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ChemCaptain
Joined: 23 Apr 2003
Posts: 495
Location: United States |
 Sun Jun 08, 2003 5:33 am
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I agree  .
I'd completely support a law banning this technology if it was used at all beyond the store doors. |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Sun Jun 08, 2003 5:36 am
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It is.
You need to read up some. |
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ChemCaptain
Joined: 23 Apr 2003
Posts: 495
Location: United States |
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Sun Jun 08, 2003 5:37 am
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It is? Last I heard it was not being used yet.
The only part that mentions it being used past the store doors is in the editorial, not the information...
*shrugs* |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Sun Jun 08, 2003 5:52 am
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Okay...whatever.
You'll be eating your words in a matter of months.
The plan is FROM PURCHASE TO DISPOSAL..in case you didn't read.
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ChemCaptain
Joined: 23 Apr 2003
Posts: 495
Location: United States |
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Sun Jun 08, 2003 6:19 am
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Well, when it is out, I would be wrong if I said it wasn't out, but if it isn't out, I am not wrong in saying so  ..
Ah.. my brain just exploded. |
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the professor
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 1164
Location: heartland USA |
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Sun Jun 08, 2003 7:10 am
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Hell if Ellyn is a looker I don't mind if she goes naked. |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Sat Jun 28, 2003 7:42 pm
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RFID Chips Are Here
RFID chips are being embedded in everything from jeans to paper money, and your privacy is at stake.
By Scott Granneman Jun 26 2003 09:15AM PT
Bar codes are something most of us never think about. We go to the grocery store to buy dog food, the checkout person runs our selection over the scanner, there's an audible beep or boop, and then we're told how much money we owe. Bar codes in that sense are an invisible technology that we see all the time, but without thinking about what's in front of our eyes.
Bar codes have been with us so long, and they're so ubiquitous, that its hard to remember that they're a relatively new technology that took a while to catch on. The patent for bar codes was issued in 1952. It took twenty years before a standard for bar codes was approved, but they still didn't catch on. Ten years later, only 15,000 suppliers were using bar codes. That changed in 1984. By 1987 - only three years later! - 75,000 suppliers were using bar codes. That's one heck of a growth curve.
So what changed in 1984? Who, or what, caused the change?
Wal-Mart.
When Wal-Mart talks, suppliers listen. So when Wal-Mart said that it wanted to use bar codes as a better way to manage inventory, bar codes became de rigeur. If you didn't use bar codes, you lost Wal-Mart's business. That's a death knell for most of their suppliers.
The same thing is happening today. I'm here to tell you that the bar code's days are numbered. There's a new technology in town, one that at first blush might seem insignificant to security professionals, but it's a technology that is going to be a big part of our future. And how do I know this? Pin it on Wal-Mart again; they're the big push behind this new technology.
Right now, you can buy a hammer, a pair of jeans, or a razor blade with anonymity. With RFID tags, that may be a thing of the past.
So what is it? RFID tags.
RFID 101
Invented in 1969 and patented in 1973, but only now becoming commercially and technologically viable, RFID tags are essentially microchips, the tinier the better. Some are only 1/3 of a millimeter across. These chips act as transponders (transmitters/responders), always listening for a radio signal sent by transceivers, or RFID readers. When a transponder receives a certain radio query, it responds by transmitting its unique ID code, perhaps a 128-bit number, back to the transceiver. Most RFID tags don't have batteries (How could they? They're 1/3 of a millimeter!). Instead, they are powered by the radio signal that wakes them up and requests an answer.
Most of these "broadcasts" are designed to be read between a few inches and several feet away, depending on the size of the antenna and the power driving the RFID tags (some are in fact powered by batteries, but due to the increased size and cost, they are not as common as the passive, non-battery-powered models). However, it is possible to increase that distance if you build a more sensitive RFID receiver.
RFID chips cost up to 50 cents, but prices are dropping. Once they get to 5 cents each, it will be cost-efficient to put RFID tags in almost anything that costs more than a dollar.
Who's using RFID?
RFID is already in use all around us. Ever chipped your pet dog or cat with an ID tag? Or used an EZPass through a toll booth? Or paid for gas using ExxonMobils' SpeedPass? Then you've used RFID.
Some uses, especially those related to security, seem like a great idea. For instance, Delta is testing RFID on some flights, tagging 40,000 customer bags in order to reduce baggage loss and make it easier to route bags if customers change their flight plans.
Three seaport operators - who account for 70% of the world's port operations - agreed to deploy RFID tags to track the 17,000 containers that arrive each day at US ports. Currently, less than 2% are inspected. RFID tags will be used to track the containers and the employees handling them.
The United States Department of Defense is moving into RFID in order to trace military supply shipments. During the first Gulf War, the DOD made mistakes in its supply allocation. To streamline operations, the U.S. military has placed RFID tags on 270,000 cargo containers and tracks those shipments throughout 40 countries.
On a smaller level, but one that will instantly resonate with security pros, Star City Casino in Sydney, Australia placed RFID tags in 80,000 employee uniforms in order to put a stop to theft. The same idea would work well in corporate PCs, networking equipment, and handhelds.
In all of these cases, RFID use seems reasonable. It is non-intrusive, and it seems to balance security and privacy. Other uses for RFID, however, may be troublesome.
Visa is combining smart cards and RFID chips so people can conduct transactions without having to use cash or coins. These smart cards can also be incorporated into cell phones and other devices. Thus, you could pay for parking, buy a newspaper, or grab a soda from a vending machine without opening your wallet. This is wonderfully convenient, but the specter of targeted personal ads popping up as I walk through the mall, a la Minority Report, does not thrill me.
Michelin, which manufactures 800,000 tires a day, is going to insert RFID tags into its tires. The tag will store a unique number for each tire, a number that will be associated with the car's VIN (Vehicle Identification Number). Good for Michelin, and car manufacturers, and fighting crime. Potentially bad for you. Who will assure your privacy? Do you really want your car's tires broadcasting your every move?
The European Central Bank may embed RFID chips in the euro note. Ostensibly to combat counterfeiters and money-launderers, it would also enable banks to count large amounts of cash in seconds. Unfortunately, such a move would also makes it possible for governments to track the passage of cash from individual to individual. Cash is the last truly anonymous way to buy and sell. With RFID tags, that anonymity would be gone. In addition, banks would not be the only ones who could in an instant divine how much cash you were carrying; criminals can also obtain power transceivers.
Several major manufacturers and retailers expect RFID tags to aid in managing the supply chain, from manufacturing to shipping to stocking store shelves, including Gillette (which purchased 500 million RFID tags for its razors), Home Depot, The Gap, Proctor & Gamble, Prada, Target, Tesco (a United Kingdom chain), and Wal-Mart. Especially Wal-Mart.
The retail giant, the largest employer in America, is working with Gillette to create "smart shelves" that can alert managers and stockboys to replenish the supply of razors. More significantly, Wal-Mart intends for its top 100 suppliers to fully support RFID for inventory tracking by 2005. Wal-Mart would love to be able to point an RFID reader at any of the 1 billion sealed boxes of widgets it receives every year and instantly know exactly how many widgets it has. No unpacking, no unnecessary handling, no barcode scanners required.
RFID Issues
Right now, you can buy a hammer, a pair of jeans, or a razor blade with anonymity. With RFID tags, that may be a thing of the past. Some manufacturers are planning to tag just the packaging, but others will also tag their products. There is no law requiring a label indicating that an RFID chip is in a product. Once you buy your RFID-tagged jeans at The Gap with RFID-tagged money, walk out of the store wearing RFID-tagged shoes, and get into your car with its RFID-tagged tires, you could be tracked anywhere you travel. Bar codes are usually scanned at the store, but not after purchase. But RFID transponders are, in many cases, forever part of the product, and designed to respond when they receive a signal. Imagine everything you own is "numbered, identified, catalogued, and tracked." Anonymity and privacy? Gone in a hailstorm of invisible communication, betrayed by your very property.
But let's not stop there. Others are talking about placing RFID tags into all sensitive or important documents: "it will be practical to put them not only in paper money, but in drivers' licenses, passports, stock certificates, manuscripts, university diplomas, medical degrees and licenses, birth certificates, and any other sort of document you can think of where authenticity is paramount." In other words, those documents you're required to have, that you can't live without, will be forever tagged.
Consider the human body as well. Applied Digital Solutions has designed an RFID tag - called the VeriChip - for people. Only 11 mm long, it is designed to go under the skin, where it can be read from four feet away. They sell it as a great way to keep track of children, Alzheimer's patients in danger of wandering, and anyone else with a medical disability, but it gives me the creeps. The possibilities are scary. In May, delegates to the Chinese Communist Party Congress were required to wear an RFID-equipped badge at all times so their movements could be tracked and recorded. Is there any doubt that, in a few years, those badges will be replaced by VeriChip-like devices?
Surveillance is getting easier, cheaper, smaller, and ubiquitous. Sure, it's possible to destroy an RFID tag. You can crush it, puncture it, or microwave it (but be careful of fires!). You can't drown it, however, and you can't demagnetize it. And washing RFID-tagged clothes won't remove the chips, since they're specifically designed to withstand years of wearing, washing, and drying. You could remove the chip from your jeans, but you'd have to find it first.
That's why Congress should require that consumers be notified about products with embedded RFID tags. We should know when we're being tagged. We should also be able to disable the chips in our own property. If it's the property of the company we work for, that's a different matter. But if it's ours, we should be able to control whether tracking is enabled.
Security professionals need to realize that RFID tags are dumb devices. They listen, and they respond. Currently, they don't care who sends the signal. Anything your companies' transceiver can detect, the bad guy's transceiver can detect. So don't be lulled into a false sense of security.
With RFID about to arrive in full force, don't be lulled at all. Major changes are coming, and not all of them will be positive. The law of unintended consequences is about to encounter surveillance devices smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Wed Jul 09, 2003 5:00 pm
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( BW)(NY-ALLIED-BUSINESS) RFID Picks Up Momentum, Furthers Efficiencies in Supply Chain, Says ABI
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/cb_headline.cgi?
&story_file=bw.070803/231895093&directory=/google&header_file=header.htm&footer_file=
Business Editors/High-Tech Writers
OYSTER BAY, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 8, 2003--Radio frequency identification (RFID) applications are branching out of traditional roles and taking on greater importance by CIOs, logistics managers and even brand managers, stimulated by wartime investment in military logistics technology and a push for supply chain visibility. Research firm ABI estimates the global RFID market will grow to more than $3.1 billion by 2008.
The U.S. Department of Defense is only one of many organizations to dramatically increase RFID spending in the last year. As the military found in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the reasons to invest in RFID and other tracking technologies are clear. However, the business cases can be made now that standards are finally materializing, innovations in manufacturing are driving prices down, and software, hardware, and integrators of the two are working together to develop cohesive, compatible enterprise solutions.
According to ABI, asset and supply chain management application revenue will grow from 20% to 48% of this projected market. Initially, asset control, asset tracking, and container and pallet level supply chain management will propel the RFID market. "But as indicated by the proliferating interest among the world's largest retailers, including Wal-Mart, Metro AG, Carrefour, Tesco, and Ahold," explains Erik Michielsen, ABI Senior Consulting Analyst, "item-level tracking in the supply chain is no more than three to four years from widespread implementation." Developing markets, such as tire tracking and alternative point of sale purchase methods, continue to drive RFID innovation and deployment across a variety of markets and applications.
"The time to build business cases, deploy trials, and firmly grasp the intricacies of the RFID marketplace is now," affirms Edward A. Rerisi, ABI's Director of Research. "With over three billion tag shipments expected by 2008, and with retailers and manufacturers already seeing positive returns on RFID investment, RFID will only gain more and more acceptance."
ABI's new report, "RFID: Emerging Applications Driving R&D Investment and End-User Demand," follows the technology for applications including asset management, supply chain management, and point-of-sale. The study breaks down RFID standards, applications, and vertical markets, and provides marketplace forecasts through 2008. Reader shipments and revenue are provided, as well as data on different RFID transponder and component markets. In addition, selected RFID vendors, integrators, developers, and IC manufacturers are analyzed, along with their various technologies and product offerings.
About ABI
ABI is an Oyster Bay, N.Y.-based technology market research firm founded in 1990. ABI publishes research and technology intelligence on the wireless, automotive, electronics, networking and energy industries. Details can be found on the web at abiresearch.com or by calling 516-624-3113. |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Wed Jul 16, 2003 12:25 am
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Ulterior motives behind ID tags exposed
By Nathan Cochrane
July 15 2003
Next
Plans to swamp the world in invisible tracking devices were revealed last week as secret industry documents detailing a global agenda to "pacify" consumers and co-opt key lawmakers were leaked.
Sensitive documents were exposed by Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), a US consumer group lobbying against the technology.
The group found documents from the US Auto-ID Centre, which has an Australian research division at Adelaide University, and published them on the privacy and security website, cryptome.org
Auto-ID is a worldwide co-ordinating group for the radio frequency identification (RFID) industry that counts Australian packaging giant Visy Industries, Dutch electronics maker Philips, computer services company IBM and consumer goods maker Gillette among its members. The group aims to embed RFID tags - tiny radio emitting tracking devices - in all consumer goods including clothes, household electronics and packaging such as aluminium cans and cardboard boxes.
The tags are used at Star City Casino in Sydney to trace workers' uniforms, by beef farmers to track livestock, and to monitor the temperature of fruit, confectionery and pet food. Packaging rivals Carter Holt Harvey and Visy are also looking to embed the technology for customers.
Industry sees RFID as a way to cut costs from the manufacture and distribution of goods, allowing it to more readily track goods through the production chain, while privacy advocates fear its negative consequences on human rights.
The ease with which CASPIAN hacked the centre's website overshadows industry claims that it can protect citizens' privacy, the lobby group says.
"Privacy advocates are alarmed about the centre's plans because RFID technology could enable businesses to collect an unprecedented amount of information about consumers' possessions and physical movements," says CASPIAN founder Katherine Albrecht.
Federal privacy commissioner Malcolm Crompton says Australians have shown hostility towards technology that invades their privacy.
"Companies, whether they are Australian or located anywhere else, are well advised to take note of these deep feelings that people have and therefore it may or may not need further laws to provide protection," Crompton says.
"But the companies can rest assured that if they are reckless in this way they will generate the call for more law."
He says the tags should be "killed" as the items leave the store and it should not be possible to reactivate them later. He is alarmed at any suggestion that they can be reactivated, and will seek more information from the industry.
IBM Consulting Service's Asia-Pacific manager for e-Business, Vicki Ward, says her company will adhere to any laws. "IBM would adhere to whatever standards are set by the government in whichever country we were working."
Ward says there was a strong push by product-makers wanting to track consumer behaviour after they'd made purchases.Concerns over how consumers would view that intrusion dissuaded the Auto-ID Centre from adding that function in the first batch of standards, but it could be added later, she says.
Among documents made available to the public for the first time was confidential research by the centre in which consumers in the US, Britain, Europe and Japan consistently gave negative opinions of the technology. Key among these were the privacy aspects, followed by health, personal safety and the likely impact on jobs, because fewer workers were needed.
"A company, a government, a rogue state, a 19-year-old in his parents' attic will try and hack this for fun, for power," said a respondent in the US study conducted by centre researcher Helen Duce.
Respondents were worried that hackers or thieves could see into their homes and shopping bags, targeting them for crime, or that police and security services would spy on them using the tags. Consumers placed the technology in the same basket as nuclear power or genetically modified foods but were "apathetic" and likely not to do much about their concerns, the centre found.
"There are currently no clear benefits (for consumers) . . . so any negative press coverage, no matter how mild, would shift the neutral (opinion) to negative," Duce wrote. "Virtually all groups spontaneously said that they wanted a choice and that the `chip should be killed' (when they left the shop)."
Duce wrote that these concerns would be overcome with a co-ordinated global public relations strategy. The tags should also be renamed either "enhanced barcodes", she wrote, or "green tags", according to another report for the centre by consulting PR firm Fleishman-Hillard.
Minutes from the centre's February meeting indicate the first pilot phase is under way with many of its members, who are building business cases for its use. One scenario will alert shopkeepers to wealthy individuals entering their store, calculating their net worth based on the tags hidden in their clothing, and comparing their type against a demographic database. Bus shelters and other public spaces might be fitted with RFID tag readers connected to display devices, which will pitch products at consumers based on their tags.
The RFID industry has had several setbacks recently. Benetton shelved plans to embed tags in its clothes, once news of its trial leaked. Wal-Mart, the big US supermarket chain, gives its customers the option to remove the tags from its products. The only Australian member of the centre is Martyn Johnson, director of the Visy Technical Centre, an offshoot of Visy Industries. Visy spokesmen did not return calls.
The Auto-ID Centre is at autoidcenter.org |
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KNOW-THIS
Joined: 14 Jul 2003
Posts: 3694
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Thu Sep 18, 2003 1:59 am
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Lawmakers to probe RFID technology
Last modified: August 11, 2003, 7:27 AM PDT
By Alorie Gilbert
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Lawmakers in California have scheduled a hearing for later this month to discuss privacy issues that surround a controversial technology that's designed to wirelessly monitor everything from clothing to currency.
Sen. Debra Bowen, a California legislator recently on the forefront of an antispam legislation movement, is spearheading the Aug. 18 hearing, which will focus on an emerging area of technology that's known as radio frequency identification (RFID), a representative for Bowen has confirmed. The hearing, which is open to the public, will take place at the state capitol in Sacramento.
Retailers and manufacturers in the United States and Europe, including Wal-Mart Stores, have begun testing RFID systems, which use millions of special sensors to automatically detect the movement of merchandise in stores and monitor inventory in warehouses.
Proponents hail the technology as the next-generation bar code, allowing merchants and manufacturers to operate more efficiently and cut down on theft.
Privacy activists worry, however, that the unchecked use of RFID could end up trampling consumer privacy by allowing retailers to gather unprecedented amounts of information about activity in their stores and link it to customer information databases. They also worry about the possibility that companies and would-be thieves might be able to track people's personal belongings, embedded with tiny RFID microchips, after they are purchased.
"If you are walking around emanating an electric cloud of these devices wherever you go, you have no more privacy," said Katherine Albrecht, the head of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, a fierce critic of RFID technology.
"Every door way you walk through could be scanning you," she added.
Albrecht is scheduled to testify at Bowen's hearing, as is Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearing House, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group in San Diego.
Givens said retailers should be required to notify consumers about merchandise containing RFID chips and that they should not only disable, but destroy, the chips at the checkout counter.
"It's troubling that MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and other developers of RFID appear to have left privacy to the last minute," Givens said.
Also expected to speak at the hearing are Dan Mullen, head of the trade group Association for Automatic Identification and Data Capture Technologies, and Greg Pottie, an electrical engineering professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. Pottie is involved in the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, a based at UCLA that's funded by the National Science Foundation.
Bowen's office has also invited key members of MIT's Auto-ID Center, a research group that has been on the forefront of RFID development, to participate in the hearing. The group has yet to accept or decline the invitation, Bowen's office said.
Bowen has not yet proposed a bill that pertains to RFID and doesn't plan to make legislation a focus at the hearing, Bowen's representative said. Rather, the hearing should mark the "beginning of a discussion of this issue among policy makers," the representative said.
Policy makers in Britain are also starting to ponder the privacy implications of RFID. A member of Britain's Parliament has submitted a motion for debate on the regulation of RFID devices when the government returns from its summer recess next month.
Tesco, a United Kingdom-based supermarket chain, has begun selling Gillette razors with RFID chips embedded in them in a trial run of the technology at its Cambridge store, according to reports. Wal-Mart had undertaken a similar test in a Boston-area store but recently decided to cancel the test. Italian clothier Benetton is also studying how it wants to use hundreds of RFID chips it has recently purchased.
Bowen, who is the chair of the legislative subcommittee on new technologies, has been an outspoken advocate of consumer privacy, helping to draft and introduce bills that would regulate face recognition technology, consumer data collected by cable and satellite television companies, and shopper loyalty cards used in grocery chains. The RFID hearing will be the subcommittee's first hearing since its formation about a year ago, Bowen's office said.
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KNOW-THIS
Joined: 14 Jul 2003
Posts: 3694
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Thu Sep 18, 2003 2:05 am
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DIGITAL SATAN, FOR ANIMALS HUH? HOW SOON BEFORE IT'S PLACED WITHIN YOU AND ME? WHAT ELSE IS IT CAPABLE OF, I WONDER?
Digital Angel gets FDA, USDA OK on implantable microchip
Associated Press
ST. PAUL - Digital Angel Corp. Tuesday said its temperature-sensing implantable microchip was approved for use in animals.
In a press release Tuesday, the St. Paul-based biosensor technology company said it has received clearances from the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to market the Bio-Therma microchip.
The device can transmit a signal containing temperature readings to the company's proprietary radio frequency identification, or RFID, scanners.
Digital Angel believes that its Bio-Thermo technology will provide vital internal diagnostics about the health of animals more efficiently and accurately than the invasive techniques used in the industry today.
The announcement sent Digital Angel shares up 27 cents, or 18 percent, to close at $1.80 on the American Stock Exchange.
The company, a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solutions, is also developing other biosensors based on its implantable RFID microchip patents.
Applied Digital is known for testing implanted chips in a Florida family last year.
Applied Digital shares traded at 41 cents, up 5 cents, or 13 percent, on the SmallCap Stock Market.
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KNOW-THIS
Joined: 14 Jul 2003
Posts: 3694
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Thu Oct 09, 2003 4:16 pm
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Defense Dept. orders its suppliers to use RFID tags by 2005
LATEST HEADLINES
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Defense Dept. orders its suppliers to use RFID tags by 2005
MOBILE & WIRELESS NEWS
Defense Dept. orders its suppliers to use RFID tags by 2005
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The new policy will cover practically everything purchased by the U.S. military
Story by Bob Brewin
OCTOBER 08, 2003 ( COMPUTERWORLD ) - The Defense Department will require all of its suppliers to use passive radio frequency identification tags (RFID) on all cases and pallets by January 2005, a mandate whose impact will likely dwarf a similar policy that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. imposed on its top 100 suppliers in June (see story).
Analysts said the Defense Department and Wal-Mart projects would impose "massive" infrastructure costs on supply chains over the next two years, with little return for suppliers.
The new policy will cover practically everything purchased by the U.S. military -- from beans to bullets and from toothpaste to tank parts -- or roughly 45 million line items, according to Alan Estevez, assistant deputy undersecretary for supply chain integration.
Estevez couldn't estimate the number of suppliers affected by the policy document, signed last week by Michael Wynne, the acting undersecretary of Defense for logistics. But the Defense Logistics Agency -- which bought an estimated $24 billion worth of goods last year, ranging from food and clothing to missile parts -- has 23,642 suppliers, according to DLA spokeswoman Dawn Dearden.
Estevez said he believes the Pentagon's policy mandate will help jump-start the RFID industry, which had already gotten a boost from the Wal-Mart decision this summer. He also said that while the 18-month timetable is ambitious, the department believes it's doable. It plans to use the Electronic Product Code (EPC) that Wal-Mart will deploy, Estevez said.
EPC is under development by the Uniform Code Council, a standards body, and EPCglobal, a new organization that the UCC will formally launch in November.
The department wants the "lowest possible price" for the tags its suppliers will use, Estevez said. Wal-Mart has a goal of 5 cents per tag, and Enu Waktol, a Texas Instruments Inc. marketing manager, said the economies of scale the Defense Department brings to the RFID market will drive down prices.
Besides requiring suppliers to use passive RFID tags on cases and pallets, the department has also instituted a formal policy to use active RFID tags to track all of the 20- and 40-foot shipping containers it uses, Estevez said. Savi Technology Inc. is already supplying active RFID tags and container tracking systems to the department under a series of contracts valued at $280 million. The latest of the contracts was announced in February.
Savi currently tracks 270,000 cargo containers transporting military supplies through 400 locations in 40 countries.
Passive RFID systems use low-powered radio transmitters to "read" information on a data chip equipped with an embedded antenna within a range of 10 feet. Active tags have built-in minitransmitters and can be read within a range of 300 to 400 feet. The data tags in each system store much more information -- 128 bytes -- than bar codes, which can store only 1.1 bytes. RFID systems can read cases stacked underneath one another on a pallet, making it easier to conduct an inventory than with a bar code system, which require scanners to be in the line of sight of the bar code.
Wynne, in his policy memo, said the Defense Department plans to use RFID tags to "improve our business functions and facilitate all aspects of the DoD supply chain." The agency also envisions using RFID tags "to improve data quality management, asset visibility and maintenance of material."
Jim Cotterman, a logistics analyst at the Logistics Management Institute, a nonprofit consulting organization in McLean Va., that works closely with the Defense Department, said portable RFID readers installed in a combat zone could provide a commander with "much better visibility" into supplies stacked in a forward depot. That would make it easier to locate a needed item quickly.
Kara Romanow, an analyst at AMR Research Inc. in Boston, said the Defense Department and Wal-Mart deadlines are highly impractical. RFID "is not going to happen" by 2005, she said, citing impediments on both the hardware and software sides. RFID chips today have a 20% failure rate and can't stand the kind of environmental extremes the Defense Department faces. EPC is also still in its early stages of development, Romanow said.
Mike Liard, an analyst at Venture Development Corp. in Natick, Mass., said suppliers will have to make massive investments in infrastructure to support the coming mandates, with little return "aside from meeting the mandate." Hardware costs for RFID readers and networks in just one warehouse could run as high as $100,000, he said, adding that suppliers would also have to integrate RFID into their existing information systems. He couldn't estimate how much that would cost.
Vinnie Luciano, marketing vice president for mobile computing at Symbol Technologies Inc. in Holtsville, N.Y., said the Defense Department would have to invest "somewhere between tens of millions and hundreds of millions" in RFID hardware and networks to support the new policy.
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