Tiny Ids Can Track Almost Anything
Alien Technology Corp. is at the forefront of manufacturing and marketing tiny radio chips that can be used as tracking devices.
Alien is producing 500 million chips for Gillette in order for them to track their product, but opponents, such as Katherine Albrecht, fear abuse of the new technology.
Albrecht is the director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, and believes the technology could lead to a gross invasion of privacy.
The new technology can get a fixed location for anything that the chip was attached to, from clothing to cars. The radio-frequency identification chips will soon be used to monitor stock at Wal-Mart, allowing the store to know what items need to be restocked and activating surveillance cameras if shoplifting is suspected.
The results of use in retail would be a more organized store with no more missing stock, responding to an increasing demand in a product immediately and helping prevent shoplifting.
In an effort to protect privacy, some developers of RFID technology are experimenting with safeguards that would automatically turn a product off once it leaves the store, a step that, according to Albrecht, could be overlooked and lead to an invasion of consumer privacy.
The technology has been marketed to the military, who have used the chips in the wrist tags of injured soldiers as they tracked them from hospital to hospital, monitoring food and equipment deliveries, while the Department of Homeland Security has used the technology to hasten border crossing by embedding chips into identification cards, and could use it to keep track of airline personnel.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Washington Times (06/09/03) P. A1; Hudson, Audrey.
