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Have a look at what else we do...
The full text in chronological order.
Dezember 2002, China: At the 16th Convention of China's Communist Party every delegate had to wear a spy chip on his lapel. With this, it was controlled who took part in the convention for how long and where he or she was to be found at a given moment. (Source: NDR, February 2004)
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Since April 2003: Rheinberg near Duisburg. The Metro Group tests RFID at the Extra Future Store in several places: Firstly, under the price tags of Philadelphia cream cheese (producer: Kraft Foods) and Pantene Pro V Shampoo bottles( Procter&Gamble). Secondly, RFIDs are tested on the inside of Gillette Mach 3 razor blade-boxes. Thirdly, on the CDs and DVDs in the Future Store there are RFID tags which, however, only show whether a CD/DVD has been paid for or not. And fourthly, RFID are tested in the store room of the Future Store, but these don't reach the customer. (Source: Metro AG, official guided tour of the store)
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Summer 2003, Great Britain: Super market chain Tesco secretly makes photos of people who take a box of Gillette razor blades from a shelf (if only to look at it) in order to later enable identification of shop lifters. After consumer protests against this kind of overall suspicion against customers and calls for boykotting of Tesco shops and Gillette products, they break off testing RFID in this form. (Source: CASPIAN, www.nocards.org) ^ back to top
25 June 2003, Massachusetts.
The "Auto-ID Center" at the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
has been sponsored by 103 companies.
( List).
The Auto-ID Center is the organisation under whose roof the RFID infrastructure
was developed with the help of international firms like Gillette, Unilever and Procter
& Gamble. We assume that these companies will be the first to implement
this technology.(Source: MIT, internet)
Autumn 2003, Neuss-Norf, Germany. At the Galeria Kaufhof store in Neuss-Norf RFID are being tested. We haven't yet been able to ascertain how, in which form, and how often. (Source: FoeBuD's own research, confirmed by Metro AG [Galeria Kaufhof belongs to the Metro-Group])
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Autumn 2003, Halle/Westfalen, Germany. In the store rooms of clothes manufacturer Gerry Weber at a place near the town of Osnabrueck, Germany, RFIDs are being used. The tags are removed before Gerry Weber delivers the clothes to the retailers because "customers won't accept them", as a representative of the company says. (Source: FoeBuD, telephone interview with Gerry Weber)
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29 Oktober 2003, Germany: Ecin.de reports: Kaufhof (Metro AG) together with clothes retailer Gerry Weber from Halle/Westfalen will test use of RFID tags for the identifictaion and security of clothes in a three months experiment. In this pilot project, which will be scientifically supervised by the "Fraunhofer-Institut fuer Materialfluss und Logistik (IML)" and the "Euro-Handelsinstitut", they want to track the movement of wares from logistics provider Meyer&Meyer in Osnabrueck via the Kaufhof logistics centre at Neuss-Norf to "Kaufhof" shops at Muenster and Wesel. (Source: Ecin.de) ^ back to top
January 2004, world wide: In 2003, more than 91 million US$ were spent for RFID and other relevant technology. Especially US super-market chain WalMart and the US Ministry of Defence move in powerfully and introduce RFID on a world wide scale. Producers and retailers are in their starting holes in order to fulfill the demands of the Big Players. Until 2008 a growth in turnover with RFID to around 1.3 billion US$ can be expected. And the next wave is at the door: Once the foundations are laid, the next step will be not only tagging of pallets and packaging but of individual products. Experts expect that the 875 million US$ necessary for RFID hardware will have to be paid mostly by the producers of consumer goods and their logistics partners. But also the necessary supporting service offers will take care of turnover growing quickly: In 2007 an amount of around 270 million US$ is expected. (Source: ecin, 7 January 2004) ^ back to top
25 January 2004, world wide:
EPCglobal, an international consortium that presses the introduction of
RFID, commissions US firm Verisign, which already is in charge of the
management of internet addresses, to a similar function for the future RFID register. The data of
wares and goods that are scanned into the EPC-net will be passed on to the Verisign register via
the internet. To date, the EPC net has around a hundred members. With growing implementation of
RFID it could be tens of thousands some tome in the future.
(Source: Frankfurter Rundschau, 25.1.2004)
FoeBuD's comment: So much for: "we only use the data only in our house, nobody else will have
access to them" (as a Metro representative once said).
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February 2004, Rhein/Ruhr area. The
Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr
(VRR, the regional public transport operator) uses RFID in its
season tickets.
(Source:
Chaostal).
1 February 2004, Payback-Association. The FoeBuD e.V. in Bielefeld accidentally finds an RFID tag in the "Payback" customer card of the Metrto Future Store in Rheinberg. "It may well be that Metro does not process data from the chips in the cards any further. But the mere collection and storing of data is already illegal when the customer hasn't been informed in advance", says Thilo Weichert from the State Centre for Data Protection in Kiel, Germany. "In the entrance area of the shop there are gates with which one can read out the chips on the products as well as those in the loyalty cards." After protests from FoeBuD and several data protection officials the company announced on Feb. 27, 2004, to withdraw the customer cards that are equipped with chips and to exchange them for conventional ones. 10,000 cards with chips have already been given out so that the exchange may take "a few weeks", as a Metro representative said. (Source: FoeBuD's own research)
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6 February 2004, Paderborn: Computer producer Wincor Nixdorf shows intelligent shelves, so-called Smart Shelves, which can read information about the goods stocked on them through RFID. Is the missing jacket still in the change room, or is it hanging on the wrong rack, or is a customer trying it on just now? "RFID is an important issue, and we want to be in it", says Wincor's marketing director Joachim Pinhammer. (Source: Neue Ruhr Zeitung, 3 Feb. 2004) ^ back to top
9 February 2004, Redmond, USA: Microsoft announces that they want to join in the RFID fray. With a special software for smaller enterprises the data generated by an RFID system will be processed directly in delivery- and inventory systems made by Microsoft. The market release of "Microsoft Axapta" and "MBS Navision" is planned for the year 2005, the release of a Microsoft "Retail Management Version" for 2006. Micorsoft is working on a first pilot project in Denmark, in a co-operation with snack vendor KiMs which is to start in summer 2004. This way, the firm can always tell where its goods are at any given moment. Deliverers and distributors will in the future be able to seamlessly get prognosis data, the history of the wares and information on marketing campaigns. (Source: Computerwelt (.at), 9 Feb. 2004) ^ back to top
March 2004, Spain: The Spanisch federation of manufacturers of corrugated cardboard contacts FoeBuD about information on RFID. They had been asked by retailers to find out whether RFIDs couldn't be integrated directly into the packaging material. (Source: FoeBuD e.V.) ^ back to top
March 2004, Neuss: The Peek & Cloppenburg store in Neuss tests RFID which are integrated in the clothes, e.g. sewn into the collar, and cannot be removed by the consumer. (Source: FoeBuD's own research)
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3 Juni 2004, Cologne:
Wood processor Cambium Forestries in the Odenwald
employs RFID in the tracking of timbers from the woods to the processing chain. This project is
realised by the DABAC GmbH in Heilbronn,
a partner of Progress Software.
(Source:
Progress Software Home Page)
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Middle of 2004, Gemany: Bodo Ischebeck, department eader of "ident solutions" at chip manufacturer Infineon estimates that RFID will make its breakthrough and conquer the whole world of retail by and by. Tom Groth, chief visionary at Sun Microsystems, who are running an RFID testing centre, says: "The needs of retail giants WalMart and Metro alone, for their test projects, has made the price of a single chip drop from two Euros to 20 Cents. Three or for more, and the price will sink well below the crucial two cent mark." (Source: Chip 02/2004) ^ back to top
Autumn 2004, Germany: "This fall, we will also employ RFID tags in the clothes section of "Kaufhof", says Metro's press spokeman Albrecht von Truchsess. (Source: taz Ruhr, 7 February 2004) ^ back to top
November 2004, Germany: Metro AG wants 100 producers and deliverers to have their pallets for the Metro shops equipped with RFID.(Source: Metro Homepage, February 2003) Metro would thus get the start of US concern WalMart, who had announced broad introduction of RFID for 2005. As of November this year RFID is to be introduced in 250 Metro shops and ten of their logistics centres in Germany. (Source: Pressetext Austria, 11.2.2004) ^ back to top
As of 2005, Europe/"Euroland": Hitachi works together with the European Central Bank in the idea to embed RFID chips in money bills. Through this, the anonymity of cash would be abolished, because single money bills could be tracked. You would, as it were, "register" your money when you receive it from a bank clerk or pull it out of a machine. Euro bills could be equipped with RFID already from ^ back to top
Summer 2006, Germany: The tickets for the soccer world championship in Germany will all be equipped with an RFID chip. The official reasoning is that one can stop any black market trade, since every ticket will be connected to its legal buyer and owner. Mr. Helmut Baeumler, the data protection official for the state of Schleswig Holstein said to German TV channel NDR in February 2004: "Which person is in the stadium, that is what one wants to ascertain. And I have every sympathy for the wish to ward off hooligans, but: Here one can see very clearly what this technology will lead to, namely tracking of people. Next time, it will not be about soccer games but a demonstration against environmental pollution or whatever. This will have wide repercussions. The soccer example shows that in the background this is all about tracking of people." ^ back to top
By 2007, Germany: Metro AG wants to have all 800 shops and logistics centres equippped with RFID technology by 2007. (Source: Chip 03/2004) ^ back to top
By 2008, world wide: According to a study by Forrester Research RFID chips will have replaced the bar code world wide by 2008. (Source: Chip 02/2004) ^ back to top