- SAN FRANCISCO--Sun Microsystems has joined a program called
Auto-ID to build wireless digital identification tags into everything from
razor blades to soup cans, Chief Executive Scott McNealy said Thursday.
The technology promises efficiency for manufacturers and convenience for
shoppers--but potentially also headaches for those concerned about privacy.
McNealy and his colleagues at Sun have eagerly anticipated the day when
everything with a "digital heartbeat"--cell phones, cars, microwave
ovens--is attached to the Internet. Sun hopes to supply the mammoth servers
that will process all the information produced by these devices.
-
- "I used to talk about everything
with a digital or electric heartbeat" being connected to the Internet,
McNealy told financial analysts in a speech here Thursday. "Now I'm
talking about tomato cans, and I'm not making it up anymore," he quipped.
Sun has joined the Auto-ID program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
funded by Procter & Gamble, Gillette, Wal-Mart, Unilever, Tesco, Target
and other corporations.
-
- "You put stuff in a grocery basket
and just drive by (a detector)," McNealy said, describing the idea.
The detector reads what's in the basket, charges a person's credit card
and "tells the factory to restock the shelves," McNealy said.
The goal of the Auto-ID program is to keep store shelves full, said Gillette
spokesman Steve Brayton.
-
- On any given afternoon, 8 percent of
the items that U.S. shoppers are looking for are out of stock, he said.
On Sunday, it goes up to 11 percent. In addition, the technology could
help curb theft, Brayton said. Wal-Mart is trying out the technology in
a piloBut building transponders into every sort of product could spark
privacy concerns, said David Holtzman, an Internet security researcher
and former Network Solutions chief technology officer.
-
- People might not be comfortable walking
around with items that identify themselves as medication, condoms or pornography.
They also might not be comfortable with manufacturers tracking where products
go after being purchased. And "if legislators mandate mandatory tagging
of things like firearms or ammunition, we could get both the left and right
wing pissed off," Holtzman said.
-
- Keeping store shelves stocked or easing
checkout isn't a big deal, Holtzman said. But combining that product information
with data about the individuals buying those products could raise hackles.
"Any one piece of information"--cell phone records, purchasing
records, car location--"is not that damning or intrusive. But if you
put them together, you've got my life," Holtzman said. "It's
very hard to hide things when you have that level of analysis."
-
- Auto-ID uses passive tags that respond
to a specific radio signal. A tiny capacitor on the chip stores enough
energy from the incoming signal to send out a response. The tags only respond
when near a special reader device. The tags also have a miniature chip
and enough memory to keep track of a digital identity. The memory is 96
bits long, tiny by computer standards but it provides a huge number of
combinations of ones and zeros. The technology is set up to identify more
than 268 million manufacturers with more than a million individual products
each, an Auto-ID representative said. The memory stores an electronic product
code, or EPC, which is linked with an Internet service called the Object
Naming Service (ONS) that keeps track of data for every EPC-labeled object.
Researchers also are working on a pared-down 64-bit version of EPC. But
the system is limited by the cost of making the tags, not to mention installing
the infrastructure to monitor the tags and process the information. With
existing technology,
-
-
- http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-833429.html
|
