Everything is watching YOU

But in Wal-Mart's case, for now, the tracking will stop in store warehouses. Individual products will not be tagged, and although the company has long been rumored to be working on plans to bring RFID into stores, Tom Williams, the spokesman, wouldn't confirm or deny anything. "I think the issue of item-level tagging is quite a ways down the road," he said. "Our immediate effort is with the supply chain."

Williams' reticence may be an indication of how nervous companies are about the prospect of bringing tagged products into stores. Although Bill Allen, at Texas Instruments, went into detail about the Gap's tests of the RFID at some of its stores, a Gap spokeswoman declined to divulge any specifics about its plans for the technology. She confirmed that the company had run some tests, but she would not say where or when they'd been done, or what the results were.

According to Allen, though, the Gap had tremendous success with RFID. "They did a study of four stores that fit the same demographics," he says. "One had RFID and the other three were a control. They looked at sales data in the stores from before, during and after the test, and what they saw was a 15 percent increase in sales in the store that had RFID. They determined that the main reason for the increase was because more of the merchandise was in the right place at the right time."

For retailers, this is the key promise of RFID -- better control of inventory, leading to more efficiency, less waste, and higher profits.

But what will we, the customers, get out of this? Early in July, Katherine Albrecht, of CASPIAN, announced that she'd found several "confidential" documents lying in public view on the Auto-ID Center's Web site. Among these was a survey of consumer attitudes toward RFID that she thinks ought to give proponents of the technology a lot to think about. (The Auto-ID Center says the documents weren't confidential, just mislabeled.)

In focus groups the Auto-ID Center held in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan, it found that many people saw no obvious benefits to RFID. "If consumers are made aware of any negatives (in the real world this could happen through negative press coverage) they have no benefits to balance their feelings against," wrote Helen Dulce, the Center's European director, in a research presentation. "For example, in Europe there is a large controversy over the health dangers of mobile phones, however mobile phone usage is on the up. This is because this technology has many benefits to consumers (convenience) and these benefits clearly over rule the very strong negatives. In the case of EPC network [the Auto-ID Center's name for its RFID technology] there are currently no clear benefits by which to balance even the mildest negative, so any negative press coverage, no matter how mild, would shift the neutral to a negative." (A PDF of the presentation -- a huge file -- is here.)

But it's not true that we'll get nothing out of RFID. For one thing, even though Albrecht is dubious of the claim, radio tags seem certain to save us money. Wal-Mart, whose raison d'être is low prices, would not remake its back office for RFID if the technology couldn't cut costs. Activists say that even if the companies do save money by using RFID, the firms won't pass along the savings to us and will just keep bigger profits for themselves -- but in the world of retail sales, lower prices are the key to winning market battles, and anything a company can do to cut costs will be reflected at the checkout counter.

The best argument critics of RFID have when presented with the idea that the technology will reduce prices is this one: It's not worth it. "To save 10 cents on a pack of Gillette I'm going to allow them to track me?" Albrecht asks incredulously. "I think many people will say, 'I think today I'll buy Schick.'"

The Auto-ID Center's numbers seem to support Albrecht's claim. In November 2001, Fleishman-Hillard, the center's public relations firm, conducted a small survey to gauge how people would respond to RFID the first time they heard about it. Of 317 people surveyed, more than 80 percent said that they grasped the technology and could see some benefits to it, but 78 percent also had privacy concerns. According to a presentation Albrecht found on the Auto-ID Center's site, half the people said they were very worried about the implications of tagging; 15 people used the phrase "big brother," and telling people that the tags could be shut off was "not compelling." (Here is a PDF of the survey, also a large file.)

Why do people react this way to the idea of their products being tagged, even if they're reassured that the tags will be shut off when they leave a store? One reason could be that people don't believe that the tags will actually be shut off. Kevin Ashton, the Auto-ID Center director, is insistent on that score: "The technology we built into this, called 'kill,' does exactly what it says. On receipt of that command, the tags will self-destruct," he says. "Now, they don't actually blow up, of course -- but the tag will blow a tiny fuse and will be rendered physically incapable of receiving or sending any signals. It's as useful as a light bulb that's been blown."

The trouble is, you'll have to trust retailers about this. If you ask a store to kill the tags on everything you buy, you won't know that they've actually done it. And Albrecht, for one, does not trust that the stores will do what consumers want.

Ashton says that the market will take care of such problems. He recommends that every company using RFID agree to three broad principles -- notification, choice and anonymity, he calls them. Items that are tagged will be stamped with a logo saying so. You'll have the choice to kill the tag when you leave the store. And the tag will never be associated with your name. If you buy a shirt from Wal-Mart using a credit card, for example, the card company will not record the tag of your shirt.

But depending on an industry to police itself is always a dicey proposition. The Gillette test at Tesco offers a case study in why there probably should be laws to police how RFID is used. According to the Guardian and Smart Labels Analyst, the shelf that activated a closed-circuit camera when Gillette razors were removed did not notify customers that it was set up that way. Why not? What happened to Ashton's policy of notification? That's not clear. When called for comment, Paul Fox, of Gillette, said it was not his place to talk about this specific test -- "Those were Tesco's shelves," he said, characterizing the trial as a third-party affair that was completely out of Gillette's hands. The company, he said, had no interest at all in tracking goods within stores. "Our focus in establishing the feasibility of this technology is a very defined window," Fox said. "That window relates to the supply chain, and our only interest rests from the point of manufacture to the retail shelf. We have no interest in the application beyond that." (Tesco did not respond to Salon's requests for comment.)

When told about Gillette's response, Albrecht burst out laughing. She pointed out that Gillette is one of the main sponsors of the Auto-ID Center, whose explicit goal is to one day have most everything tagged. In many of the documents on the Auto-ID Center's site, Gillette razors are held up as an example of a good that could be better managed in stores with RFID. So for Gillette to say, now, that it only cares about the supply chain seems somewhat disingenuous.

When asked about the Tesco test, Ashton seemed to demur. "Ideally," he said, such a shelf should tell people what it's doing. If it was me doing it, I would have had some sort of notice." But he said that in a test situation, a notice was not as important as in a full-scale rollout.

The more thorny ethical question is this one: If the shelf did tell you that it would record your picture if you removed a package of razors, would it then be OK? Albrecht says it would still be terrible. It's much worse than the ambient surveillance system that already pervades our stores, she says, because "this technology is presuming that every single Gillette customer is a criminal."

But don't all surveillance systems presume that you're a criminal? That's why they're watching you, right? Because you might do something naughty. And isn't this system, which focuses on just on heavily stolen goods, actually better, since it's forgetting about all the other people in the store? That's the argument that Ashton makes. The system, he suggests, might be beneficial to all the razor shoppers who aren't stealing, as there would be some record of their innocence; such a shelf would prevent false accusations. And, Ashton notes, if such a shelf helps stop razor thefts, he won't apologize for that. "Stopping people from committing crimes is a good thing."

This is not an argument with which Ashton will change many people's minds, though. There is something viscerally disconcerting about a product triggering a camera to take your picture, however rational it may seem. And even if the tags on all your items have been killed when you go out the shop door, there'll be something disconcerting about knowing that, maybe, someone is tracking your new shoes.

Ashton recognizes that people will feel this way. He says he knows that people have concerns about RFID and that retail firms will face a huge battle in getting people to embrace it. But he has faith that people will come around. He doesn't have any real fears that -- as happened with genetically modified foods, say -- public concern will greatly slow down radio tagging, because he believes his industry will always be upfront about what it's doing. And, he says, "I think consumers are intelligent enough to see how good this will be."

• View blog reactions