Who's watching the watchers?

[Guest guest]

" Daphne Bradshaw " <laurelnymph

Sat, 5 Aug 2006 22:36:26 -0700 (PDT)

Who's Watching the Watchers?

 

 

 

 

 

Who's watching the watchers?

DAWN RAE DOWNTON

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

 

A silicon chip in your Viagra pack reports back to Pfizer on how much

you took, and when. You fetch the last Coke from your chip-tagged

fridge and your TV airs a Pepsi ad. Your phone company combs your

trash for the chips you've cast off, selling the data it finds to

marketers. And when you pick up pricey pasta at the supermarket, a

screen on your shopping cart flashes an ad for a high-end sauce to go

with it.

 

Science fiction? Not at all.

 

The plans to " spy-chip " your fridge belong to Procter & Gamble, which

has a second patent pending to track consumers in-store. American

telecommunications giant BellSouth has a patent pending on the

garbage-picking. NCR is behind the shopping cart ads and also holds a

patent on " automated monitoring of shoppers " at grocery stores. As for

Viagra, like OxyContin, its manufacturers are already tagging bulk

bottles at the pharmacy (packs of Diovan, an antihypertensive, are

actually tagged individually).

 

Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, is surveillance technology at

its finest -- cheap, invisible, infallible, ubiquitous -- and privacy

advocates abhor it. Silently, without even a bar code beep, RFID reads

and records people's behaviour and inventories their possessions.

 

Benetton was the first large retailer to find out the hard way that

not everyone likes being watched. In 2003, consumer outrage forced it

to recall millions of garments it had embedded with microchips.

 

Tesco and Gillette were next: Later the same year, customers boycotted

both companies when the British grocery chain showcased RFID " smart

shelves " that flashed customers pictures of themselves reaching for

razor blades.

 

All the same, a complete history of your movements could soon be

recorded and sold to commercial and security interests. Privacy

experts predict that RFID will replace the closed-circuit television

surveillance currently used by governments in China, Europe and

Canada, and businesses are heavily investing in the technology.

 

The tags aren't new -- billions have been sold since the early

eighties -- but their proliferation is. Cumulative to 2005, 2.4

billion were sold. For 2006 alone, sales of 1.3 billion are forecast.

By 2015, sales of 13 trillion are projected, with the greatest push in

retail, electronics, health care and pharmaceuticals. A chip lasts 20

years, needs no batteries and costs just five cents (with cent-apiece

chips coming).

 

So, how long before RFID actually comes home with you?

 

The sooner the better, says Mark Roberti of RFID Journal, the industry

publication. For Mr. Roberti, the shopping-cart ad for tomato sauce is

no different from a salesman at a boutique who shows you some Prada

shoes to go with the Armani suit you're considering. RFID is your

friend, he says from his Long Island home. He thinks companies are

over-sensitive to consumer concerns about their privacy.

 

Consumer-privacy expert Katherine Albrecht disagrees. The boutique

salesman forgets you, she says, but " the computer always remembers. "

The woman behind the Benetton recall, Ms. Albrecht has been called the

Erin Brockovich of RFID.

" Promoters have a lot more funding these days to make their case.

Privacy advocates don't get as much press, " she says from her office

in New York. " RFID fans have considerable respect for the ethics of

corporations, too. Often, they're paid by them. "

 

Ms. Albrecht, founder of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy

Invasion and Numbering, has briefed Canada's federal Privacy

Commissioner. She has been invited back to brief Ontario Privacy

Commissioner Ann Cavoukian, too, as more and more RFID comes to

Canada. Wal-Mart Canada would like to see all its merchandise tagged

at supply point by 2007. And Canadian retailer Nygard tags garments in

Toronto. RFID pill bottles are made in Ottawa.

 

We even have our own fledgling Canadian RFID Centre. David Wilkes of

the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors says Agriculture and

Agrifood Canada, whose logo appears on the RFID Centre's website,

contributed $485,000 for the centre's operations. The money was

channelled through Mr. Wilkes's group for " evaluation of the

feasibility, benefits and impacts " of RFID in Canada's food industry,

Agriculture Canada's Chantale Courcy says, although she was unable to

provide further details.

Elaine Smith of Food & Consumer Products Canada has said of the

centre, " It's important . . . to address any consumer and privacy

concerns. " But the centre is really about shaping " consumer

perception, " she says in an interview. " As the future unfolds,

consumers need to understand that there are no privacy concerns. "

 

Meanwhile, the centre's press material says monitoring people, as well

as products, is a chief use of RFID, in Canada and elsewhere.

 

In the United States, IBM may be sewing up this side of the business.

It holds a patent to build RFID peepholes into the walls and ceilings

of public places, washrooms included. These will surreptitiously

identify passersby and look into purses, pockets and briefcases.

 

The system is for government and law enforcement, and from his

laboratory in Taiwan, IBM engineer Junwei Chen offers a seminar about

it called RFID for People Tracking: You can run but you can't hide.

" People tracking, " Mr. Chen says, " is one of the most popular

scenarios for RFID. GPS tracking is inferior. RFID can track anyone,

especially indoors. "

 

IBM has taken heat, but never distanced itself from its patent.

Business is good worldwide, with many countries using RFID-based smart

cards and national identity cards. An American national ID card is on

order, as are RFID passports with visitor-tagging at the borders.

 

Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Association says,

" It's going to result in everyone, from the 7-Eleven store to the bank

and airlines, demanding to see the ID card [and] scan it in. It's

going to be not just a national ID card but a national database. "

 

Ms. Cavoukian, Ontario's privacy commissioner, has said, " Clearly,

it's not anyone's intent to spy on consumers. The vast majority of

RFID technology is used [for] supply-chain management. "

 

Nonetheless, while crate-tagging is done for inventory control and

security, when you get to labelling individual products, Ms. Cavoukian

admits, " You have a potential linkage with credit-card information. "

 

In fact, at item-level tagging you have actual linkage, since details

of your purchase are archived along with your credit-card information

and other particulars of your private life. Your details are even

matched with those on file for your family and associates.

 

Might companies sell their data, link their databases to broaden their

surveillance? " Of course not, " RFID Journal's Mr. Roberti says. " The

lifeblood of any business is customer data. "

 

But businesses sell data routinely, and Mr. Roberti himself has

written about data-sharing between Wal-Mart, Target and a host of

manufacturers. Retail RFID knows who you are, what you pick up from

which shelf or rack -- and what you put back. " One day, " Mr. Roberti

says, " it might be very valuable to know that 100 customers picked up

product A, put it back, and bought product B. "

 

Valuable to whom? Pat King of the Pharmacy Association of Nova Scotia

says drug companies track data to ensure compliance. Since half of

patients with long-term conditions go off their drugs within six

months, " non-compliance costs the drug companies big time. " While Mr.

King says " we sure don't tattoo [patients'] bums with bar codes, " he

thinks there is a trend toward increasing invasion of patient privacy.

RFID readers are not yet in Canadian dispensaries, but no one's sure

whether Canadian drugs are tagged.

 

Similarly, though RFID could improve customer service and savings,

track corpses in disasters, keep prisoners " in sight " and safeguard

children, it also spy-chips American library books and European

Central Bank notes.

 

Even Levi-Strauss, the Woodstock-era fashion icon, is caught in the

devil's bargain: It's putting chips in its jeans.

 

Mr. Roberti likes to compare RFID to the Internet. " It's used to track

people's behaviour and on-line interests. Would consumers be better

off if we banned the technology? Of course not. Rules for how RFID can

and can't be used will be established as the technology matures.

Companies will abide by these rules and customers will benefit

tremendously. "

 

In the U.S., patients are RFID-equipped on admission to hospital. Soon

the tagging of patients, health records and prescriptions may seem

like everyone at the party is having a look inside your medicine

cabinet -- and not just those you have authorized. Johns Hopkins

University engineers say RFID is hackable; health and credit

particulars can be plucked from the air. Tags will soon be read from

long distances, making systems leakier.

 

But consumer profiles built " legitimately " might hurt you more than

hackers ever could. In 2003, a New England grocery chain developed

" Smart Mouth " software to analyze the habits of each of its shoppers,

converting their records into dietary profiles. To recoup expenses,

the grocer said it planned to share its data with a selection of

health maintenance organizations wanting to know which of their

clients " had had too many steaks " and brought their ill health on

themselves: no more coverage for them.

 

In a study last year of six private companies, the Rand Corporation

found that data from employee RFID access cards was, in every case,

systematically passed from corporate security to human-resources and

medical departments. Only in one instance was an employee informed.

 

" Key players in the industry have some very bad plans, " Ms. Albrecht

says. " Corporations have been caught red-handed describing ways to use

RFID to spy on the rest of us. "

 

Dawn Rae Downton is a Halifax-based writer.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060722.wxtags22/BNStory/Tec\

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" The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after

all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it

and to foster its renewal is our only hope. " Wendell Berry