Scandal: Wal-Mart, P&G Involved in Secret RFID Testing

[cujo0123]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 10, 2003

Scandal: Wal-Mart, P&G Involved in Secret RFID Testing
American consumers used as guinea pigs for controversial technology

Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble conducted a secret RFID trial involving Oklahoma consumers earlier this year, the Chicago Sun Times revealed on Sunday. Customers who purchased P&G's Lipfinity brand lipstick at the Broken Arrow Wal-Mart store between late March and mid-July unknowingly left the store with live RFID tracking devices embedded in the packaging. Wal-Mart had previously denied any consumer-level RFID testing in the United States.

"It proves what we've been saying all along," says Katherine Albrecht, Founder and Director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN). "Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble and others have experimented on shoppers with controversial spy chip technology and tried to cover it up. Consumers and members of the press should be upset to learn that they've been lied to."

The Sun Times also reported that a live video camera trained on the shelf allowed Procter & Gamble employees, sometimes hundreds of miles away, to observe the Lipfinity display and consumers interacting with it.

"This trial is a perfect illustration of how easy it is to set up a secret RFID infrastructure and use it to spy on people," says Albrecht. "The RFID industry has been paying lip service to privacy concerns, calling for notice, choice and control. But companies like P&G, Wal-Mart and Gillette have already violated all three tenets when they thought nobody was looking. This is exactly why we oppose item-level RFID tagging and have called for mandatory labeling legislation."

The Lipfinity tests were conducted while Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble were sponsors of the MIT Auto-ID Center, a consortium of over 100 corporations and government agencies founded in 1999. Auto-ID Center activities were supervised by a Board of Overseers, which included both Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble, along with the Uniform Code Council (UCC), the standards body that oversees the bar code. The UCC (along with EAN International) took over commercial functions from the Auto-ID center on November 1 of this year.

"Given the players, the Wal-Mart Lipfinity trial probably isn't an isolated incident," says CASPIAN spokeswoman Liz McIntyre. "UCC and Auto-ID Center documents suggest that other products, including Huggies baby wipes, Pantene shampoo, Caress soap, Purina Dog Chow and Right Guard deodorant were also slated for live RFID field trials. Coca Cola, Kraft, Kodak and Johnson & Johnson products are also implicated. However, it may be difficult for consumers to learn the extent of those trials in the current climate of secrecy and denials."

(Links to documentation provided below.)

Disclosure of the Broken Arrow trial is only the latest scandal to hit the privacy plagued RFID industry. Early this year, CASPIAN called for a worldwide boycott of Italian clothing manufacturer Benetton when the company announced plans to equip women's undergarments with live RFID tracking tags (see [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now]). This summer, CASPIAN uncovered an RFID-enabled Gillette "smart shelf" in a Brockton, Massachusetts Wal-Mart and helped disclose Gillette's scheme to secretly photograph consumers picking up Mach3 razor blades in UK Tesco stores (see [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now]). The group also revealed confidential industry plans to "pacify" consumers and "neutralize opposition" in the hope that consumers will be "apathetic" and "resign themselves to the inevitability" of RFID product tagging (see: [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now]).

CASPIAN encourages consumers to contact Wal-Mart, P&G and the UCC to voice their opinion about the use of RFID spy chips in consumer products. Contact information for these companies is provided on the group's RFID website at [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now].

For links to documents implicating other consumer products in item-level tagging trials, see:

"The EPC Network, RFID and data" at [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now]
mirrored at: [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now]

"EPC Field Test" at [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now]

"Lessons Learned in the Real World" (note, for example, pages 25 & 26) at [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now]

Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) is a grass-roots consumer group fighting retail surveillance schemes since 1999. With members in all 50 U.S. states and over 20 nations across the globe, CASPIAN seeks to educate consumers about marketing strategies that invade their privacy and to encourage privacy-conscious shopping habits across the retail spectrum.

The Chicago Sun Times article is online at: [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now]


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For CASPIAN's overview of RFID product identification and tracking technology, please see: [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now]

[pandybat]

Here we go again.......

What is the big deal?

[pandybat]

[Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now]

[Shainie]

I don't get it.

[verwon]

Originally Posted by Shainie

I don't get it.

Thank goodness I am not the only one who doesn't get it and really doesn't care!!

Why on earth should it bother me if people know what I buy??? Especially when it gets me other deals, discounts and freebies?? I am a cheapskate, whatever works for them to give me more deals is fine by me, they still don't know what I am doing in my bedroom at home!! LOL!

I guess this person is the only one who does get it???

[cujo0123]

It was an e-mail I got that was interesting and I thought I would share.

[verwon]

And your sharing is appreciated, we don't mean to cut up on you in anyway, just most of us would be more concerned about other issues or privacy infringments than worrying about companies knowing what we buy.

Anytime you use a coupon, store card, credit card, bank card and etc., they know anyway.

[Jane456]

Sorry for bumping this old thread.... but i just read to many other threads that has as a subject, the Wallmarts.... why everyone is talking about Wallmarts???? I know they have great deals... but at least post here if you have something to say about Wallmart...don't begin another thread about it!!!!!!!!!!!
Jane [Only registered and activated users can see links. Either login above or Register Now]

[shrimppimp]

I don't get this article. it seems bogus to me..btw i work for walmart. DEF NOT THE BEST PLACE TO WORK FOR...the customers arent the greatest sometimes either.