Walmart to Push RFID 497
bravehamster writes "According to this article over at MSNBC, Walmart is going to push its suppliers to start using RFID to track inventory by 2005. The article goes on to mention how it was Walmart who helped jumpstart widespread adoption of barcodes. The report also points out some of the barriers in the way of RFID acceptance, but never once mentions consumer privacy concerns. Guess that kind of stuff just isn't important anymore."
the biggest concerns (Score:4, Insightful)
Recent conversation (Score:5, Insightful)
Truth be told, I fail to see the privacy issues the adoption of these things would raise. I assume that, once you've brought your item home, you're free to remove the offending tag. Or, if you want to mess with the system, switch 'em around [re-code.com].
Note the limited description of RFID (Score:0, Insightful)
Inventory management technology that uses wireless signals to track products from the factory to store shelves is set to win a major new ally next week: Wal-Mart.
Only "track products from the factory to store shelves," eh?
This is why we don't want the media controlled by large corporations. The idea that RFID's can be used beyond "the store shelves" can be suppressed if the media speaks with one voice.
Innovation or domination? (Score:2, Insightful)
OK Don't Get Paranoid, Yet (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing to realize is... (Score:4, Insightful)
... this is going to be a huge boost for RFID's. I don't think most realize the huge amount of sway that Wal-Mart has in both the American economy and the World economy in general. They are a huge company: the first retailer to ever become the biggest company in the world. They should change the old saying to "As goes Wal-Mart, so goes the world..."
gun control (Score:5, Insightful)
Not saying its a good idea, but I just wonder if its floating out there
Re:Note the limited description of RFID (Score:3, Insightful)
Walmart = sleaze (Score:5, Insightful)
A friend and I were walking through walmart to get some engine coolant(minor emergency, no choice), and I expressed my distaste for walmart. She asked, "Why? Where else could you get all these wonderful things?"(points to grocery section, hardware, etc.)
My answer was rather simple. "Well, before Walmart, the center of my town- the local town hardware store, the local grocery store, and so on. But thanks to Home Depot and Walmart running all the local businesses out, now you can't get anything without driving 20+ minutes". So now, for the $2 in savings, I've got to burn $2 in gas just to get there. I've got to spend 5 minutes finding a parking space, 5 walking from the lot into the store, another 5 trying to find the section and get there, another 5-10 waiting in line...so on etc. That's 'better'?
All because the only thing consumers value these days is the pricetag- not all the other benefits that come from giving your business to a small, locally owned business...or the hidden costs(your time, travel expenses, etc). Lost your reciept? Walmart tells you to go fuck yourself,m you shoplifting scum! Joe at Joe's Hardware remembers selling you that door hinge a few days ago- so the answer is "hey, no problem, here's your money." Not to mention, Joe knows what he's talking about when you ask him a question about doors, instead of some PFY who blankly stares at you because you asked something other than "what aisle is ___ in?"
You know what? It's not the only thing that bugs me about Walmart- their people are downright sleazy. It's stuff like the stories about Walmart managers taking donated items out of charity dropboxes in the stores that were not in walmart bags, and restocking them onto the shelves. Why? Walmart claimed it was to prevent shoplifting(or, in this case, 'shopdonating'), and items not in Walmart bags must not have been legitimate purchases. The donation box was AFTER the registers, not before. Further- ever been in a Walmart? There's more security cameras than you can count- yet a)items were supposedly shoplifted, yet not caught on tape and b)supposedly walmart didn't have any security cameras covering the area where the donation box was. Uh huh. Oh, and don't get me started on Walmart's union-busting...
It's so frustrating to see these giant box stores pop up. A big part of the local economy shifts over to that one store- all the mom+pops die off, and everyone that worked for mom+pop end up working for Walmart, they get nice clean blue uniforms, and all is(mostly) good. What happens when Walmart goes the way of K-mart, Caldoors, Bradlees, etc...or decides that store isn't quite profitable enough? Oops. Smallville's unemployment just went to %50.
Re:RFID abuse is almost certain (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe not.
The problem with the Benetton plan was that the RFIDs were suppose to be embedded in the clothing itself. No one has ever said Walmart is asking for this.
Certainly, for non-clothing products, I doubt the RFID will be embedded in the product itself. That would be far too costly a change for the manufacturing process. Rather, it will probably be embedded in the packaging itself (like UPCs).
Even for clothes, I imagine (in Walmart's case) the RFID will be in the clothing tags or packages. I can't imagine Walmart convincing Fruit of the Loom to embed RFIDs in every pair of briefs.
I think the article does not mention privacy concerns because, frankly, unless the RFID is somehow permanently associated with the product, there are no privacy concerns.
I'm amazed (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm really amazed by all of the posts belittling the potential danger of RFID's. Also, many comments talking about RFID abuses, or even asking sane questions about them, have been moderated down. Then comments like this one [slashdot.org] are moderated up.
I find that odd.
Re:Walmart = sleaze (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:privacy in a store is not present (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:the biggest concerns (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Waaa waaaa "privacy concerns" (Score:5, Insightful)
i mean, if all wal-mart does is implement this system and guarantees that the tags will be disabled, i think that's all fine and well, but this should be monitored closely so that we don't end up with an orwellian big brother checking over our shoulders seeing what we bought.
i heard on off the hook how those member discount cards at grocery stores are monitored so feds can see if your buying large amounts of precursor chemicals for drugs (sudafed was one example). well, great, they're trying to stop the production of drugs, but they're doing it at the expense of the everyday citizen who may now be subject to investigation and hassles that may damage their reputation and/or career just because for some legitimate reason they needed a large amount of sudafed!
also, supposedly they are now implementing a massive government database to track all these purchases and scan the data looking for potential terrorist buying habits (lol!).
that's what i have . . . innocent until proven guilty; why should the government monitor citizens until it has legitimate grounds to?
Re:the biggest concerns-Privacy Painball. (Score:1, Insightful)
"They" will not have to because a lot of parents will do it under the misbegotten belief that it's good for the child.
Sometimes the best friend is an enemy, and the best enemy is a friend.
Re:2 questions... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, instead of paranoid worries, I hope people start focusing on the promise of RFIDs: instant checkouts, instant inventories, instant customer feedback to the retailer (meaning better product choices by the stores) and much better inventory management (meaning lower prices!). Never mind trackable warranties, potential theft prevention/insurance, etc, etc, etc...
Re:Walmart = sleaze (Score:5, Insightful)
let's don our foil hats (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, what? If you have a problem with them tracking every item you purchase then you need to stop paying for everything with credit or cheques. I buy stuff all the time even with (shudder!) a Kroger savings card and ya know what? Kroger don't know a damn thing about me. It's not like they take your driver's license number to fill out one of those stupid things; it's not like you can't lie.
It really amazes me how so many people tie themselves intimately to corporations and then bitch about the loss of privacy. If you value your privacy, tell'em to go to hell. Shop with the local merchants while they still exist; stop using plastic every time you buy a damn pack of gum and you won't have to worry about it - or open a numbered swiss account and get a debit card drawn on it.
I think the idea was that people could track what you purchased after you left the store, which is a bit more insidious.
Apparently the notion of removing the damn tag is completely alien to the tinfoil hat crowd.
Re:gun control (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with this is that guns are not difficult to manufacture. Heck, many popular models still in use to day are simple variations on guns built before electricity. Not to mention the fact that their are literally millions of weapons currently in existence.
The firearms cat has been out of the bag for several hundred years. Pretending that you can keep firearms out of the hands of criminals (especially criminals that want to get past a security checkpoint) is ridiculous. Worst comes to worse the criminals could simply make their own weapons.
Re:2 questions... (Score:2, Insightful)
The RFID chip itself would not have to be deactivated upon checkout--only the ID in the store database would need to be deactivated.
Re:Walmart = sleaze (Score:5, Insightful)
The anti-union crap Wal-Mart puts out is hilarious. Almost half of my training (two weeks) involved watching videos and taking computerized tests agreeing with Wal-Mart on how unions are bad and Wal-Mart is good and that I should never join a union because they'll never help me and Wal-Mart is such a dandy place to work that I'll never want to work anywhere else ever again, or join one of those sleazy unions!
Between that mindwash and the near-deification of Sam Walton (I'm not joking), the whole training session made me feel like I was joining a cult.
Back on the subject, the RFIDs and such better have a really simple implementation and there had better be some damned good training for removal, because NONE of the 40+ cashiers at the store I worked at knew how to fully deactivate the existing tags!!
I attended one of the cashier team meetings and, when asked, NO one had any idea how to do it right. The proper way is to KEEP SWIPING across the little demangetizer until the 'bing' sound stops. How hard is that? With the extreme emphasis on training the people there, you'd think that more people would know that, but they don't. I hope the RFID deactivation methods they employ are FAR simpler than this, because I honestly don't think that that lowest common denominator could handle it if not.
Re:Walmart = sleaze (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Walmart = sleaze (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:gun control (Score:4, Insightful)
If guns were banned here (U.S.), there really would be an undergound gun making establishment, and the guns would be pretty good. (We are Americans after all). The 'No RFID' feature would make them all the more desirable.
Re:2 questions... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nevermind job cuts...
Of course, since you have your bread and butter, you don't see that as a big loss do you? I mean afterall, cashiers are unskilled workers anyway, right? The store is better off without them, no?
I know I was rather horrified to see when a grocery store down the street to me shut down and reopened just up the road. The new store had half the cashiers, but was twice as big. In the place of half of the cashiers were "self-checkout" counters, with one person watching all of them (about 10 in all).
With RFIDs, now they can get rid of ALL of them, and just pay one thug to wait by the door to beat up on someone who tries to walk out without paying.
Re:2 questions... (Score:3, Insightful)
This would not solve the very real "camping" problem he mentioned.
Re:Waaa waaaa "privacy concerns" (Score:2, Insightful)
The world is becoming a small place indeed.
RFID is here to stay (Score:4, Insightful)
TI Tiris [ti.com]
Actual size is about 2cm and about 4mm in diameter.
Give it a break... (Score:5, Insightful)
Tim
Re:2 questions... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:gun control (Score:2, Insightful)
If guns were illegal I'm sure there would be underground gunmaking, not sure of how good they would be though(for the money anyways).
I tend to rthink, though, that people would just remove the RFID taga if they were planning to commit a crime with the gun, much the same as they apparently do with the ID tags in all those movies.
Please excuse any gramatical errors, my English is no good when summertime rolls around.
Every single tag is a diff number? (Score:3, Insightful)
If so how big is the number that an RFID tag stores?
If it is unique per tag then no matter what it will run out bloody quickly, an astronomical number of products are sold every year. If the tag is not unique, ie it is the same as the barcode system and all products of the same type have the same ID then it is impossible to track people!!!
Also would it not be trivially easy to create a fake RFID generator so you could overload the senor equipment and make it useless??
Re:New way to advertise (Score:5, Insightful)
An important thing to realise about targeted ads is that the number of ads won't change - you won't be suddenly blitzed with many more ads. The difference is that the ads you'll see will more frequently be relevant to you.
Less dross. More stuff you're interested in. Sounds good?
If anything, the total number of ads will tend to decrease as advertisers won't need to plaster every damned product to make sure they're all seen by the target market. Further, I would expect that each targeting site would be much more expensive than a static site (but probably cheaper than all the static sites they'd need to cover all the product lines).
Both of these will tend to make the RoI calculation come out in favour of few advertising sites, each with many potential ads they can show.
The Wheel (Score:1, Insightful)
Pop quiz (Score:1, Insightful)
Now, can you think of any reasons why RFIDs would be integrated into clothing in such a manner? If so, can you think of any reasons why the tags might have a design which allows them to survive the total immersion in water and intense heat of a wash-dry cycle? If not, can you name any items where the tag probably would be integrated in such a manner?
Yabber Yabber Yabber (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're afraid of people knowing what you buy and where what's up with the HILFIGIER or GAP or [etc]. across your chest?
Fucking
Re:the biggest concerns (Score:3, Insightful)
The shops claime that there will be a net saving. Firstly, in theft - which costs shops something like 5% of turnover. Some of it walks out the door with customers, so could be stopped at the door. Some "dfalls off the abck of lorries", and could be traced back to the larcenous lorry driver (half of such thefts are bnelievced to be by staff). If it were to halve that, 5c per item would payoff massively. Secondly, in better stock control. You can "ask" a shelf how many items it has on it, so you will never be out of stock but nt have to send someone to count the stock.And you can track inventory without needing a droid to scan bar codes - a whole fork-lift full of stock is automatically inventoried as it goes out the door.
Once the system gets universal, I could these making real net savings which, in a truly competitive environment, will get passed back to the consumer.
What problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
At all.
So the store knows more about what you buy, can much more accurately track your purchasing habits, sees which things you like, and which you don't, knows how much you spend every month in the store etc.
What's the big-ass problem for crying out loud?
I *want* the stores to know my buying habits so that they can do a better jobs of providing me with more of the things I like!
Ask yourselves WHY the store wants to know this? It's so that they can tailor themselves to YOU, to give YOU a better service and more of the things you want to spend your money on. Why on Earth would Walmart put money into something that would frustrate, irritate or otherwise turn away customers?!?
I say bring it on! I say, yeah, let's see my tastes and purchasing history take their place in the big database so that I become a future dynamic of the store!
All these privacy advocates going nuts are well off the mark... get some common sense in your head... these people don't want to take away your life... they're not like the common fictional evil genius with a mad plot to eradicate privacy from the face of the world (muhahaha).
I genuinely see this as a *service*, cannot wait for it to be implemented and have absolutely NO worries about the scheme at all. Stop watching too much X-Files!
-Nex
There are no legitimate "privacy concerns" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What problem...here it is (Score:4, Insightful)
While it may be FUD only, this technology being used to track ALL that you buy is the concern. RFID will eventually be "mainstreamed" and many people such as yourself won't see a problem with it being in money or in credit cards. Again, no FUD just fact, the FBI has already planned an investigation about RFID in money [eetimes.com] Why is this a privacy concern? What I'm about to say may be an ethical issue but it is seen different ways by different people. What if I want to buy some marijuana with that note? What if I want to pay the kid down the down the street to cut my lawn? What if that same kid does drugs? Now, I am suspect for being in "drug ring" if they can trace all those RFIDs.
Same with purchases from Walmart. What if I happen to purchase a combination of items unknowingly, that the average drug user purchases. Will I be profiled for that buying habit too?
I am with you, it's coming no matter what. It will be hard to stop. But, there are legitimate concerns.
I will hope that Walmart will adopt the Philips chip that you can turn off [zdnet.co.uk] if the customer so wills to.
You would be amazed at what your grocery store bonus card data holds about you! Returns, complaints to the store, not just sales data. Again, what if something with an RFID or something trackable has your fingerprints on it, are you suspect when the "bad guy" buys it from Goodwill or steals it? Not only do we need Walmart to understand that before they make this step that we want on off switches, but we would also like disassociation capability. IE, erasure of your association with an RFID. Also, yearly reports by email or mail on what your RFID info holds and what data they truly are keeping about you would be nice.
Re:the biggest concerns (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:the biggest concerns (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:the biggest concerns (Score:2, Insightful)
But what happens if it gets to the point where it is impossible to buy anything which isn't tagged. All it needs is for the major players in the market to come together to decide on this, and it becomes a de facto standard. Kind of like what Microsoft is/was trying to do with DRM. And if current trends continue, the government won't even try to stop them, they're more likely just to ask for a share of the pie (e.g. tracking data will be made available to law enforcement agencies).
Re:the biggest concerns (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone makes a mistake and the RFID for my underwear somehow shows up in JCPenney's inventory computer, and I'm arrested for shoplifting when I go to JCPenney? (the RFID tags aren't turned off, they just mark that ID "sold" in their inventory so they don't arrest you when you take them out the door)
Someone makes a mistake and the ID for my underwear isn't updated in the master Wallmart database. I wear them to another Wallmart, where I'm arrested for shoplifting. (with those magnetic tags I can see them and remove them myself when I get home)
I'm suspected of a crime, and the cops get my shopping records from Wallmart then put out an APB to all retailers to be on the lookout for my underwear's RFID? (note: this could be a good thing, but it could be abused, too)
I'm not paranoid. I have no objection if they put RFIDs in the packaging, like they do now with the magnetic markers. I object to putting the RFIDs in the product, which is what the retailers want because they're afraid I'll just unwrap it before I try to walk out with it.
Perhaps that's the real problem here: they treat us all like shoplifters instead of customers and thus assume we have no rights. This is just another reason to not shop at Wallmart (as if I needed yet another).
Re:There are no legitimate "privacy concerns" (Score:3, Insightful)
1. I buy new tires for my car at Walmart. Each tire has an RFID tag for legitimate inventory tracking purposes.
2. McDonalds installs an RFID tag reader that checks for a RFID tag in the front left tire while driving through the drive through.
3a. When McDonalds sees that RFID tag again, they are able to display on their order board items which I am likely to buy, based on my vehicle's previous orders. (Nothing particularly wrong here)
3b. When McDonalds sees that RFID tag again, they subtly change prices based on what they believe I will pay. (Bad Bad Bad)
From a privacy standpoint, nothing particulary evil has happened yet. McDonands knows my vehicle tends to order certain products, but they don't know who I am.
4. A large data warehouse firm starts collecting RFID sales information from companies like Walmart and McDonalds. The companies agree because either they are well paid, or they recieve access to the database in return for contributing to it. The RFID tag in my tire allows the firm to tie me (based on the information on the check/credit card I used to buy the tires) with the items I later purchased at stores which could put an RFID tag close to my tire (most likely drive-throughs, mechanics, and similar places).
5. My Health/Life insurance is cancelled after the database indicates that my vehicle has made too many trips to McDonalds.
6. My auto insurance rates go up because I frequently visit the MicDonalds in a bad part of town.
Now, I'm not saying that any of this would happen automatically just because of RFID tags in tires or other consumer products. The problem it that I am aware of nothing which would prevent this scenario from occuring.