Wall-Mart Following you Home?

News to me. Makes me want to buy small objects and distribute them among the city's crack houses.

IS THIS AN URBAN LEGEND? IF THIS IS REAL WAL MART WILL KILL THEIR OWN BUSINESS.

I doubt that this would kill Wally-world's business, farmerman, apart from the current events ignorance of so much of the population, people simply don't care. Cheap goods will trump vague fears any thime. I'll go check snopes . . .

Bingo . . . Snopes says its true . . .

Link to Snopes[/color]

The article also contains a link for Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) -- where would we be without self-appointed watchdogs . . .

However, for those who would like to get themselves worked up on a variety of flimsy pretexts, see this section of Snopes;

Moral Outrage Link[/color]

These are the same RFID chips we discussed in John Ashcroft must be salavating over new tiny ID chips.
The RFID chips have been hot in tech news for about 6 months.
Wal-Mart announced their intent a few months ago, but I thought it might be a while longer yet. Oh well.

Resistance is futile ... the technology is inevitable, so buy your jammers now!

I these were put into all products, the metal detectors at airports would have fits . . . frankly, i find all of this amusing . . . the "Moral Outrage" section of Snopes is truly a hoot . . .

Almost the size of a grain of sand, they can be embedded into almost any product for less than $0.05.

A couple hundred of the RFID chips would be smaller than a penny, not nearly enough to be detected by a metal detector.

No batteries, no power supply, they respond when zapped with a certain frequency, with a range of up to 20 feet max.

For the next year or two they could only really be used inside a store. But it's possible, once every store in town has a detector by the door ... and they add that data to their existing comm links (say, their Visa/MC data lines) then a central information service could easily collect your travel path from store to store.

The data is available, therefore people will use it.




Another possible use: If an agent wants to follow you, all he needs to is walk within 20 feet of you, and read the unique serial number attached to your pants. They publish an all-points-bulletin, and every toll booth and gas station in town can then notify them the instant you show up there.

The technology is easy. All they need is a court order.

Who cares if Wal-Mart knows I buy their cheap T shirts? Don't you realize that with technology that we have now, there IS no privacy, anywhere?
When I think of the difference in the anonymity that I had in the years that I was growing up and now, the change is amazing. And we all got accustomed to it, except for junk mail.

Every upside to a new technological improvement has a downside...........get used to the idea!

(Boy, do I sound jaded this morning! )

Oh god, laughed my ass off. Were someone in a position not to want government agents to follow them, and such an agent were following them, obliged to stay within 20 feet, the target would have to be a right plank not to know he/she was being followed.

Big Brother would like to be watching you, but don't walk too fast . . .

The agent (or at least a small box) needs to be within 20 feet of you only once.
Then he can go home and just wait for the data stream to inform him wherever you go.

You can be sure college kids will have a great time doing exactly this, as pranks. A pea-shooter could stick an RFID in your hair, and all they need is some cheap detectors scattered around town.

Anyone who wants to follow someone can use this method.
The point is the technology is cheap and widely available, so get used to it.



Another use: We already have $30 motion detectors that you can put at the far end of your driveway, to ring a doorbell whenever someone drives in. With a little training, that doorbell can announce who all the people are, or if it is an unknown person on the property. Would you pay $100 for a doorbell like that?

Another use: They are considering embedding RFID's within printed money. It would make customs declarations quick and easy, to just scan exactly how many dollars a person is carrying. With an encrypted serial number, the RFID could eliminate counterfeiting and even provide an electronic history as the bill makes it's way around town. But it would also make muggings very easy, once organized crime bought a few remote money counters for themselves. Pros and cons.

Oh, horseshit . . . it these items are ubiquitous, how does your imagined agent tell you from anyone else? The only means is to implant a device with a truly unique frequency. Apart from all of the problems to be associated with that action, there is the question of what said agent does when you change clothing. That's a truly ridiculous contention, for pragmatic reasons alone. Conspiracy theories about government snooping ignore the logistic limitations imposed on anyone who wished to do a significant level of spying in a nation of over 250,000,000 people.

Every RFID tag has a unique serial number, 100-120 digits long.
Also, that number may be encrypted, so it cannot be forged and only the people with a matching encryption key are even able to read that particular one.



Another Use (#4): Place a hundred RFID detectors all over a stadium or public park. Each person entering the place might have six or seven tags on them, but as they walk around, a computer can easily recognize which tags are sticking together as one "person". Thus, they have an exact count of how many people are there, where each person currently is, and the usage patterns for walking traffic throughout the facility.


Another Use (#5): Employers already use electronic badges to log and monitor where employees go within a company facility. (Mine do anyways). They measure how much time in the lobby, restroom, courtyard, meeting room. Different people are permitted to use only certain hallways. If a lowly graphic artist walks down the executive hallway, an alarm tells the guard to run after and stop him. RFIDs make electronic badges more discrete and invisible.



When your kid brother can put a few chips and detectors around town, then pull up a webpage that shows where you are ... then a mugger or stalker could, your school or business could, K-Mart could, and anyone else too. I'm not dwelling on government conspiracy theories, just outlining what the technology is capable of, for only a few dollars expense.

The 120-digit frequency doesn't mean much in the face of the number of products on sale in all of the nation's retail outlets. Without someone's knowing intent to track a particular individual, this is a specious contention. And, even in that circumstance, there is the problem of how the RFID and the individual are matched up, and the match maintained. Whether or not its someone's kid brother, or the goverment, the logistical considerations alone make such a conention little short of clinical paranoia.

I'm not sure what you're saying... Can you rephrase?

There are logistical problems associated with such tracking--in particular, the vast amount of data involved--which make the contention that RFID tags can be used, either for a malicious prank, or for the nefarious purposes of government, of a stalker, of whomever, a ridiculous contention. It's a matter of scale. The amount of data to be sifted would be prohibitive. You contend that an individual only need follow you briefly to establish the link--but if these items are ubiquitous, how would the perp know which frequency is significant? If it were embedded in your cell phone, then you'd likely continue to have that RFID on your person. If it were embedded in the waist band of your skivvies, you would, one hopes, change them the next day, and thereby make the tracking a moot point. If you take perspective from the amount of data to be dealt with, and the number of persons upon whom several such RFID's would be carried, given a scenario of their ubiquitous use, then the "tracking" scenario sinks to an absurdity.

IF THEYRE MADE OUT OF SPECIFIC METALS LIKE AL OR BRASS, THEY WONT BE PICKED UP BY DETECTORS THAT USE RF/ EM FREQUENCIES.
WE WERE LOOKING AT APPLYING RFID CHIPS ON WASTE PACKETS FROM MINE WATER TREATMENT PLANTS. THEN AFTER ABOUT A 2 MONTH PERIOD WED GO BACK AND QUERY THE CHIPS TO SEE HOW THEY ARE DISPERSED INTO THE ENVIRONMENT. I HEARD THAT BILL RATHJE FROM U ARIZONA WAS ALSO EXPERIMENTING WITH THEIR USE TO SEE HOW LANDFILLS GET FILLED UP.

THE P[OINT ABOUT ONLY A 20 METER (+/_) RANGE IS WRONG. THE RANGE CAN BE EXTENDED ALMOST INDEFINATELY. ITS THE RADIO TRACKER THAT EMITS A SIGNAL THAT TURNS THE CHIP ON. THEN A SIMPLE SW RECEIVER , TUNED TO AN EXCEPTIONALLY THIN FREQ CAN DETECT THE RESPONSE OVER 10 MILES(THATS TODAYS WORLD). IF THIS IS THE SAME TECHNOLOGY, THE CHIPS ARE MARKETED AT ABOUT 3 TO 4 BUCKS EACH.

IF THEY INSTALL THIS TECHN OLOGY, ILL HAVE TO RECONSIDER WHERE I BUY MY BATTERIES AND FILM AND BIC RAZORS

IF THEYRE MADE OUT OF SPECIFIC METALS LIKE AL OR BRASS, THEY WONT BE PICKED UP BY DETECTORS THAT USE RF/ EM FREQUENCIES.
WE WERE LOOKING AT APPLYING RFID CHIPS ON WASTE PACKETS FROM MINE WATER TREATMENT PLANTS. THEN AFTER ABOUT A 2 MONTH PERIOD WED GO BACK AND QUERY THE CHIPS TO SEE HOW THEY ARE DISPERSED INTO THE ENVIRONMENT. I HEARD THAT BILL RATHJE FROM U ARIZONA WAS ALSO EXPERIMENTING WITH THEIR USE TO SEE HOW LANDFILLS GET FILLED UP.

THE P[OINT ABOUT ONLY A 20 METER (+/_) RANGE IS WRONG. THE RANGE CAN BE EXTENDED ALMOST INDEFINATELY. ITS THE RADIO TRACKER THAT EMITS A SIGNAL THAT TURNS THE CHIP ON. THEN A SIMPLE SW RECEIVER , TUNED TO AN EXCEPTIONALLY THIN FREQ CAN DETECT THE RESPONSE OVER 10 MILES(THATS TODAYS WORLD). IF THIS IS THE SAME TECHNOLOGY, THE CHIPS ARE MARKETED AT ABOUT 3 TO 4 BUCKS EACH.

IF THEY INSTALL THIS TECHN OLOGY, ILL HAVE TO RECONSIDER WHERE I BUY MY BATTERIES AND FILM AND BIC RAZORS

RANDOM THOUGHT HERE.
I THINK THE PACKAGING INSTITUTE WOULD BE FREAKING RIGHT NOW. AS RFID S GET INSTALLED, THEY BECOME A CONFIRMATION ABOUT HOW WE HOG UP OUR NATION WITH JUNK AND LITTER.


PLESE DONT TELL ME ABOUT FLAMING, MY CAP LOCK IS ACTING UP AND IT HAS ME PERMANENTLY IN CAPS MODE.