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Loyalty Cards and Data-Gathering place. So, do we see an evolving symbiosis between Let's not talk about a police state, let's talk about government and private corporations, where they share supermarket loyalty cards. There isn't much difference — technology and tools and cooperate in data-gathering? between them in terms of technology, and modern ID cards seem to be close descendants of loyalty cards, | RFID: A Powerful Tracking Technology intended for a similar purpose: gathering information One of the tools that has migrated from loyalty cards about people. To be able to track someone, first you to ID cards is RFID (radio-frequency ID). It's in the new need to identify them. Chinese ID card and it's going into all the new "smart" Corporations want to know as much as they can about —_ID cards. their customers, for marketing purposes, and have made RFID is a tracking system, originally developed to track an incredible investment in infrastructure for gathering stock in the supply chain and in warehouses. Tiny chips and analysing data about them. By 2004, Wal-Mart had allow a serial number and potential other data to be gathered 460 terabytes of information about customers, read from a distance of up to several feet. When an or more than twice the total information on the Internet| RFID-tagged item passes a reader, its number is The majority of this data came from recorded. loyalty cards. When RFID readers are connected to Governments have adopted a network, it is possible to compile a record of the movements of an object (or person) by listing the times and electronic ID cards because stores have shown what powerful and Soon the stores effective technology they are—not will be able to places when and where the RFID merely effective, but cost-effective. number was recorded. Stores have demonstrated that they read the RFID RFID in loyalty cards allows the can trac and profile their customers serial number in cardholder's name and all the o find their spending habits, their g | personal information on the card to weaknesses and their suggestibility, your nationa be read from a distance of several feet, whet achertising works on them ID card in much Without the cardholders knowledge, e technology they use not only sing , stores can read your ad to prove it could work, but also the same way, identity from your loyalty card as soon | ad to prove it could pay for and governments as you walk in, without your itself. If supermarket realising. Now we are being are going to sell ID confirmation to cross-reference the serial number on your ID card... issued with government “loyalty cards" which will identify us by RFID. The stores realised that, by placing readers at various locations, they could use RFID to track customers’ movements—to see, for example, the products they looked at but did not buy, in addition to those they did. Governments have realised Very quickly, the stores also that this same profiling realised that RFID in products technology works and can also be applied to finding such as clothing items could be used to track the terrorists, "extremists", political dissidents or any other movements of the people who bought them. Unlike bar category of interest to the state. Some of those codes, RFID identifies each item with a unique serial companies also help in data-gathering. number, differentiating identical items. When the US government obtained personal data The chain stores’ huge databases allowed them to about voters in 11 different Latin American states, for keep a tally of which objects had been bought by which unspecified purposes, that data was obtained by private | customers—putting names to RFID serial numbers. corporations including ChoicePoint. This extra information was very powerful in "profiling" It has been reported that the majority of US customers; for example, they started to get data about intelligence data-gathering is outsourced and that who was standing next to them, and they could guess about 70 per cent of the budget goes to private whether customers shopped alone, with their husbands corporations. or wives, or with someone else. Although the majority of this spending goes to Soon the stores will be able to read the RFID serial military-defence corporations such as SAIC and Booz — number in your national ID card in much the same way, Allen Hamilton, consumer corporations also take their and governments are going to sell ID confirmation to corporations invest as much as hey do, the technology has to be very effective. Powerful and effective software, such as ChoicePoint and LexisNexis, has been developed or analysing stores’ loyalty card data. Now we find some of those systems in use at the FBI to shortlist suspects.” place. So, do we see an evolving symbiosis between government and private corporations, where they share technology and tools and cooperate in data-gathering? your national ID card in much are going to sell ID confirmation as 14 * NEXUS Soon the stores will be able to read the RFID serial number in the same way, and governments to cross-reference the serial number on your ID card... OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 2009 www.nexusmagazine.com