Global CIO: Wal-Mart Reignites RFID HysteriaGlobal CIO: Wal-Mart Reignites RFID Hysteria

"Starting next month, the retailer will place removable "smart tags" on individual garments that can be read by a hand-held scanner," the Journal article says. "Wal-Mart workers will be able to quickly learn, for instance, which size of Wrangler jeans is missing, with the aim of ensuring shelves are optimally stocked and inventory tightly watched. If successful, the radio-frequency ID tags will be rolled out on other products at Wal-Mart's more than 3,750 U.S. stores...

"Wal-Mart's broad adoption would be the largest in the world, and proponents predict it would lead other retailers to start using the electronic product codes, which remain costly. Wal-Mart has climbed to the top of the retailing world by continuously squeezing costs out of its operations and then passing on the savings to shoppers at the checkout counter. Its methods are widely adopted by its suppliers and in turn become standard practice at other retail chains."

So my take on that is Wal-Mart uses RFID to lower its costs and be in a position to pass those savings on to consumers, and then other retail chains and CPG companies follow Wal-Mart's lead and in turn create better value for consumers. And I would therefore say RFID's a good thing.

But some see this sort of customer-centric innovation as a nuisance, an invitation to dastardly deeds, and the end of life as we know it. I was pained to see that the Journal, in its attempt to inject the obligatory counterpoint into the story, gave air time to veteran anti-RFID screecher Katherine Albrecht, who trotted out the same flimsy, weary, and basically absurd objections:

" 'There are two things you really don't want to tag, clothing and identity documents, and ironically that's where we are seeing adoption,' said Katherine Albrecht, founder of a group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering and author of a book called "Spychips" that argues against RFID technology. 'The inventory guys may be in the dark about this, but there are a lot of corporate marketers who are interested in tracking people as they walk sales floors.' "Smart-tag experts dismiss Big Brother concerns as breathless conjecture, but activists have pressured companies. Ms. Albrecht and others launched a boycott of Benetton Group SpA last decade after an RFID maker announced it was planning to supply the company with 15 million RFID chips. "Benetton later clarified that it was just evaluating the technology and never embedded a single sensor in clothing."

Let me address three points from Albrecht's comments and the Journal's sloppy extension of her remarks:

1) Albrecht says the two main things she's concerned about are clothing and identity documents. But a few years ago, #1 on her list of doomsday scenarios was food, as some meat producers back in the day of mad-cow hysteria wanted to put RFID tags on their products to be able to assist in case a product recall was necessary. But Albrecht, true to the "supermarket" term in her outfit's name, launched a scare campaign saying something about how the loss of food-chain privacy would crush American liberty.

2) She says that "corporate marketers" might want to be "tracking people as they walk sales floors." Gee, I thought that's what retailers were supposed to do: attempt to understand customer behavior so as to anticipate needs and offer compelling and tailored choices. But no, that's all a little too capitalistic and "scary"—so RFID needs to be shut down or regulated. And who would regulate it—the same geniuses who run the IRS or the Postal Service?

3) In citing the Benetton anecdote, the Journal lends far more credence and authority to the efforts of these "activists" than they could ever possibly deserve. The "activists" have to reach back to another decade to find an example of a company that stepped back from an RFID commitment, and that's their one and only example.

With pathetic results like that, I think it's fair to ask this: for whom do these busybodies claim to speak? Surely not for the many tens of millions of Wal-Mart customers who find that retailer's operation to be worthy of their trust, their time, and their hard-earned dollars. And surely not at any of the other retail chains that the Journal says tend to follow Wal-Mart's lead, or else Albrecht and other fantasists would surely toss those companies' name on top of the one, single, solitary retailer that, during the last decade, changed its mind on an expanded RFID deployment.

Look at it another way, through the lens of another great technology that's in widespread use and that, like all technology and indeed all tools used by humans, can be applied for malicious purposes: the Journal had another story yesterday about a dangerous security flaw in a Citigroup iPhone app that might have revealed account numbers, bill payments, and security access codes.

Should we ban iPhones? Should we ban the use of apps on iPhones? Should we ban Apple's App Store?

Those questions are, of course, asinine on their face. And so too are the objections of Albrecht and her ilk who would, for whatever possible reason, seek to ban the rest of us from using perfectly wonderful technology simply because it carries the potential of being used in misguided or even unlawful ways.

So in closing, two messages:

First, to Albrecht and others in her Flat Earth Society: if you dislike or distrust RFID, then by all means avoid it like the plague. But spare the rest of us your intrusive and annoying and terribly misguided intentions.

Second, to Wal-Mart and other retailers: You have nothing to fear from accelerating your thoughtful and rigorous deployments of RFID or any other technologies, and you have much to gain from them. These loudmouth but lightweight screechers have no credibility and despite their ability to generate publicity, most people today can recognize the tin-hat brigade quite easily.

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