Looking after you

It seems innocuous enough, especially since it’s pitched as advanced technology that will make life better somehow.

A pioneer in low-cost practices widely copied by competitors, Wal-Mart has pushed its suppliers to use exotic radio-activated tags to chop labor and inventory costs anew. But tests using the tags aren’t showing any savings, and suppliers forced to invest in the relatively expensive technology are grumbling.

This is a business story in the Wall Street Journal, and the use of radio frequency identification devices is sort of an incidental part of the story.

Wal-Mart once hoped to have up to 12 of its roughly 120 distribution centers using the Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, technology by January 2006. But so far it has installed the technology at just five, plus 1,000 stores. Wal-Mart expects to add a further 400 stores this year.

It’s creeping technology, and you aren’t hearing much about it, except for business stories like this.

Wal-Mart declined to make an executive available to comment on its RFID efforts.

Now, why would that be?

In response to questions about whether it was saving money with the technology, spokesman Kevin Gardner replied that the tags had improved product availability on store shelves and store managers worked more efficiently in replenishing inventories. “We look for our RFID expansion to build on these results,” Mr. Gardner wrote in an email.

An email response. That keeps the questions down, and easily manageable.

Manufacturers and retailers have long wanted an efficient way to track individual items from production to sale, and RFID seemed ideal for the task. RFID was to replace the 25-year-old bar-code technology printed on labels for everything from tubes of toothpaste to diamond rings. The bar codes help track inventory and can match a product to a price, but they lack the electronic tags’ ability to store more detailed information — such as the serial number of a product, the location of the factory that made it, and when it was made and when it was sold.

And where it went after it was sold. Namely, on your person or in your home. And plenty more. That’s the world of difference between the bar code and the RFID as a tracking device. The bar code scans at point of sale and ends there. The RFID contains digital information that stays with the product and continues to hold readable information….and it is read. This is no wacky conspiracy, it’s been happening quietly and spreading for years now, all the way to the implantable chip some people are putting in their pets, and some people are considering putting in themselves — or others.

This is the tip of the iceberg. Earlier this week, a story on the evening news featured some pricey new sneakers that carry the RFID — extra pricey because they afford the wearer the opportunity to be tracked wherever they go. Seriously. The news story even showed a man at a monitor watching the whereabouts of someone with the sneakers tracked by way of a GPS reading the digital chip in the shoes.

Here’s the Chicago Tribune version of it:

A growing number of companies are developing global positioning system technology to track friends and family, using devices like watches and cell phones. But Miami entrepreneur Sayo Isaac Daniel says those systems are flawed.

You can forget to carry your phone, and you can forget to wear a watch, but you can’t leave the house and forget to put on your shoes.

Daniel has developed shoes embedded with GPS technology that can locate the wearer anywhere in the world. His design allows wearers to press a button hidden near the shoe’s lace to send a distress signal.

That’s how it’s being pitched, and there’s certainly the appeal of having built-in security if a distress call is needed. And the industry is finding other ways to sell the idea.

It also is targeting social networking, allowing users to, for example, find which bar friends are hanging out at on a Friday night.

For example. But…

What’s keeping the industry from growing faster is consumer’s privacy concerns.

For starters. Especially since a lot of these RFIDs are embedded in products or packaging without the consumer even knowing it’s there.

“People are concerned about location and privacy, and I think they have to get more comfortable with that,” Sudit said.

“It’ll be six months to a year before that level of comfort is reached.”

Only with a slick enough marketing campaign. I’ve been researching this story for a while with a colleague. It begs some questions.

Who, in the general population, would want to be watched and tracked, knowing that the chip is there? Do you have any idea how many products already contain chips that are being tracked by corporate watchers? Have you heard any of the proposed uses for implantable chips on the body, touted as….say, medical advancements or security enhancements?

You will. Then again, there’s a lot you won’t hear as these things proliferate. Check your comfort level in the next six months or so.