Evening Std runs Story on Tesco Gillette RFID Chip Trial + Campaign
id | 13.08.2003 00:38 | Globalisation | Repression | Technology | Cambridge | London
Evening Std Covers RFID chip story / anti-campaign:
http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/6181085?source=Evening%20Standard
http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/6181085?source=Evening%20Standard
Tesco to snap every shopper
By Ed Harris, Evening Standard
12 August 2003
Tesco supermarket is testing a "Big Brother" anti-theft system which takes pictures of everyone buying high-value products in a bid to stop shoplifting.
A microchip the size of a grain of sand is attached to each product and - when someone removes that product from a display - an instore CCTV camera is triggered.
Civil liberties campaigners have criticised the experiment, and protested outside the Cambridge-supermarket where it is being carried out. They described the pilot, by Tesco, as an infringement of privacy and called on shoppers to boycott the chain until it drops the idea.
The CCTV images are destroyed once a product passes through the checkout and is paid for. Otherwise they can be retained to identify and possibly prosecute thieves. Police are said to be "impressed" with the quality of the images.
The products used in the trial are Gillette Mach 3 razor refills, which are shoplifted more often and in greater quantity than any other products in Europe. They cost up to £6.97 each, but can be easily concealed because the packs are relatively small.
Marks & Spencer, Woolworths and Asda are said to be planning to introduce the microchips, with many other stores expected to follow suit.
But the technology has already provoked a backlash in the US.
Benetton dropped plans to use the chips in pullovers following a threatened international boycott.
Outside the Tesco store in Cambridge, one protester, Damien Lawson, warned: "If this trial is successful a broader range of goods will be tagged.
"Tags could be buried in clothes and other items, and you could be bristling with chips. You would be transmitting - without your knowledge - personal information about where you shop, what you buy and how you pay. This could be retrieved by anyone with the proper equipment."
He added: "If enough customers make their concerns known then we hope Tesco will drop this."
Tesco spokesman Greg Sage said the scheme was designed to keep track of products within the store, and insisted that the chips would not be used once those products left the premises.
He pledged: "We would never compromise the privacy of our customers.
"The system was designed to improve the availability of products to customers by enabling us to say exactly how many items are left on the shelf. Also, it makes life easier for staff to track exactly where items are."
The chips are in the packaging and will be discarded when the customer unwraps the product, Mr Sage said.
"The chips can only be read within a Tesco store - and in any case they only contain an eight-digit number, in the same way that a barcode contains a number."
http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/6181085?source=Evening%20Standard
----
See report on cambridge tesco RFID protest
http://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/cambridge/2003/08/275490.html
By Ed Harris, Evening Standard
12 August 2003
Tesco supermarket is testing a "Big Brother" anti-theft system which takes pictures of everyone buying high-value products in a bid to stop shoplifting.
A microchip the size of a grain of sand is attached to each product and - when someone removes that product from a display - an instore CCTV camera is triggered.
Civil liberties campaigners have criticised the experiment, and protested outside the Cambridge-supermarket where it is being carried out. They described the pilot, by Tesco, as an infringement of privacy and called on shoppers to boycott the chain until it drops the idea.
The CCTV images are destroyed once a product passes through the checkout and is paid for. Otherwise they can be retained to identify and possibly prosecute thieves. Police are said to be "impressed" with the quality of the images.
The products used in the trial are Gillette Mach 3 razor refills, which are shoplifted more often and in greater quantity than any other products in Europe. They cost up to £6.97 each, but can be easily concealed because the packs are relatively small.
Marks & Spencer, Woolworths and Asda are said to be planning to introduce the microchips, with many other stores expected to follow suit.
But the technology has already provoked a backlash in the US.
Benetton dropped plans to use the chips in pullovers following a threatened international boycott.
Outside the Tesco store in Cambridge, one protester, Damien Lawson, warned: "If this trial is successful a broader range of goods will be tagged.
"Tags could be buried in clothes and other items, and you could be bristling with chips. You would be transmitting - without your knowledge - personal information about where you shop, what you buy and how you pay. This could be retrieved by anyone with the proper equipment."
He added: "If enough customers make their concerns known then we hope Tesco will drop this."
Tesco spokesman Greg Sage said the scheme was designed to keep track of products within the store, and insisted that the chips would not be used once those products left the premises.
He pledged: "We would never compromise the privacy of our customers.
"The system was designed to improve the availability of products to customers by enabling us to say exactly how many items are left on the shelf. Also, it makes life easier for staff to track exactly where items are."
The chips are in the packaging and will be discarded when the customer unwraps the product, Mr Sage said.
"The chips can only be read within a Tesco store - and in any case they only contain an eight-digit number, in the same way that a barcode contains a number."
http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/6181085?source=Evening%20Standard ----
See report on cambridge tesco RFID protest
http://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/cambridge/2003/08/275490.html
id
Comments
Hide the following 2 comments
early guardian article on cambs tesco trial
19.08.2003 07:54
Tags in packs of razor blades used to track buyers
Alok Jha Science correspondent
Saturday July 19, 2003
The Guardian
The supermarket chain Tesco has admitted testing controversial technology that tracks customers buying certain products through its stores. Anyone picking up Gillette Mach3 razor blades at its Cambridge store will have his or her picture taken.
The Guardian, alerted by Katherine Albrecht, director of US-based Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy and Invasion and Numbering, to the use of the smart electronic tags, has found that tags in the razor blades trigger a CCTV camera when a packet is removed from the shelf. A second camera takes a picture at the checkout and security staff then compare the two images, raising the possibility that they could be used to prevent theft.
"Customers know that there are CCTV cameras in the store," said a spokesman for Tesco. He went on to insist that the aim of the trial was to provide stock information and not security, but the manager of the Cambridge store, Alan Robinson, has already described how he presented photos of a shoplifter to police.
The trial uses radio frequency identification (RFID) in which tiny chips can communicate with detectors up to 20ft away. The chip can then return information - anything from a unique serial number to more complex product details. Or, as in Tesco's case, it could trigger a camera.
Retailers have hailed the technology as the "holy grail" of supply chain management but civil liberties groups argue that the so-called "spy chips" are an invasion of consumers' privacy and could be used as a covert surveillance device.
The technology is mostly used to track batches of products through the supply chain. But manufacturers want to go a step further and tag each individual product: everything from yoghurt pots to clothes.
One potential problem with RFID tags is that they can still work long after the product has been bought. If the tags become as ubiquitous as the manufacturers would like, people could be bristling with the chips in clothes and possessions. Anyone from police to potential thieves could work out exactly what they carry. Manufacturers, however, insist that the chips can be disabled at the point of sale.
"You can disable the tag by erasing the data on it and this can be done at the checkout," said Jon Parsell of Bedford-based RFID Components, which supplies RFID systems to retailers.
Transport for London is also using RFID-style chips in its new Oyster smart cards to allow users to travel around the tube network. The intention is that registered users will have information such as their names and addresses stored on the cards, which would eventually replace season tickets.
A spokesperson for TfL said that the entry and exit points of each journey made by Oyster users were recorded and that, technically, it would be possible to track people through the tube network. Nicole Carroll, marketing director for TranSys, the consortium responsible for implementing the system, told the Guardian that all the journeys made by a user would remain stored in a central computer for the lifetime of the card.
Barry Hugill of Liberty expressed concern about "function creep" - information recorded for one purpose and used for another. "We want quite clear legal guidelines as to what information companies, government agencies, local authorities are allowed to glean [and] what they can do with it," he said.
Additional reporting by Rachel Shabi
info
zdnet / silicon
19.08.2003 09:01
Andy McCue
silicon.com
August 15, 2003, 09:10 BST
The tracking of Gillette razor blades is being trialled at a Tesco store in Cambridge, to the horror of privacy groups
Gillette has dismissed complaints by privacy groups that the company plans to use smart tags in its products to track and photograph shoppers.
The company is one of the first to trial the controversial radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in its Mach 3 razor blade packets. Supermarket chain Tesco has been testing the tagged products in a Cambridge store.
But privacy groups started protesting outside the Tesco store when it emerged the supermarket was automatically taking photographs of shoppers when they picked the blades up off the shelf and when they left the shop with any tagged product.
US-based group Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (Caspian) is also urging a worldwide boycott against Gillette over the tagging concerns.
Caspian founder and director Katherine Albrecht said: "We want to send a clear message to Gillette and other companies that consumers will not tolerate being spied on through the products they buy."
But Gillette has hit back at the "misleading" claims, saying it only wants to use the RFID tags to improve the efficiency of its supply chain. The chips, when inserted into products, emit radio signals that allow them to be tracked.
Gillette spokesman Paul Fox told silicon.com: "Our intention is very much pallet-and-case application within our supply chain. We have never nor do we have any intention to track, photograph or videotape consumers."
Tesco's Cambridge trial finished at the end of July and it is now running a pilot with RFID tags in DVDs at its Sandhurst store.
A Tesco spokesman said the photographing of consumers was just part of a range of uses the supermarket chain is looking at for the tags.
"We are just looking at the benefits. It is blue-sky stuff. The camera use was a side project to look at the security benefit."
info