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Edited on Wed Dec-08-04 05:38 PM by jmowreader
You've been to stores that have this weird gray box behind the bag holder, right? Not everyone has these, but it's part of the current Sensormatic system. This thing deactivates Sensormatic tags.
I think an RFID-enabled cashier station will have an RFID transponder in that gray box. The cashier will drop the item in the bag and it will be automatically read. When the cashier enters the amount of money you paid, the system will zap all of the tags.
You want to talk violation of privacy? I used to hold a clearance that required maintenance of Close and Continuing Relationship forms. There are two kinds--CCR with Foreign Nationals, and CCR with US Nationals. You get a stack of each when you get read on. Every time you make a new friend, you have to fill out one of these forms so they can be investigated. There are different levels of relationship here--"casual," "business," "intimate." So let's say you are a male GI and you know a nice female GI down in Combat Support Brigade with whom you go to concerts, dancing or drinking once or twice a month. Most of us would have listed this as a "casual" relationship, which is how the manual lists it. Now, let's say the two of you are sitting in the House of 100 Beers attempting to get the rest of the way through the menu when she mentions that she would be amenable to a night in bed together. You have one duty day from the time you had sex with this woman to fill out a new form and to turn it in to your security officer or they will pull your clearance and investigate you with a thoroughness that would make a KGB officer blanch. (However, you only have to report the first time you had sex, because that's a change in status.) And yes, casual sex with too many partners is grounds for suspending access.
(On edit: I'm not worried about the people who can figure out how to deactivate an RFID tag in the store without anyone noticing; those guys are sophisticated enough that they'd get out of shoplifting and into other, more lucrative, forms of theft like breaking into receiving areas. The ones I worry about are the shoplifters who are so dumb they attempt to steal high-end Stanley tape measures that have "this product contains anti-theft devices" written right on the package label. This is no shit. Some things, like the big Stanley tape measures and all DeWalt tools, are made with Sensormatic tags embedded in the product so you can't get them out. And some of that stuff says, right on the package, that the tag is in there. But about three times a week someone will take one of those items out of the wrapper, stick it on his person, stroll through the detectors and get this "who, me?" look when the sensor goes off and we catch them. THOSE are the people RFID will catch.)
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