- Activists in Germany on Saturday will protest the use
of radio-frequency IDs and various plans by businesses to track consumers.
Their efforts already forced one of the largest retailers in Europe to
back down this week from a trial run of the tags.
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- Led by German privacy organization FoeBud, activists
in Rheinberg, Germany, plan to stage a protest outside the Metro Extra
Future Store, a department store that serves as a site to test RFID tracking
and other retailing technologies.
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- Metro AG, the store's parent company, is the world's
fifth-largest retailer with more than 2,000 stores, including supermarkets
and electronics stores in 28 countries.
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- Activists recently discovered RFID chips embedded in
the store's customer loyalty cards. They also found them in products for
sale there, including goods from IBM, Gillette and Procter & Gamble.
Metro failed to notify customers that they were being tracked. Although
Metro told activists the chips worked only while customers were inside
the store, activists discovered that a kiosk used to deactivate the chips
didn't completely disable the tags.
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- An RFID tag consists of a microchip the size of a grain
of sand attached to an antenna that transmits information whenever it passes
in front of an RFID reader. Product manufacturers and stores have expressed
interest in placing the tags on consumer items to manage inventory, track
consumer interest, speed checkout time and thwart thieves.
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- Critics say the tags would let businesses monitor the
movement of citizens and collect information for marketing purposes. Information
transmitted by the tags can be read up to 10 feet away.
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- Public outcry and the impending protest over the privacy
violation at Metro forced the company to cancel its use of RFID tags in
loyalty cards. The company announced Thursday it would cease embedding
RFID chips in its loyalty cards and would replace cards that were already
distributed to customers.
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- "This demonstrates the power of the free market
at work," said Katherine Albrecht, director of Consumers Against Supermarket
Privacy Invasion, or CASPIAN, an organization based in the United States.
"The world's people are telling global businesses ... that they won't
tolerate being spied on through products and services."
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- Even with Metro's retreat, representatives from 14 privacy
and civil rights organizations in Germany said they would proceed with
the Saturday protest. Rena Tangens, founder of FoeBud, said the announcement
didn't go far enough since the company and its product partners didn't
agree to remove tags from products.
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- "We are asking Metro and its partners to comply
with the terms of a position statement that calls for a moratorium on item-level
product tagging," he said. They also want Metro and its partners to
fund research that would examine the privacy problems associated with using
RFID technology.
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- Albrecht, who has a degree in business administration
and international marketing, said there are legitimate uses for the tags
but questions the "benefit of getting through the checkout line five
minutes faster at a cost to civil liberties."
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- Metro is not the first company to face controversy over
the use of RFID tags.
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- Italian clothing manufacturer Benetton Group ran into
trouble last year when it announced plans to tag its clothing labels with
RFID chips. The company shelved the plan after consumers threatened a boycott.
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- Newspapers reported last year that the European Central
Bank was planning to embed RFID chips into the fibers of bank notes by
2005 to thwart counterfeiters. Activists have expressed concern that the
chips would record when and where monetary transactions occur, destroying
the anonymity that cash payments usually provide.
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- More commonly, libraries have been using RFID tags to
track books, speed up checkout time and help them make purchasing decisions.
But last year, Japanese bookstores announced plans to embed books with
tags linked to surveillance cameras. A store could observe a consumer's
browsing habits by noting the books they peruse and the pages they linger
on.
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- "That becomes extremely disturbing in light of the
Patriot Act," Albrecht said, referring to provisions in the U.S. anti-terrorism
act that allow government agencies to access library records.
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