Harrop points out that consumers have often responded in such a way. Cell phones and credit cards are currently tracking our movements and purchases, yet “I’ve never heard of privacy groups ever giving a damn about it,” he says.
Albrecht, meanwhile, maintains that the RFID industry has good reason to keep quiet about its plans. She points to a 2001 IBM patent application that outlines the company’s intention to track people in public places.
In the patent, IBM explains how it will identify people using the RFID tags that a person is already bearing — in a package they’re carrying, say, or embedded in a garment or a shoe. Once IBM has determined a person’s identity, it will track him or her around a store and record his or her shopping habits. This information will be used to “provide targeted advertising to the person as the person roams.”
The patent also suggests that this same tracking method can be carried out in public spaces. Readers can be placed in “shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, restrooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, museums, etc.,” it says.
Patents are frequently written to cover all potential uses of a technology, so it does not necessarily indicate that IBM is planning to track people. Still, the patent undermines frequent industry assertions that the technology will not — and even cannot — be used to track individuals.
In fact, Wal-Mart, Gillette, and Proctor & Gamble have already been caught surreptitiously spying on consumers. In 2003, a Wal-Mart in Brockton was found to have installed a “smart shelf” that held RFID-tagged razors. When a package was removed from the shelf, the tag in the box triggered a hidden camera that snapped the customer’s picture. That same year, a similar scheme occurred in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, with packages of Lipfinity Lipstick.
These stories have validated many privacy advocates’ concerns and hastened them to further action. In July 2004, Steinhardt told members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that RFID, along with computers, GPS, biometrics, and sensors, is “feeding what can be described as a surveillance monster that is growing silently in our midst.”
“The fact is, there are no longer any technical barriers to the creation of the surveillance society,” Steinhardt said. If the technology is allowed to develop and IBM’s patent is approved, this may certainly be true.
Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), agrees. The EFF “would admit that ... because there aren’t many RFID readers in the social environment, it’s not right now a major threat,” he says. “But the problem is, we see the technology moving very quickly ... therefore, the possibility of tracking personal info is going to increase.”
Still, Peter Harrop says that RFID will not become Big Brother. He maintains that RFID won’t diminish privacy any more than other technologies have. You have to consider how little privacy there already is, he says. “If you’ve taken out a [shopper’s loyalty] card, stores like Wal-Mart already know a frighteningly lot about you.”
