PRIVACY ISSUES AND CONCERNS

     Concerns for personnel privacy being violated by RFID systems stem from the ability to correlate an RFID tag to a specific individual, and to read the tag remotely, without the individual’s permission or knowledge.  CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) is a vocal group of private citizens who are against RFID tagging of  individual items.  CASPIAN’s concern is that marketers, criminals and governments can use RFID tags (“spy chips”) to find information on individuals and exploit it.  For example, by tracking the buying habits of an individual through an RFID tag imbedded in a loyalty card, stores will read the tag when the individual returns to the store and tailor advertisements to them.  Criminals can remotely read RFID tags and determine the contents of a woman’s purse and “capture details about the style of panties she is wearing through their cloths.” Finally, governments can violate Forth Amendment rights by using RFID systems to create dossiers on citizens. ⁸

     Citing difficulties in current technology and probably more important, making a case that Return on Investment does not justify tracking of individuals through RFID systems, industry experts estimate it will be five to seven years before companies will even consider tracking individuals.  While these experts believe the privacy issues are “way over hyped,” they do recommend companies begin developing privacy policies if only to sooth consumer anxiety. ⁹   

     Several methods are being developed to address RFID privacy issues ranging from obtaining customer consents to various means of disabling the RFID antenna after purchase (such as mounting the antenna in scratch-off material or perforating the line connecting the antenna to the tag so customers can disable the tag) to electronically disabling the tag at purchase. ¹⁰

     There are several cases in 2003 that highlight consumer and industry sensitivity to RFID privacy issues.  Gillette’s testing of “smart shelves” in a UK Tesco store is an example.  When a Gillette Mach 3 razor was picked off the shelf, the RFID system triggered a hidden camera to take a picture of the customer.  When discovered, hundreds of people protested at the store, including CASPIAN, who called for a worldwide boycott of Gillette products.  Shortly after this story became public, Wal*Mart cancelled its planned testing of smart shelf technology, in response to the strong negative reaction to the Gillette test case. ¹¹  Of note, Gillette’s stated reason for the smart shelf test was to demonstrate RFID system capabilities and not to track individual customers.  ¹²