literature
of Liberty and has received wide critical acclaim. Authored by Harvard
doctoral researcher Katherine Albrecht and former bank examiner Liz McIntyre,
the book is meticulously researched, drawing on patent documents, corporate
source materials, conference proceedings, and firsthand interviews to paint
a convincing -- and frightening -- picture of the threat posed by RFID.
-
- Despite its hundreds of footnotes and
academic-level accuracy, the book remains lively and readable according
to critics, who have called it a "techno-thriller" and "a
masterpiece of technocriticism."
-
- ======
-
- CASPIAN: Consumers Against Supermarket
Privacy Invasion and Numbering Opposing retail surveillance schemes since
1999.
-
- http://www.spychips.com/ http://www.nocards.org/
-
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- If you have difficulty with the web-based
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- ======
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- ======
-
- CASPIAN: Consumers Against Supermarket
Privacy Invasion and Numbering Opposing supermarket loyalty cards and other
retail surveillance schemes since 1999
-
- http://www.spychips.com/ http://www.nocards.org/
-
- You're welcome to duplicate and distribute
this message to others who may find it of interest.
-
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