Radio Frequency identification, or RFID, is being hyped as the next-generation of the barcode.
Like its predecessor, an RFID tag is attached to a product… say, a bottle of milk.
The tag sends out a signal that's picked up by a reader.
It can for example identify that milk bottle when it comes in to the store, when it is purchased, and
when it's too old to drink.
Because it allows individual items to be traced, companies are hoping RFID technology will help them with everything from tracking shipments to reducing employee theft.
INTRO NATURAL SOUND – CONFERENCE ROOM
Bruce McDowell works at Datamax Corporation, an RFID printer manufacturer.
He points to some labels that are about the size of a greeting card.
On one side is a barcode, and on the other side a silicon chip about the size of the nail on your pinky finger.
Other RFID tags can be as tiny as a grain of sand.
T39, 2:03 “Today we can store up to 96 bits of information, and in this application it’s the supplier’s identification, part number, and then serial numbers of all those different parts. So if there’s a hundred parts on a pallet, it’s storing all that information. So that as they receive that, they automatically – it gets uploaded to their system, they know what they received, and then it goes through the processing.”
Right now RFID tags are too expensive to use on individual items.
Instead, they’re typically attached to pallet shipments that come in to a warehouse.
Wal-Mart’s top 100 suppliers, were required to be RFID compliant this past January.
So were Department of Defense suppliers.
Other major retailers, like Home Depot, Target and Best Buy plan to require the labels by next year.
This has set New Hampshire’s high-tech industry racing to get on board with RFID.
Merrimack-based MicroLan Systems manufactures spare parts for the Pentagon.
John Harvey, the company’s vice president, says he hopes to be using RFID labels by the fall.
T35, 2:22 “There’s a big cost factor for a small company if you believe you have to buy the RFID tag encoder and the label printer. As long as there’s a service that can handle smaller quantities of labels… as they say here, the mandate has come down.”
In light of the high cost of RFID label printers, companies like Winco ID, based in Nashua, have stepped in to help.
Winco ID sells pre-printed RFID labels that can be slapped onto large shipping containers.
The company’s sales manager, David Holliday, says the demand for RFID in New Hampshire is high.
T36, 6:03 “Because we have quite a lot of companies that need to comply with Department of Defense mandates… we don’t have an enormous number of top 100 Wal-Mart suppliers so we’re not so tuned in on the retail side… but we do have a very good infrastructure of high-tech companies who are working very hard to get in compliance with DoD mandates.”
RFID developers are eager to point out the possibilities.
The Food and Drug Administration is looking at RFID to combat counterfeit drug distribution within the country.
Libraries are already using it to help keep track of books.
Airlines are using it to cut down on lost luggage.
The Portsmouth-based Exavera is creating RFID bracelets to help hospitals keep tabs on patients and medical staff.
Therefore it’s no surprise people are becoming more and more aware of this new technology.
According to a poll conducted by BIGresearch and Artafact, public awareness of RFID technology grew from 28% last September to 40% last month.
And a lot of people don't like it.
Katherine Albrecht is the founder and director of CASPIAN, a privacy rights group based in Nashua.
By attending meetings of RFID developers in 2002, Albrecht says she stumbled on an Orwellian vision of the microchip labels.
T62, 1:47 “In one meeting, one gentleman who attended the meeting actually said ‘Won’t it be great when we’ll know every time when a consumer takes the lid off the toothpaste in their own bathroom.’ So their vision was, and still is actually, to put an RFID tag on every manufactured object on the Planet Earth, and to use a ubiquitous network of readers to track all of those items. And those readers would be in our refrigerators, in our medicine cabinets, in store doorways, in shelving, in walls, literally encompassing our entire environment.”
According to the poll mentioned earlier, 2/3 of those aware of RFID say they are concerned about the possible invasion of privacy.
Specifically people worry that information in RFID tags could be combined with personally identifiable consumer information.
And that they fear could be used to track a person’s purchases, movements and other behavior.
Out of those concerns arose House Bill 203.
The legislation would would forbid stores in New Hampshire from using RFID without warning customers.
The bill is currently being held in the Commerce Committee.
But New Hampshire is not alone.
14 other states have seen legislation introduced dealing with RFID technology.
But Maureen Riehl of the National Retail Federation dismisses those privacy concerns.
She spoke to a recent gathering of the New Hamsphire Retail Merchants Association.
T43, 28:30 “The consumer groups are kind of glomming on to the fact that they’re concerned that retailers and manufacturers are applying a new technology that’s going to invade your customer’s privacy.”
Riehl says respecting the customer’s privacy is a top concern for retailers.
But she says retailers need to be more aggressive in promoting the benefits of RFID, and in blocking legislation on the technology.
T43, 32:45 “We want to make sure people understand what it can and can’t do, and what in fact the intention of the retail community is, which is simply to streamline not only our supply chain, but to provide benefits to our customers that the current technology does not allow us to do.”
Privacy advocate Katherine Albrecht says she sees no problem with using the technology in warehouses to track inventory.
But she adds, the problems occur when RFID tags become cheap enough to use for individual items.
13:26 “it’s inevitable that other companies will come along and people with a different agenda: marketers, criminals, government officials, whoever it is, who has an interest in tracking individuals; will use those economies of scale and the availability of an easily-obtained tag to kind of move toward a different agenda.”
Maureen Riehl of the National Retail Federation says the cost of an RFID label may run as high as several dollars now.
But in several years the cost is expected to come down to a few cents or less.
That means everything from the sneakers on your feet, to the book you’re reading, to the bag of chips you buy for lunch could potentially contain unique information available to anyone with an RFID reader.
And while that may thrill some and terrify others, the technology will be here before you know it.
For NHPR News, this is Avishay Artsy.
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