Germans Protest Radio-ID Plans
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Led by German privacy organization FoeBud, activists in Rheinberg, Germany, plan to stage a protest outside the Metro Extra Future Store, a department store that serves as a site to test RFID tracking and other retailing technologies.
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Metro AG, the store's parent company, is the world's fifth-largest retailer with more than 2,000 stores, including supermarkets and electronics stores in 28 countries.
Activists recently discovered RFID chips embedded in the store's customer loyalty cards. They also found them in products for sale there, including goods from IBM, Gillette and Procter & Gamble. Metro failed to notify customers that they were being tracked. Although Metro told activists the chips worked only while customers were inside the store, activists discovered that a kiosk used to deactivate the chips didn't completely disable the tags.
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Metro is not the first company to face controversy over the use of RFID tags.
Italian clothing manufacturer Benetton Group ran into trouble last year when it announced plans to tag its clothing labels with RFID chips. The company shelved the plan after consumers threatened a boycott.
Newspapers reported last year that the European Central Bank was planning to embed RFID chips into the fibers of bank notes by 2005 to thwart counterfeiters. Activists have expressed concern that the chips would record when and where monetary transactions occur, destroying the anonymity that cash payments usually provide.
More commonly, libraries have been using RFID tags to track books, speed up checkout time and help them make purchasing decisions. But last year, Japanese bookstores announced plans to embed books with tags linked to surveillance cameras. A store could observe a consumer's browsing habits by noting the books they peruse and the pages they linger on.
"That becomes extremely disturbing in light of the Patriot Act," Albrecht said, referring to provisions in the U.S. anti-terrorism act that allow government agencies to access library records.
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