The Times: Tech column - RFID
By David Rowan
THERE is a new buzz among tech investors that the "next big thing" has finally arrived. No, it's not biotechnology, nor even the nanotechnology that keeps the Prince of Wales awake at night. What is sending share prices jumping is a tiny, low-cost chip known as a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag, which emits radio signals to identify anything from a tank to a toothbrush. Although this column cannot guarantee that they will make your fortune, by this time next year there will be billions of them signalling away from the high street to the battlefield.
Retailers in particular have long sought a technology that can manage inventories more efficiently than bar codes, which do little more than identify a product as a 50p can of cola or a £10.99 DVD. The RFID chip carries detailed data specific to each item: where it was made, when it was put on the shelf, when it passes its sell-by date. Better still, scanners located around the store can talk to the tags to find out when to order new supplies, to know what's in your basket (bad news for checkout staff) and to indicate when goods have not been paid for (worse news for shoplifters). As prices fall, the tags - less than 1mm long - will soon cost just a few pence each. The industry's visionaries see a future of vast computerised databases, fed by scanners all over the world to create an "internet" of physical things.
In the past few weeks, the number of companies planning to embed RFID tags into their products has reached a critical mass. Wal-Mart, which owns Asda, has told its top 100 suppliers that it expects all their goods to be chipped by 2005; Tesco has been testing the tags in its Sandhurst store; Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury's intend to hold trials of the technology. But it's not just retailers who are chipping away. The European Central Bank wants to put RFID tags into all new banknotes to deter counterfeiters; the US military is fitting tags to goods shipped to Iraq, and has even used them to track injured soldiers as they move from battlefield to hospital.
But there remains a serious question that the industry has so far failed to confront. The tags remain active after they have left the store, unless they are switched off. What worries consumer groups is the power this revolution will give to people who want to know more about you - marketers, who can learn your purchasing habits simply by scanning your clothes from a few metres away, or muggers, who can use powerful receivers to learn who is carrying large numbers of banknotes. Benetton already faces a consumer boycott over plans to tag its pullovers, and privacy activists are uneasy about banknotes that can identify where they have been. Unless clear guidelines are agreed soon about how RFID data can be used, this clever innovation will face a damaging backlash.
Talking of futuristic scanners, the US Transportation Security Administration last week unveiled a new machine that it hopes will detect air passengers hiding even non-metallic weapons. The scanner, which relies on a technology called "backscatter" X-rays, distributes radiation so that dense objects produce darker shadows than human skin. The only problem: the passenger appears exactly as nature intended. "It does make you look fat and naked," the TSA's Susan Hallowell said as she bravely demonstrated how security staff would see her, with little of her modesty retained. Expect a surge in applications for airport-security jobs.
British Airways is not, by the way, offering free flights to anyone who forwards a current e-mail doing the rounds to ten more people. It's a hoax, and should be deleted - just as similar too-good-to-be-true offers from Microsoft and Disney proved to be in the past.
(The Times, July 1 2003)
THERE is a new buzz among tech investors that the "next big thing" has finally arrived. No, it's not biotechnology, nor even the nanotechnology that keeps the Prince of Wales awake at night. What is sending share prices jumping is a tiny, low-cost chip known as a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag, which emits radio signals to identify anything from a tank to a toothbrush. Although this column cannot guarantee that they will make your fortune, by this time next year there will be billions of them signalling away from the high street to the battlefield.
Retailers in particular have long sought a technology that can manage inventories more efficiently than bar codes, which do little more than identify a product as a 50p can of cola or a £10.99 DVD. The RFID chip carries detailed data specific to each item: where it was made, when it was put on the shelf, when it passes its sell-by date. Better still, scanners located around the store can talk to the tags to find out when to order new supplies, to know what's in your basket (bad news for checkout staff) and to indicate when goods have not been paid for (worse news for shoplifters). As prices fall, the tags - less than 1mm long - will soon cost just a few pence each. The industry's visionaries see a future of vast computerised databases, fed by scanners all over the world to create an "internet" of physical things.
In the past few weeks, the number of companies planning to embed RFID tags into their products has reached a critical mass. Wal-Mart, which owns Asda, has told its top 100 suppliers that it expects all their goods to be chipped by 2005; Tesco has been testing the tags in its Sandhurst store; Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury's intend to hold trials of the technology. But it's not just retailers who are chipping away. The European Central Bank wants to put RFID tags into all new banknotes to deter counterfeiters; the US military is fitting tags to goods shipped to Iraq, and has even used them to track injured soldiers as they move from battlefield to hospital.
But there remains a serious question that the industry has so far failed to confront. The tags remain active after they have left the store, unless they are switched off. What worries consumer groups is the power this revolution will give to people who want to know more about you - marketers, who can learn your purchasing habits simply by scanning your clothes from a few metres away, or muggers, who can use powerful receivers to learn who is carrying large numbers of banknotes. Benetton already faces a consumer boycott over plans to tag its pullovers, and privacy activists are uneasy about banknotes that can identify where they have been. Unless clear guidelines are agreed soon about how RFID data can be used, this clever innovation will face a damaging backlash.
Talking of futuristic scanners, the US Transportation Security Administration last week unveiled a new machine that it hopes will detect air passengers hiding even non-metallic weapons. The scanner, which relies on a technology called "backscatter" X-rays, distributes radiation so that dense objects produce darker shadows than human skin. The only problem: the passenger appears exactly as nature intended. "It does make you look fat and naked," the TSA's Susan Hallowell said as she bravely demonstrated how security staff would see her, with little of her modesty retained. Expect a surge in applications for airport-security jobs.
British Airways is not, by the way, offering free flights to anyone who forwards a current e-mail doing the rounds to ten more people. It's a hoax, and should be deleted - just as similar too-good-to-be-true offers from Microsoft and Disney proved to be in the past.
(The Times, July 1 2003)
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