- (Note - Be sure to listen to Jeff's June 18th interview
with Katherine Albrecht of StopRFID.com in our Archives)
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- Plans to swamp the world in invisible tracking devices
were revealed last week as secret industry documents detailing a global
agenda to "pacify" consumers and co-opt key lawmakers were leaked.
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- Sensitive documents were exposed by Consumers Against
Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), a US consumer group
lobbying against the technology.
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- The group found documents from the US Auto-ID Centre,
which has an Australian research division at Adelaide University, and published
them on the privacy and security website, cryptome.org
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- Auto-ID is a worldwide co-ordinating group for the radio
frequency identification (RFID) industry that counts Australian packaging
giant Visy Industries, Dutch electronics maker Philips, computer services
company IBM and consumer goods maker Gillette among its members. The group
aims to embed RFID tags - tiny radio emitting tracking devices - in all
consumer goods including clothes, household electronics and packaging
such as aluminium cans and cardboard boxes.
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- The tags are used at Star City Casino in Sydney to trace
workers' uniforms, by beef farmers to track livestock, and to monitor the
temperature of fruit, confectionery and pet food. Packaging rivals Carter
Holt Harvey and Visy are also looking to embed the technology for customers.
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- Industry sees RFID as a way to cut costs from the manufacture
and distribution of goods, allowing it to more readily track goods through
the production chain, while privacy advocates fear its negative consequences
on human rights.
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- The ease with which CASPIAN hacked the centre's website
overshadows industry claims that it can protect citizens' privacy, the
lobby group says.
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- "Privacy advocates are alarmed about the centre's
plans because RFID technology could enable businesses to collect an unprecedented
amount of information about consumers' possessions and physical movements,"
says CASPIAN founder Katherine Albrecht.
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- Federal privacy commissioner Malcolm Crompton says Australians
have shown hostility towards technology that invades their privacy.
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- "Companies, whether they are Australian or located
anywhere else, are well advised to take note of these deep feelings that
people have and therefore it may or may not need further laws to provide
protection," Crompton says.
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- "But the companies can rest assured that if they
are reckless in this way they will generate the call for more law."
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- He says the tags should be "killed" as the
items leave the store and it should not be possible to reactivate them
later. He is alarmed at any suggestion that they can be reactivated, and
will seek more information from the industry.
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- IBM Consulting Service's Asia-Pacific manager for e-Business,
Vicki Ward, says her company will adhere to any laws. "IBM would adhere
to whatever standards are set by the government in whichever country we
were working."
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- Ward says there was a strong push by product-makers wanting
to track consumer behaviour after they'd made purchases.Concerns over how
consumers would view that intrusion dissuaded the Auto-ID Centre from adding
that function in the first batch of standards, but it could be added later,
she says.
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- Among documents made available to the public for the
first time was confidential research by the centre in which consumers in
the US, Britain, Europe and Japan consistently gave negative opinions of
the technology. Key among these were the privacy aspects, followed by health,
personal safety and the likely impact on jobs, because fewer workers were
needed.
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- "A company, a government, a rogue state, a 19-year-old
in his parents' attic will try and hack this for fun, for power,"
said a respondent in the US study conducted by centre researcher Helen
Duce.
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- Respondents were worried that hackers or thieves could
see into their homes and shopping bags, targeting them for crime, or that
police and security services would spy on them using the tags. Consumers
placed the technology in the same basket as nuclear power or genetically
modified foods but were "apathetic" and likely not to do much
about their concerns, the centre found.
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- "There are currently no clear benefits (for consumers)...
so any negative press coverage, no matter how mild, would shift the neutral
(opinion) to negative," Duce wrote. "Virtually all groups spontaneously
said that they wanted a choice and that the 'chip should be killed' (when
they left the shop)."
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- Duce wrote that these concerns would be overcome with
a co-ordinated global public relations strategy. The tags should also be
renamed either "enhanced barcodes", she wrote, or "green
tags", according to another report for the centre by consulting PR
firm Fleishman-Hillard.
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- Minutes from the centre's February meeting indicate the
first pilot phase is under way with many of its members, who are building
business cases for its use. One scenario will alert shopkeepers to wealthy
individuals entering their store, calculating their net worth based on
the tags hidden in their clothing, and comparing their type against a demographic
database. Bus shelters and other public spaces might be fitted with RFID
tag readers connected to display devices, which will pitch products at
consumers based on their tags.
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- The RFID industry has had several setbacks recently.
Benetton shelved plans to embed tags in its clothes, once news of its trial
leaked. Wal-Mart, the big US supermarket chain, gives its customers the
option to remove the tags from its products. The only Australian member
of the centre is Martyn Johnson, director of the Visy Technical Centre,
an offshoot of Visy Industries. Visy spokesmen did not return calls.
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- Copyright © 2003 The Sydney Morning Herald.
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- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/14/1058034923230.html
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