Could your jeans be spying on you?

[struggle4progress]

It's not such a strange question if you wear a popular brand of blue jeans.

Levi Strauss confirms it is using tiny microchips to track clothing in one undisclosed location in the U.S. But the company says the chips are imbedded in the hang tag, not in the actual clothing.

Privacy advocates want the company to stop using these so-called "spy chips".

But Levi Strauss says they're not trying to spy on customers, they're just trying to track their inventory.

http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=51504

[cdsilv]

1. Hmm - wonder what a degaussser would do to all these RFID chips...

..that seem to be popping up everywhere - anyone know?

[Lone_Wolf]

10. You can easily make an RFID zapper...

http://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/wiki/RFID-Zapper(EN).

The small, but strong, electromagnetic pulse from one of these devices will knock the chip out of commission.

[0007]

2. No wonder they're so expensive. After they sell the item it is

none of their fucking business.

[RoyGBiv]

3. Is this about RFID chips?

The "article" is thoroughly uninformative.

If so, this is hardly a new thing and not at all limited to Levi Strauss. While the chips certainly present a privacy concern, m'think this piece is just a tad on the sensationalistic side.

[struggle4progress]

5. Privacy Group Slams Levi's for Radio ID Tags

Jeans Maker Puts Chip in Core Men's Apparel in Test With One Retailer
By Jack Neff

... Retailer Benetton ended a test of RFID chips in its retail line in 2003 after the group Consumers Against Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) launched a boycott. In a statement yesterday, the group said "it may be time to ditch your Dockers and lay off the Levi's" because the company isn't honoring CASPIAN's moratorium on item-level RFID tagging, but did not call for a boycott.

'Floodgates will open'
"Companies like Levi Strauss are painting their RFID trials as innocuous," CASPIAN founder Katherine Albrecht said in the statement. But she said "once clothing manufacturers begin applying RFID to hang tags, the floodgates will open and we'll soon find these things sewn into the hem of our jeans. ... The problem with RFID is that it's tracking technology, plain and simple."

CASPIAN says numerous patents by RFID technology developers describe ways to link unique serial numbers on RFID-tagged items and track consumers for marketing or advertising purposes. The group cites an IBM patent describing how RFID tags could be used by the government to track individuals in public places ...

http://www.adage.com/article?article_id=108846

[Old and In the Way]

6. I assume so.

It is kind of interesting though. I think if you were shopping in a mall, that chip data would show up in the various stores with receivers that ping for this kind of info. Each store could get a pretty good idea of what the shopper coming into the store has purchased. If nothing else, it might tell the buyer what items have selling potential or might be complimentary to the shoppers that visit.

[RoyGBiv]

8. Don't get me wrong ...

I totally oppose the use of these things in clothing, of all things, or with any other item I might purchase *if* the chip remains with the item after I purchase it. Imbedding them in tags attached to the item that are then removed at the time of purchase is something else altogether. I am normally completely on the side of privacy advocates in their opposition to technologies such as this, but some of the rhetoric being used goes overboard, imo.

Of course the real question is whether the chips are actually being removed, i.e. are they only in special tags that are removed at the register. It would be incredibly easy to imbed one of these chips into many objects, including denim clothing due to its bulk. Hell, I walked around in a pair of pants for a year without realizing an extra button was sewn into the lining of the cuffs.

I also get confused about all the focus on clothing and other retail items. RFID chips are used in those nice, little devices that let you drive through toll booths without stopping. Talk about potential for "spying" on you ... I refuse to use one, for that reason.

[Old and In the Way]

9. Don't get me wrong either.

My views pretty much match yours. And they are being imbedded in consumer products, I have no doubts. I agree that they are a great asset for managing inventory, but that feature ought to be disabled when you leave the store. I think these chips are passive, though. They don't have a power supply and rely on a transmitter to poll the device and release its data.

I'm pretty sure that there is no direct linkage to the user, but, in thinking about it, if they can poll this chip, the new credit/debit cards have embedded chips, so they could certainly tie what you are wearing or carrying with who you are. So there definitely is cause to wonder how all this stuff can be collected and used to build a profile.

[struggle4progress]

7. Do you know where your children are? These gadgets help

Thursday, April 27, 2006
By Li Yuan, The Wall Street Journal

A host of new products that help parents keep tabs on their children are hitting the market, including one-touch phones and even electronic tags that can be sewn into clothing ...

The same technology that drives the SmartWear tags is used in Denmark's Legoland, one of Europe's biggest amusement parks, where parents can rent special tracking wristbands for their children to wear in the park. If a child wanders off, the parents can send a text message from their cellphones and receive a reply telling them where to find their child ...

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06117/685620-51.stm

[NNN0LHI]

4. No I wear Carhartts exclusively n/t