Mail on Sunday: Boycott threat to stores over 'smart tags'
RETAILERS including Tesco, Marks & Spencer and Asda face the threat of organised consumer boycotts over plans to introduce controversial new "smart tags" designed to track individual products. By David Rowan
The tiny tags, embedded inside manufactured goods or built into the packaging, emit radio signals that can be read from up to 20 feet away, and unless disabled they remain active long after they have left the store.
An investigation by Channel 4 News has discovered that a US-based consumer group, which has previously targeted Benetton and Gillette for adopting this technology, is now launching a UK branch to organise boycotts of British firms using the tags. A boycott of Benetton last March - under the slogan "I'd rather go naked" - led the company to suspend plans to embed the tags in its Sisley-branded pullovers.
Katherine Albrecht, organiser of the Boycott Benetton campaign and founder of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (Caspian), said the technology would be used to spy on shoppers and would let governments or marketers learn more about you simply by scanning you from a distance. Unlike barcodes, the smart tags - known as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) labels - identify individual items, whose movements can be tracked by a network of internet-linked computers. The microchips involved are the size of a grain of sand, and with the price falling to a few pence they can be fitted to anything from trainers to toothbrushes.
"This technology has the potential to track people from the time they get up in the morning to the time they go to bed at night," Ms Albrecht said. "The reader devices are very easily hidden, and have been fabricated into floor tiles, carpeting and doorways. As you enter the doorway, you will be emanating an electronic cloud - everything from your earrings to what's in your briefcase would be sending out information. My concern is that this will be tied in with Britain's surveillance system so you'll be literally surveilled at every turn."
The technology is being tested by corporations such as WalMart, Procter & Gamble and Unilever as a means of automating supply lines and knowing where goods are in real time. Tesco is currently using the tags on DVDs and Gillette Mach 3 razors, and Marks & Spencer will start fitting them to clothes in the autumn. The Home Office sees the tags as a means of preventing shoplifting and identifying counterfeit goods, and the European Central Bank plans to fit them inside euro banknotes. Privacy activists warn that police will use the tags to track suspects, and that criminals will obtain tag-readers to locate valuables.
Caspian told Financial Mail on Sunday that it planned new campaigns against Gillette and Tesco if they did not resolve its concerns about their use of the tags, and that it would "fight back" against other firms adopting RFID in Britain. In its main Cambridge store, Tesco has been using hidden cameras linked to tag-readers to photograph shoppers who pick up Mach 3 razors, the chain's most shoplifted item.
A Tesco spokesman said: "There are some potential security benefits of RFID tags, but our trials are about availability and making life easier for customers and staff." Marks & Spencer said it may use the tags more extensively if its autumn clothing trials prove successful.
Richard Allan MP, the Liberal Democrats' technology spokesman, said: "I am very worried that with RFID tags in circulation, all kinds of personal information will be collected about you that won't be properly protected. Do we want where we were at any particular point of the day to be known to everyone? The idea that one has not only has CCTV cameras watching over you, but your own clothes watching over you and sending off data that could be spat out to your detriment, is of serious concern to me."
You can see David Rowan's report about smart tags on Channel 4 News tonight at 7pm
(Mail on Sunday, July 27 2003)
The tiny tags, embedded inside manufactured goods or built into the packaging, emit radio signals that can be read from up to 20 feet away, and unless disabled they remain active long after they have left the store.
An investigation by Channel 4 News has discovered that a US-based consumer group, which has previously targeted Benetton and Gillette for adopting this technology, is now launching a UK branch to organise boycotts of British firms using the tags. A boycott of Benetton last March - under the slogan "I'd rather go naked" - led the company to suspend plans to embed the tags in its Sisley-branded pullovers.
Katherine Albrecht, organiser of the Boycott Benetton campaign and founder of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (Caspian), said the technology would be used to spy on shoppers and would let governments or marketers learn more about you simply by scanning you from a distance. Unlike barcodes, the smart tags - known as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) labels - identify individual items, whose movements can be tracked by a network of internet-linked computers. The microchips involved are the size of a grain of sand, and with the price falling to a few pence they can be fitted to anything from trainers to toothbrushes.
"This technology has the potential to track people from the time they get up in the morning to the time they go to bed at night," Ms Albrecht said. "The reader devices are very easily hidden, and have been fabricated into floor tiles, carpeting and doorways. As you enter the doorway, you will be emanating an electronic cloud - everything from your earrings to what's in your briefcase would be sending out information. My concern is that this will be tied in with Britain's surveillance system so you'll be literally surveilled at every turn."
The technology is being tested by corporations such as WalMart, Procter & Gamble and Unilever as a means of automating supply lines and knowing where goods are in real time. Tesco is currently using the tags on DVDs and Gillette Mach 3 razors, and Marks & Spencer will start fitting them to clothes in the autumn. The Home Office sees the tags as a means of preventing shoplifting and identifying counterfeit goods, and the European Central Bank plans to fit them inside euro banknotes. Privacy activists warn that police will use the tags to track suspects, and that criminals will obtain tag-readers to locate valuables.
Caspian told Financial Mail on Sunday that it planned new campaigns against Gillette and Tesco if they did not resolve its concerns about their use of the tags, and that it would "fight back" against other firms adopting RFID in Britain. In its main Cambridge store, Tesco has been using hidden cameras linked to tag-readers to photograph shoppers who pick up Mach 3 razors, the chain's most shoplifted item.
A Tesco spokesman said: "There are some potential security benefits of RFID tags, but our trials are about availability and making life easier for customers and staff." Marks & Spencer said it may use the tags more extensively if its autumn clothing trials prove successful.
Richard Allan MP, the Liberal Democrats' technology spokesman, said: "I am very worried that with RFID tags in circulation, all kinds of personal information will be collected about you that won't be properly protected. Do we want where we were at any particular point of the day to be known to everyone? The idea that one has not only has CCTV cameras watching over you, but your own clothes watching over you and sending off data that could be spat out to your detriment, is of serious concern to me."
You can see David Rowan's report about smart tags on Channel 4 News tonight at 7pm
(Mail on Sunday, July 27 2003)
<< Home