Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Smile, You're a Potential Shoplifter

By Scott Berinato

August 06, 2003 — CSO — Recently, Gillette was testing a system in retail outlets in the United States and Britain that would snap a photograph of you every time you lifted a pack of the company's razors from their shelf. Somewhere, Orwell smirked. Maybe Gillette wants to check the closeness of its consumers shaves, but more likely, it wants to endear itself to retailers by helping to stop shoftlifting. Taking that snapshot of you in case you forget to visit the cashier on your way out, however, is a tacit presumption of your guiltuntil you prove your innocence when you pay.

Gillette's "smart shelf" system uses RFIDs (radio frequency identifications), tiny tags that send a radio beacon to a receiver, which tells the camera hidden in the shelf to take the picture. It's the same technology used in toll-booth express lanes and to pay for gas with a dongle.

The system was developed in conjunction with the Auto-ID Center, an organization powered by MIT engineers and corporate funding (from Gillette, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart, among others). The Auto-ID Centers goal is to promote RFID use in every aspect of commerce imaginable. For example, some day, proponents hope, there will be RFIDs in food to prevent bioterrorism. In the meantime, the first RFID applications boost efficiency in the supply chain. With extremely little human intervention, RFIDs can track parts and inventory from point of origin to final destination. And they can detect parts and inventory diverted fraudulently anyplace in between.

The technology itself isn't particularly overwhelming. The tags are basically UPC symbols that don't require contact to "read." All you need is proximity, since the tags transmit the data they hold. What is overwhelming about RFIDs are the economics. The RFID tags are so cheap that Gillette bought 500 million of them earlier this year.

That purchase was a watershedthe legitimization of the technology. The only limit for RFID applications now is the human imagination. There are plans to put RFIDs in tires and soda cans and sneakers and weave them into clothes. They're on dog collars. And, yes, there are plans to link them to cameras in order to prevent shoplifting. RFIDs do hold a lot of promiseas long as they're not abused.

But avoiding abuse will be a tall order amid the corporate rush to make more money more efficiently, and to create what corporations will say are great consumer benefits (some real, some clearly imaginary). Already, the toddling RFID industry has failed to thoughtfully consider privacy before starting to RFID everything. Some things it did not address before launching some trials:

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