2501B - networks VII ? privacy and surveillance

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2501B



RFID (radio frequency identification) systems are used to track goods and inventory by providing a unique ID that can be linked to any physical product. In some hospitals, they have also been implemented in order to trace people – most usually patients and nurses, hardly ever doctors or management staff (Monahan 2009, p. 294). In real time, those with access to the system can monitor the movements of staff. Justified as ‘workflow management’, the gathering of data serves to dehumanise the worker and provides a form of surveillance that has negative implications for privacy.


Some types of RFID chips can be read from a distance without the knowledge of the individual who owns the item embedded with a chip. For example, chips embedded in supermarket loyalty cards could be read as a holder enters the store. As it is very likely that the shopper supplied their name and address when signing up for the card, that linked information would be known to the store as soon as the shopper walked in.


When this is combined with smart trolleys that use GPS to track your movements through the supermarket in order to send you location-appropriate advertising and have a self-scanner to record all the items you place in your trolley, it adds up to a database full of information about individuals. As Monahan (2009: 297) notes, ‘The intention to surveil is not necessary for the effects of surveillance to be felt’.




References


Monahan, Torin 2009, ‘Dreams of Control at a Distance: Gender, Surveillance, and Social Control’, Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, vol. 9, no. 2 (April 2009), pp. 286-305, available from Sage,


Albrecht, Katherine 2002, ‘Supermarket Cards: The Tip of the Retail Surveillance Iceberg’, Denver University Law Review, vol. 79, issue 4 (Summer 2002), pp. 534-539 and 558-565, available from





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