Performance Monitoring
He who mounts a wild elephant goes exactly where the wild elephant goes.
Randolph Bourne
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has incubated in relative obscurity for more than 60 years, quietly altering our lives with scant attention outside the technologies community. Initial utilized to identify Allied aircraft in Globe War II, RFID is now properly integrated in developing security, transportation, rapidly food, well being care and livestock management.
Proponents hail RFID as the next natural step in our technological evolution. Opponents forewarn of unprecedented privacy invasion and social manage. That is it? That?s a bit like asking if Christopher Columbus was an intrepid visionary or perhaps a ruthless imperialist. It depends upon your perspective. 1 factor is clear: As RFID extends its roots into frequent culture we every single bear responsibility for tending its growth.
Your Eyes Only
RFID functions as a network of microchip transponders and readers that enables the mainstream exchange of much more ? and much more precise ? information than ever ahead of. Each and every RFID transponder, or ?intelligent tag?, is encrypted using a distinctive electronic item code (EPC) that distinguishes the tagged item from any other within the globe. ?Wise tags? are provocatively developed with both read and write capabilities, which indicates that each and every time a reader retrieves an EPC from a tag, that retrieval becomes component of the EPC?s dynamic history. This constant imprinting supplies real-time tracking of a tagged item at any point in its lifespan.
Recognizing the possible commercial advantages of the technologies, scientists in the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies (MIT) began creating retail applications of RFID in 1999. Install a reader in a display shelf and it becomes a ?intelligent shelf?. Network that with other readers all through the store and you?ve got an impeccable record of buyers interacting with goods ? from the shelf to the shopper; from the shopper to the cart; from the cart to the cashier, and so on.
Proctor & Gamble, The Gillette Company and Wal-Mart were among the very first to provide financial and empirical support to the project. Less than five years later RFID has eclipsed UPC bar coding as the next generation standard of inventory manage and supply chain management. RFID offers unparalleled inventory manage at reduced labor costs; naturally the retail industry is excited.
Katherine Albrecht founded the consumer advocacy group CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) to educate consumers about the prospective dangers of automatic-identification technologies. She warns that ?wise tags? ? dubbed ?spy chips? ? increase retailer profits in the expense of consumer privacy.
RFID delivers a continuous feed of our activities as we peek, poke, squeeze and shake tagged items all through the store. Advocacy groups consider this electronic play-by-play a treasure for corporate marketing and a tragedy for consumer privacy.
Albrecht?s apprehension is understandable. However, shopping in any public venue is not private. It?s public. The decision to be in a public space includes a tacit acknowledgement that 1 can be seen by others. That?s the difference between the public globe and the private globe.
What if those worlds collide? CASPIAN and other consumer groups are concerned about retailers using RFID to connect public activities with private information. Because every EPC leaves a singular electronic footprint, linking each and every item of each and every transaction of each and every customer with personally identifying information, anyone with access to the system can simply follow the footprints to a dossier of the customer and their purchases.
Again, we must be clear. RFID does enable retailers to surveil consumers and link them with their purchasing histories. As disconcerting as that may be, it is neither new nor exclusive to RFID. Anyone who uses credit cards agrees to forfeit some degree of privacy for the privilege of buying now and paying later. Credit card companies collect and retain your name, address, telephone and Social Security numbers. This personal information is utilised to track the date, time, location, items and price of each and every purchase made with the card.
Don?t use credit cards? Unless you pay with cash, someone is monitoring you too. The now familiar UPC bar codes on nearly all consumer goods neatly catalogue the intimate details of all check and bank card purchases. Cash remains the last outpost for the would-be anonymous consumer. Of course, all things are subject to change. RFID inks may be coming soon to a currency near you, but that?s a discussion for another day.
If RFID is no much more intrusive than a curious fellow shopper or perhaps a ceiling mounted security camera, what is the downside for consumer groups? If RFID is no additional revealing than a bank or credit card transaction, what is the upside for the corporate suits? There must be much more.
Indeed, there is. Bear in mind that ?intelligent tags? are uniquely developed to pinpoint tagged items anytime, anywhere from point of origin through point of sale. And, theoretically, beyond.
Ah, the great beyond. RFID?s prospective is limited only by our imaginations. And not just our imaginations; the imagination of anyone who has a reader and a transponder. Wal-Mart. Your employer. The government. Anyone.
Everything Costs Something
Members of German privacy group FOEBUD see shadowy strangers lurking within the imagination playground. Their February 2004 demonstration in front of Metro?s RFID-rigged Future Store was intended to raise public awareness of the implications of RFID.
?Because the spy chips are not destroyed in the shop exit, they continue to be readable to any interested party, such as other supermarkets, authorities, or anyone in possession of a reading device (available to the general public)… The antennas utilized for reading are still visible within the Future Store, but soon they will be hidden in walls, doorways, railings, at petrol pumps anywhere. And we won’t know anymore who is when or why spying on us, watching us, following each and every of our steps.? 1
Freedom is Slavery
Dan Mullen would call that an overreaction. Mullen is the President of auto-identification consortium AIM Global. He cautions that unrealistic fear can obscure the very genuine rewards of RFID: ?Many of the concerns expressed by some of the advocacy groups are frankly, inflated. The technologies can be set up so that identifying information is associated with the item, not with the people interacting with the item. Tracking individuals? That?s not how the technologies is utilized.?
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When asked, ?Could it be employed that way?? Mullen was doubtful. ?I don?t think so. Not at this point. And I don?t see a benefit to anyone.? We’d like to think he?s right, but someone obviously sees a benefit. RFID has been utilised exactly that way.
Wal-Mart is 1 of the retailers who have tested photographic ?wise shelves? in some of their U.S. stores. The technologies did what it was supposed to do ? photograph consumers who removed tagged items from a display. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart didn?t do what they were supposed to do. Goliath didn?t tell David about the camera.
The most disturbing aspect of the project was Wal-Mart?s emphatic denial that they had secretly photographed their shoppers. They weren?t confused. They didn?t make a mistake. They chose to lie. It was only after Albrecht exposed the evidence that Wal-Mart finally admitted conducting the pilot tests in an effort to combat shoplifting and employee theft. After all, the argument goes, this type of inventory shrinkage costs U.S. retailers as much as $32 billion every year. 2 (Don?t feel too sorry for our friends in blue. The bill for this hefty loss is passed on to you and me.)
The public was unmoved by Wal-Mart?s defense, and the project has been aborted. At least for now. Wal-Mart?s smiley face logo belies the arrogance wrought by its success, and we will likely see the photographic ?intelligent shelf? again. Or it will see us, anyway.
Wal-Mart is somewhat like a spoiled child, a casualty of indulgence, who is accustomed to doing quite what he wants when he wants to and rarely anything that he doesn?t. It hardly seems fair to expect the child to accept ?no? when he only vaguely recognizes the word, and even less so, it?s finality.
Bear in mind that RFID does not create opportunities for consumer profiling. We do. Every single time we enter a store we expose ourselves to scrutiny. Each and every time we purchase goods or utilize a service we are assimilated, Borg-like, into the collective revenue stream. Everything costs something.
Worldwide spending on RFID is expected to top $3 billion by 2008, almost triple the market of a year ago. 3 Wal-Mart?s decree that its top 100 suppliers must be RFID compliant by 2005 told the rest of the globe to either get on the train or get off the track. The U.S. Department of Defense has since issued a similar mandate, and falling technologies prices coupled with the establishment of uniform RFID communication standards are making it easier for other industries to do the same.
The War on Drugs
It?s no longer enough to just say no to the schoolyard crack jockeys. We have new enemies within the war on drugs. Our increasing reliance on chemical relief ? born of a pervasive spiritual poverty as much as our aging demographic ? has made us attractive to drug counterfeiters.
Counterfeit drugs are sub-potent or inert imposter pills that are channeled into the prescription drug pipeline and sold as legitimate medication. The Globe Wellness Organization estimates that in less-developed countries as many as half of all prescription drugs dispensed are counterfeit. 4 The economic cost to defrauded and dying consumers is staggering. And it is almost meaningless compared to the emotional cost.
In February 2004 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration?s Counterfeit Drug Task Force released its report ?Combating Counterfeit Drugs?. FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan directed the group?s six month review of America?s prescription drug channels.
Its conclusion? The supply of prescription drugs inside the United States is overwhelmingly safe. The FDA?s complex system of regulatory oversight insures that with rare exception, the pills we pop have been manufactured to the highest standards of purity and potency, distributed safely and dispensed as the doctor ordered.
However, later within the same report McClellan warns that drug counterfeiters are better organized and much more technologically sophisticated than ever just before. According to McClellan, the FDA?s current system can not meet the evolving challenges of the new century, and he recommends full-scale implementation of RFID technologies by 2006. 5
Without question, RFID is a additional formidable guardian than our present paper-based drug audit system. The savviest saboteur will find RFID tags extremely difficult to counterfeit and almost impossible to do so at a profit. EPCs afford flawless accountability, that is a distinct impediment to illegal diversions and substitutions. And no doubt each overworked, carpal tunnel-strained pharmacist would welcome RFID?s promise of tighter inventory and simplified service.
Does this justify the enormous expense of a complete system overhaul? Do the positive aspects outweigh the privacy concerns? Are you comfortable enlisting RFID within the battle against drug terrorism?
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Just before you decide, consider this: The FDA may incorporate ?at least two types of anti-counterfeiting technologies into the packaging and labeling of all drugs, in the point of manufacture, with at least 1 of those technologies being covert (i.e., not made public, and requiring special equipment or knowledge for detection)…?6
?Not made public, and requiring special equipment or knowledge for detection?. Hmm… so, RFID tags can be hidden in our prescriptions without our knowledge or consent… and we will be unable to detect or remove them.
Consider, too, that companies inside the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Denmark have developed electronic blister packs that monitor pill removal and automatically notify the physician?s computer when a patient has dispensed (or neglected to dispense) the medication as scheduled. 7
Here’s a better idea. The FDA should explain how concealing information from me about my prescriptions makes the globe a safer place. And then they can explain how spying on your medicine cabinet ? and tattling to your doctor ? thwarts drug counterfeiting.
The FDA?s prime directive is to protect and advance the public wellness. They have done this remarkably nicely for more than 140 years at an annual cost to taxpayers of only about $3 per person. 8 When evaluating any policy change the FDA must always preserve that that is most fundamental to its success ? indeed, its very existence ? the public trust. RFID may prove vital for the continued integrity of our prescription drug pipeline, but never far more vital than the continued integrity of the FDA.
RFID is in its spring. These tiny chips, sown by science and nourished richly by corporate support, will burgeon beyond imagination, penetrating our lives like the roots of a willow. This is the time for discourse. This is the time to shore our boundaries. If we cede the opportunity to deliberate, we accept surveillance as a norm. Our indifference will do nothing to stem its growth.
Endnotes
1. [http://www.foebud.com]
2. http://www.retailindustry.about.com
3. Jennifer Maselli, ?ABI:RFID Market Poised for Growth,? RFID Journal July 18,2003.
4. http://www.who.int/en/
5. [http://www.fda.gov/oc/initiative/counterfeit/report02_04.html]
6. [http://www.fda.gov/oc/initiative/counterfeit/report02_04.html]
7. http://www.idtechex.com
8. http://www.fda.gov
Copyright ?2005 by Dennis and Sally Bacchetta. All rights reserved.
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