Metro Store bows to pressure from anti-RFID activists

IDG News Service - Consumer uneasiness about the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips has prompted yet another large retailer to scale back its ambitious plans for deploying the smart tag technology.
Ahead of a planned demonstration on Saturday, Metro AG decided to drop the use of RFID tags in customer loyalty cards used at its Extra Future Store supermarket in Rheinberg, Germany, where the retail group is testing several new retail technologies, Metro company spokesman Albrecht von Truchsess said today.
Metro -- the fifth-largest retailer in the world -- is the latest high-profile retailer to bow to pressure by privacy advocates over the use of RFID chips. Last year, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the Benetton Group SpA were among a group of high-profile retailers forced to tweak their ID tag strategies following complaints by activists, including the highly vocal Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (Caspian) in the U.S.
Caspian and several other privacy and civil liberties advocacy groups, such as FoeBud EV and Fitug EV, worry that RFID could create an Orwellian world where sales clerks or law enforcement officials could read a handbag's contents by simply waving an RFID chip-reading device.
Retailers, however, aren't the only ones to have caused a public outcry over privacy violations. Activists have also expressed concerns about the plans of the European Central Bank to embed RFID chips into the fibers of bank notes to thwart counterfeiters. They're worried that the chips could record when and where monetary transactions take place, destroying the anonymity that cash payments typically provide.
At the Rheinberg supermarket, Metro had embedded RFID chips in loyalty cards for the sole purpose of identifying the age of shoppers wanting to view DVD trailers, according to Truchsess. German law, he said, prevents anyone under the age of 16 from viewing certain movies, so stores like Metro need to have an identification system if they want to provide a viewing service.
The ID chip on the loyalty card, which shoppers use to activate the monitor for viewing DVD trailers, contains the customer number only, according to Truchsess. Data about the individual shopper, such as age, is stored in a database linked via wireless LAN technology to an RFID reader in the DVD section.
"We wanted to test RFID technology for this application instead of bar codes, but because of protests by some groups, we have decided to use bar codes," he said.
None of the other areas where Metro is testing RFID technology, however, are affected by the company's decision to abandon RFID

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