Shoppers at seven Dallas-Ft. Worth area Wal-Mart stores can walk
into the consumer electronics department and find Hewlett-Packard
products for sale with live RFID tags attached. Wal-Mart's public
statements appear to leave open the possibility that other goods
could be tagged with RFID as well, and CASPIAN – or Consumers
Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering – is
furious.
The group says that Wal-Mart's decision to tag individual items
on the store floor violates a call for a moratorium on such tagging
issued last November "by over 40 of the world's most respected
privacy and civil liberties organisations."
"Wal-Mart is blatantly ignoring the research and recommendations
of dozens of privacy experts," says Katherine Albrecht, Founder and
Director of CASPIAN. "When the world's largest retailer adopts a
technology with chilling societal implications, and does so
irresponsibly, we should all be deeply concerned."
In addition to "violating" the call for a moratorium on
RFID-tagged items in stores (albeit the company never agreed to the
demand), Wal-Mart has begun a consumer education campaign that
CASPIAN is calling unethical.
"Read the FAQs at the Wal-Mart corporate web site and you'll
find plenty of half truths," Albrecht says. "They call it consumer
education, but the omissions and spin make it feel more like a
calculated disinformation campaign."
Albrecht provides the example of Wal-Mart's statement that RFID
tags in its stores are harmless since they contain nothing more
than identification numbers. "While technically that's true,
Wal-Mart fails to explain what it means for items to carry
remote-readable unique ID numbers. It's like saying someone's
social security number is 'only' a number, so sharing it with
perfect strangers should be of no concern."
Albrecht explains that many major retailers today routinely link
shoppers' identity information from credit, ATM and loyalty cards
with product bar code numbers to record individuals' purchases over
time. "If nothing is done to stop it, the same will happen with the
unique RFID numbers on products. This means that if retailers can
read an RFID tag on a product they previously sold you, they can
identify you as you walk in the door and even pinpoint your
location in their store as you shop," she said.
Albrecht also criticises Wal-Mart for failing to tell consumers
of the retailer's long-term goals for RFID. "The industry plan is
to put an RFID tag on every product on Earth to identify and locate
them at any time, anywhere. Wal-Mart is taking the first steps to
creating a society where everything could be surveilled at all
times. A shopper would hardly learn this by reading their web
site."
With potentially billions of dollars riding on RFID, global
corporations are eager to see it deployed. However, consumer
acceptance has proved to be an obstacle.
Procter & Gamble's own research suggests that 78% of
consumers surveyed reacted negatively to the technology on privacy
grounds and did not find industry reassurances compelling. Another
industry study, published in January 2003, found similar misgivings
among focus groups of consumers in the US, Germany, France, Japan
and the UK.
The most publicized trial of item-level RFID tagging to date,
Metro-AG's "Future Store" in Rheinberg, Germany, met with massive
consumer outcry earlier this year, culminating in a protest outside
the store.
"Wal-Mart may soon be facing a similar backlash," said
Albrecht.
