> On Fri, 15 Mar 2002 at 4:03pm Doug Henwood wrote:
> And don't forget the immortal words of Scott McNealy, "You have
zero
> privacy anyway. Get over it"
==============================
Stores' Microchips Will Track Every Move
http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2002/3/14/192821
Thursday, March 14, 2002
Stores have started to install sensor-alerting microchips that delight businesses and worry privacy advocates.
"In ten years nearly every consumer item will probably bear a tiny chip that continually broadcasts its existence to radio-frequency readers at loading docks, store shelves, entrances, security stations and parking lots - just about everywhere," says the March 18 issue of Forbes Global.
The invention promises to save businesses, and thus consumers, billions of dollars by greatly improving inventory control and cutting losses to shoplifters and thieving employees. A Sam's Club under construction outside Tulsa, Okla., is installing the system, already in use at a Gap store in suburban Atlanta; a Prada boutique in Manhattan; a McDonald's in Boise, Idaho; and Star City Casino in Sydney, Australia.
But there are three obstacles, the magazine reports:
Cost. The radio tags go for up to $2 but must drop to less than a cent to become ubiquitous and replace bar codes. A 5 cent tag is expected in three years.
Technology. Researchers are working to overcome the confusion of multiple transmissions from different products' chips, which "broadcast on an unlicensed frequency near the FM band."
Privacy. This is the big concern.
"Privacy advocates are quaking over the prospect that anyone with a radio-frequency reader, including the government, could find out where a passerby had purchased his shoes. It would be easy for Wal-Mart, say, to use its in-store readers to figure out which competitors its customers frequented. Even scarier, some credit- card issuers are considering implanting radio tags in their plastic cards," Forbes Global says.
Lee Tien, a lawyer with the San Francisco watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation, warned "there will be times when that information will be demanded by the government for purposes of investigation."