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Big Brother Comes To Wal-mart
BIG BROTHER COMES TO WAL-MART
By Mary Starrett
NewsWithViews.com
Starting this week, the nation's largest discount
retailer will quietly begin selling tracking-chipped
products to clueless shoppers. The first volley in
their war against our privacy is set to start at their
Brockton, Massachusetts store.
Wal-Mart will put Radio Frequency I.D. sensors on
shelves stocked with RFID-tagged Gillette products,
but they'd rather you didn't know about it, because,
hey, you might not like it, and then you might make
noise and then they'd have a big PR mess on their
hands.
You might even stop buying Gillette products or, say,
refuse to shop at Wal-Mart.
These chips, researched at M.I.T.'s Auto-ID Center are
about the size of a grain of sand. Chipsters say the
technology will only be used to help retailers keep
track of inventory - like bar codes. But
privacy-loving consumers question the very concept of
a device that sends out radio waves to "readers" that
not only identify the article, but where and with whom
it's going.
The Big Brother implications of this thing need little
hyping to get your skin crawling.
Wal-Mart's putting the pressure on its top 100
suppliers to make sure their inventory is all chipped
by the end of next year.
But why start this in Brockton, Mass?
Could it be because the store's customers are
typically lower income minorities who'd be less likely
to be aware of the tracking devices, and even less
likely to make a fuss about them?
Their thinking? Let's foist it on folks who're too
concerned about paying the electric bill to be aware
of these types of issues.
Retailers are SUPPOSED to alert their customers to the
tracking chips and offer to "kill" the tags at the
checkout counter.
Don't count on it, because what you don't know won't
hurt you, right? And to PROVE those RFID tags won't be
"killed" at the cash register one of the ways they're
planning on convincing you, the shopper that these
tags are A-OK is by touting how "hassle-free" returns
will be. Huh? If the tags are supposedly turned off at
purchase, how can they be read after the item's
brought back to the store? Just one of the myriad lies
you'll be told about this technology.
Are we to expect that in addition to being asked the
"paper or plastic" question we'll get an option on
whether the RFID tags are left on or turned off? Not
only will consumers be witnessing the death throes of
privacy, but it's going to cost them. Currently, the
chips cost about 60 cents each. Add that to the cost
of each and every item that uses this Orwellian
technology. Gillette and Wal-Mart are only the
pioneers here, the stated plan is to affix each item
produced on the planet with RFID tags. Each pack of
gum, each roll of film, each bottle of Merlot.
So what's a freedom-loving shopper to do?
Fortunately for us, there's a really smart lady
finishing up a Ph.D. at Harvard. She started a group
that's bellowing out the urgency of fighting this
technology; her name is Katherine Albrecht and she's
founder of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket
Privacy Invasion And Numbering). Albrecht's CASPIAN
has proposed a piece of federal legislation called
"RFID RIGHT TO KNOW ACT OF 2003". It's a law that
would let consumers know which products had tracking
chips attached to them. In short, the proposed bill
would amend the Fair Packaging and Labeling Program by
adding language that requires manufacturers to state
(in a conspicuous location) that the package contains
a radio frequency identification tag that can transmit
unique identification information to a "reader" device
both before and AFTER it's purchased(!).
This is where you come in.
The bill needs a sponsor.
Maybe YOUR Congressional Representative would like to
go on record as having helped stop this assault on our
privacy. Forward this article to him/her and tell them
the entire text of the bill can been seen at
nocards.org.
Will you make it a point to email, call or fax your
representative today, before our Big Brother gets any
bigger? Do it NOW before the lobbyists and big money
special interests get to them and convince Congress
these RFID chips are consumer-friendly!
And while you're at it, why not tell the suits at
Wal-Mart and Gillette (and Home Depot, Proctor and
Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, too, by the way) that
from here on out you wouldn't go near their stores or
their products with a ten foot pole.
It works. Remember back a few months when I told you
how Italian clothing company Benetton had chipped
their Sisely line of clothes and was all set to roll
out the garments with RFID tracking devices? Well your
outrage and feedback caused them to put the scheme on
hold.
Let's make sure the behemoth Wal-Mart is similarly put
on notice. (By the way, IBM's planning to add RFID to
it's products; so if Wal-Mart manages to sneak this
past us, all bets are off and then every corporate
giant will be able to inflict this chilling,
tracking/monitoring horror on us.)
If RFID gets off the ground as planned, that would
make George Orwells' predictions off by just 20 years.
By Mary Starrett
NewsWithViews.com
Starting this week, the nation's largest discount
retailer will quietly begin selling tracking-chipped
products to clueless shoppers. The first volley in
their war against our privacy is set to start at their
Brockton, Massachusetts store.
Wal-Mart will put Radio Frequency I.D. sensors on
shelves stocked with RFID-tagged Gillette products,
but they'd rather you didn't know about it, because,
hey, you might not like it, and then you might make
noise and then they'd have a big PR mess on their
hands.
You might even stop buying Gillette products or, say,
refuse to shop at Wal-Mart.
These chips, researched at M.I.T.'s Auto-ID Center are
about the size of a grain of sand. Chipsters say the
technology will only be used to help retailers keep
track of inventory - like bar codes. But
privacy-loving consumers question the very concept of
a device that sends out radio waves to "readers" that
not only identify the article, but where and with whom
it's going.
The Big Brother implications of this thing need little
hyping to get your skin crawling.
Wal-Mart's putting the pressure on its top 100
suppliers to make sure their inventory is all chipped
by the end of next year.
But why start this in Brockton, Mass?
Could it be because the store's customers are
typically lower income minorities who'd be less likely
to be aware of the tracking devices, and even less
likely to make a fuss about them?
Their thinking? Let's foist it on folks who're too
concerned about paying the electric bill to be aware
of these types of issues.
Retailers are SUPPOSED to alert their customers to the
tracking chips and offer to "kill" the tags at the
checkout counter.
Don't count on it, because what you don't know won't
hurt you, right? And to PROVE those RFID tags won't be
"killed" at the cash register one of the ways they're
planning on convincing you, the shopper that these
tags are A-OK is by touting how "hassle-free" returns
will be. Huh? If the tags are supposedly turned off at
purchase, how can they be read after the item's
brought back to the store? Just one of the myriad lies
you'll be told about this technology.
Are we to expect that in addition to being asked the
"paper or plastic" question we'll get an option on
whether the RFID tags are left on or turned off? Not
only will consumers be witnessing the death throes of
privacy, but it's going to cost them. Currently, the
chips cost about 60 cents each. Add that to the cost
of each and every item that uses this Orwellian
technology. Gillette and Wal-Mart are only the
pioneers here, the stated plan is to affix each item
produced on the planet with RFID tags. Each pack of
gum, each roll of film, each bottle of Merlot.
So what's a freedom-loving shopper to do?
Fortunately for us, there's a really smart lady
finishing up a Ph.D. at Harvard. She started a group
that's bellowing out the urgency of fighting this
technology; her name is Katherine Albrecht and she's
founder of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket
Privacy Invasion And Numbering). Albrecht's CASPIAN
has proposed a piece of federal legislation called
"RFID RIGHT TO KNOW ACT OF 2003". It's a law that
would let consumers know which products had tracking
chips attached to them. In short, the proposed bill
would amend the Fair Packaging and Labeling Program by
adding language that requires manufacturers to state
(in a conspicuous location) that the package contains
a radio frequency identification tag that can transmit
unique identification information to a "reader" device
both before and AFTER it's purchased(!).
This is where you come in.
The bill needs a sponsor.
Maybe YOUR Congressional Representative would like to
go on record as having helped stop this assault on our
privacy. Forward this article to him/her and tell them
the entire text of the bill can been seen at
nocards.org.
Will you make it a point to email, call or fax your
representative today, before our Big Brother gets any
bigger? Do it NOW before the lobbyists and big money
special interests get to them and convince Congress
these RFID chips are consumer-friendly!
And while you're at it, why not tell the suits at
Wal-Mart and Gillette (and Home Depot, Proctor and
Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, too, by the way) that
from here on out you wouldn't go near their stores or
their products with a ten foot pole.
It works. Remember back a few months when I told you
how Italian clothing company Benetton had chipped
their Sisely line of clothes and was all set to roll
out the garments with RFID tracking devices? Well your
outrage and feedback caused them to put the scheme on
hold.
Let's make sure the behemoth Wal-Mart is similarly put
on notice. (By the way, IBM's planning to add RFID to
it's products; so if Wal-Mart manages to sneak this
past us, all bets are off and then every corporate
giant will be able to inflict this chilling,
tracking/monitoring horror on us.)
If RFID gets off the ground as planned, that would
make George Orwells' predictions off by just 20 years.
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