Spychips Sees an RFID Conspiracy

[Lord Ser Brightblade]

Spychips Sees an RFID Conspiracy

By Mark Baard

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69068,00.html

02:00 AM Oct. 05, 2005 PT

A new book by privacy advocates makes the case that corporations and government agencies are in collusion to put tiny radio transmitters on nearly everything we buy. Companies say it's about providing thought leadership, not the Mark of the Beast.

Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre hope to become the twin Erin Brockoviches of RFID, by revealing the threat posed by the radio tag replacements for barcode labels.

They may get their wish, if readers believe the conclusions of the privacy advocates' new book, Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID.

Albrecht and McIntyre make a staggering accusation in Spychips: that Philips, Procter and Gamble, Gillette, NCR and IBM are conspiring with each other and the federal government to follow individual consumers everywhere, using embedded radio tags planted in their clothing and belongings.

The businesses, who form the center of the RFID industry, hope to wirelessly monitor the contents of consumers' refrigerators, medicine cabinets, basement workbenches -- even their garbage pails, the book claims.

These companies have long insisted they are interested only in making their supply chains run more smoothly.

The authors, who run the consumer privacy rights group Caspian, support their assertions with company documents, records of patents and patent applications, and statements made by RFID industry leaders at corporate events.

They also cite magazine articles and news reports in which industry executives appear to be rubbing their hands over the power of RFID tags to track consumers. In one example, Gillette vice president of global business management Dick Cantwell in quoted in a 2001 Technology Review article as saying he looks forward to the company using (RFID) readers "to track consumer use of its products at home."

Those who have been following the RFID privacy debate will find no shocking revelations of smoking guns in Spychips. But by assembling in one place a vast amount of documentation and history, and stretching it all together into a coherent narrative, the authors clearly hope to reach a broad group of ordinary consumers -- enough, perhaps, to mobilize a movement against the technology.

Spychips is published by the Christian media publisher Thomas Nelson, and a forthcoming Christian edition of the book will contain an additional chapter linking RFID to the Mark of the Beast passage in the Bible's Book of Revelation, as well as "minor updates throughout the text to reflect Christian concerns," said Albrecht.

The Spychips Threat: Why Christians Should Oppose RFID Technology and Surveillance is due out in January 2006.

While the authors' religious motives might make the books easier for critics to dismiss, others note that successful consumer exposés are rarely written in an academic style by researchers with PhDs.

"Unsafe at Any Speed and Silent Spring were not written by academics," said Ronald Shaiko, a senior fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences at Dartmouth. "The Jungle (about Chicago's meat packing industry) was a novel," he said.

All of those books caused U.S. laws to change, said Shaiko.

As described by Albrecht and McIntyre, the RFID "conspiracy" amounts to more of a marriage of convenience between corporate and government interests. Marketers believe RFID tags on goods will help them figure out what makes a shopper pick an item off a shelf and put it back, while the government may want to use the tags to monitor individuals suspected of crimes or under the scrutiny of state social workers.

RFID will help officials "ensure the well-being of the people they serve" through contact with social workers monitoring people in their homes, according to one patent application filed by Big Five consulting firm Accenture, described in Spychips.

The authors also relate imagined scenarios in which stalkers and lechers armed with handheld, rogue RFID readers terrorize and humiliate their prey.

Procter and Gamble spokeswoman Jeannie Tharrington declined to comment on Spychips, saying the company had not had the opportunity to review the book, which goes on sale Tuesday. But she wrote in an e-mail that the company "remains committed to protecting consumer privacy while moving forward with our plans to continue testing and learning about the cost and benefits" of RFID.

An executive who handles RFID business at NCR division Teradata believes the Spychips' authors took much of their source material out of context in spinning their conspiracy theory. Companies in the RFID industry are in the business of imagining every conceivable application for the technology, he said.

"That's part of creating thought leadership," said Richard Beaver, director for retail offer development at Teradata. "Many of the documents we produce or use are concept documents. You can make all kinds of assumptions about the future (based on them)."

--- Editor's note: Spychips cites Wired News reports by, and a correspondence with, reporter Mark Baard.