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RFID Tech Infiltrating a British Institution
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Nov 14, 2006 03:53 PM
from the tea-and-tracking dept.
from the tea-and-tracking dept.
An anonymous reader writes, "According to silicon.com, Marks & Spencer — a department store as quintessentially British as tea & cake — is so pleased with its trial of RFID clothes-tagging that it's planning to roll it out nationwide. Considering that the UK's Information Commissioner recently made a lot of noise around the RFID track and trace tech, warning that Britain is 'sleepwalking into a surveillance society', Marks & Sparks seems to be setting itself up as a tweed-clad Public Enemy Number One."
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Not so bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Typical head in the sand response (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Not so bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, have some imagination. This is wide open to abuse.
Parent
Re:Not so bad (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say you need a far more active imagination to determine exactly how this is 'wide open to abuse', but to be honest you're paranoid enough for all of us already.
Parent
Re:Not so bad (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
> spend 900 quid on clothes, is it?
Marks and Spencers isn't that expensive. If you're worried about it, take the stickers off.
> Come on, have some imagination. This is wide open to abuse.
You need a pretty good imagination to imagine someone wanting to guess who's bought what. If you want to rob people who've bought expensive clothes, why not pick a high-end/designer shop
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Or M&S could track you as you visit other stores, to build up a picture of your shopping habits"
Please tell me how M&S are going to build extremely powerful radio transcievers sensitive enough to pick out the signal from an RFID tag from several miles away in every single one of their stores and then triangulate your location without anyone noticing or M&S going bankrupt.
Re: (Score:2)
'Could' and 'will' are two entirely different concepts. I 'could' meet someone on the net, track down where they live, go round to their house and kill them. But it doesn't make the technology itself dangerous, and neither does it mean I 'will'.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds to me like it should be called S & M.
(Oh come on, you knew this comment was coming.)
Re:Not so bad (Score:5, Funny)
This is not just a police state, this is an M&S police state.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Retailers don't store credit/debit card numbers longer than necessary (i.e until the funds clear and are audited), and even then they aren't even linked in the backend with specific purchased products, just a total.
Re:Not so bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, enough nitpicking, you're correct. RFID won't affect any of those things. All of this is FUD...if it helps reduce stock take time (stock take is where you count the stock of everything in the shop at once, which takes an ungodly amount of time-last I heard at my work it took them pretty much all night...) then I don't see how anyone (in retail at least) could NOT be in favour of an RFID system.
Parent
what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They're just using RFID to prevent shoplifting.
If you had bothered to RTFA instead of jerking your knee, you'd have read that they're using it for inventory control.
Re:what? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is in fact true. Still, the point remains: how does this contribute to a surveillance society again?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The RFID tags are contained in throwaway paper labels attached to, but not embedded in, a variety of men's and women's clothing items in stores.
Someone could simply rip off the label before exiting the store if they wanted to shoplift.
Anyway, I think people's objection is that eventually the RFID tags will become commonplace. But instead of placing them in easy-to-remove paper lables, they will be embeddeded in the f
Re: (Score:2)
Right. That other guy noted that. I am suitably abashed.
> I'm not saying that will happen, although I think someone will try, or that there's any legitimate risk of people being tracked using these things, but that's "how this is bad" in a nutshell.
And you could use a kitchen knife to kill someone. That doesn't make kitchen knives bad things. This seems like a completely legitimate use of RFID technology.
sleepwalking into a surveillance society? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As soon as that happens on a wide scale, THEN we can talk about a surveillance society.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought this was common sense...
Re: (Score:2)
You basically end up with recordings residing in a error-prone computer system, which, even when there aren't any problems, keeps a record of y
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The answer to The Prisoner is... (Score:3, Funny)
It's removeable (Score:5, Informative)
Buy garment, remove RFID tag. Hopefully, it will be on one of the easily removed tags that you cut off anyway.
Remove tag, attach to remote controlled car.. (Score:3, Funny)
Spencer != Sparks (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Spencer != Sparks (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Where's your complaint about the inconsistency in the summary using both "UK" and "Britain"?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The Falkland Islands is a territory of but not part of the United Kingdom.
Re: (Score:2)
England has a widespread problem apparently (Score:5, Insightful)
But just a couple hours ago, there was another article [slashdot.org] warning that
Perhaps someone should look into this sleepwalking. I'm sure there's some kind of treatment.
A British Geek writes... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, stop it (Score:2)
Go and find something more useful to post, eh?
As an employee of John Lewis... (Score:2)
Mod article -1 flamebait !!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Public Enemy Number one? (Score:3, Insightful)
Brett
How is this different than stock taking? (Score:2, Insightful)
Many others have commented on this already, but this announcement shouldn't be a problem, and for two reasons: The tags come off, and they are only monitoring what is being sold, not what is coming in the shop.
Because the tags are not embedded, it's not a lasting concern. Remove the tags, you are wearing any other garment. I fail to see the worry with this implementation.
And, because the monitoring is simply for automated stock taking, there is no ulterior motive. Anyone that has worked in the R
What's the problem? Cameras not RFID. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem we have in Britain is with cameras, they are multiplying like a virus. One street in London
I am watching currently has 82 cameras (I counted them), when it reaches 100 I'm writing an article for the
newspaper. Some spots on the street are covered by up to 4 cameras. This is an ordinary public space.
I hope we become more like the French and people start going out with shotguns, rocks and paint to
vandalise and destroy these creepy nuicance devices which are proven not to reduce crime but lure
people into false security so that next time you get mugged or raped you merely get to have everyone see
it on YouTube.
Also they are a vast waste of taxpayers public money which is goung to line the pockets of these
so called "security companies". The money would be much better spent putting more police out on
the streets.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait until the street is empty. Climb up to just under the camera and take a picture.
Attach the picture to the camera so the camera sees only the picture. They'll just record an empty street all day. (That's why you waited for the street to be empty.)
Hey, it worked on the A-Team.
Re: (Score:2)
Or darkness and/or fuzziness, because your picture blocks out most of the light and is too close to the camera to be in focus.
F@#$ the police! (Score:2)
They clothe their businesses in the UK? That is weird.
People don't know or care (Score:2)
No, they aren't. Really. Go into a Marks & Spencer store, and ask customers at random if they are concerned about RFID, or even what it is.
About 90% of them will have never even heard of it, and a further 9.9% or so will know what it is but not care.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't all so bad until you join up the data ... (Score:4, Insightful)
(I would at some times welcome a way of having an ID card - have you tried opening a bank account lately, with having to prove you are who you say you are, and you live where you say you live ? Waiting two weeks while they run $DEITY knows what checks on you ?)
Having to go through a criminal records check to get a job as an IT architect in London .. that doesn't bother me that much. However, when all this data starts to join up - now I start to get scared. Maybe I have been watching too many movies, but the prospect of data being joined together is far more scary - the whole being much, much greater than the sum of the parts. The technology exists - all it would take is a bit more 'anti-terror' legislation and a good ETL and ta-da!
Add to that a little identity theft, the possibility of others' criminal activity corrupting your data; your digital footprint being messed up with cross-references and data duplicates that shouldn't be there; laws that assume guilt instead of proving it; laws that can put you away for two years for forgetting a password; and bugger me, it is time to leave the country.
Shelf Stackers Dream (Score:2, Interesting)
The uses are clear (Score:3, Insightful)
The potential for abuse is a lot more abstract and hypothetical. They could work out that people are buying certain items together, but most superstores are already collecting that sort of information. These are largely anonymous so there's a complete lack of personal information. Exactly what they're spying on is a bit vague.
However, we do have some pretty competent privacy legislation in this country. If RFID tags do become a problem I'd imagine the legislation will be expanded.
Re: (Score:2)