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RFID Eyed as Anti-Shoplifting Tool

Tags used to identify stolen items within bags

September 10, 2008

• RFID Eyed as Anti-Shoplifting Tool • Internet Providers Admit to Monitoring Customers' Web Surfing • Big Brother Hitching A Ride in California? • GAO: Government Can Do More to Protect Personal Data • US Search Agrees to Stop Selling Private Credit Data • TSA Site Left Passenger Data Exposed To ID Theft • Connecticut Governor Wants 'Opt Out' For Online Directories • Verizon Gave Customer Data To Government Without Court Orders • House Democrats Probe Warrantless Surveillance --- • More Privacy News ...

Radio-frequency identification, or RFID, has caused concern among some privacy advocates because of its ability to identify and track both objects and people. Its supporters praise its security qualities.

The debate could well intensify as the technology appears headed for the retail sales floor, as a tool to deter shoplifting. The technology reportedly performed well in a new feasibility study on its use as a potential sales-floor theft-deterrent system, conducted by researchers in the RFID Research Center at the University of Arkansas.

The researchers says the study demonstrated RFID's usefulness in several shoplifting scenarios, including many items moving through a security/reader portal at a high rate of speed and many items stuffed into a "booster bag," a traditional shopping bag lined with aluminum foil.

Bill Hardgrave, director of the research center and professor of information systems in the Sam M. Walton College of Business, announced the findings at a two-day forum on item-level RFID hosted by the research center, the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Solutions Association and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals.

"The most interesting data came from scenarios involving the booster bag and testers running through portals with many items," Hardgrave said. "These scenarios included many multiple RFID tags, and we were able to obtain a great deal of information at the entry/exit portal."

Researchers tested two types of ultra-high frequency, generation 2 RFID tags in various baseline and shoplifting scenarios. The tests involved comparisons to two conventional systems, acousto-magnetic and low-level radio-frequency electronic article surveillance, currently used in many retail stores.

In the baseline tests, the researchers experimented with various tag locations and orientations as the tags moved through portal readers. In each test, the RFID system performed as well as or better than the conventional systems. The specific strength of RFID, as demonstrated in the baseline tests, was its ability to capture individual tags at various locations and orientations. Perhaps more importantly, the RFID technology recorded the total number of individual tags, while the other technologies simply noted the presence of any tag in the read field.

"Because RFID can uniquely identify individual tags, it can provide information on the number of stolen items within a bag or the number of items held by a shoplifter," Hardgrave said. "Conventional systems cannot uniquely identify individual tags, which means they can report only one item in a bag that may have 20 or 50 stolen items."

Business was quick to jump on the concept of millions of products that could be individually identified and tracked. Wal-Mart has led the way in using RFID tagging, investing $250 million in RFID technology and requiring their distributors to mark high-end items such as consumer electronics with RFID tags.

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