Benetton has announced that they will be sewing RFID tags into all of their clothes. RFID tags are passive wireless devices that can be individually found with scanners. While RFID tags are a great technology allowing companies to inventory whole boxes of items without and individual approach, they also allow other people to find out a little more information than you want to put out there.

“Benetton has thousands of retail outlets worldwide and therefore wanted to put in place a future-proof technology to bring clear cost benefits to the business, while seamlessly enabling garments to be tracked throughout their lifetime,” Terry Phipps, electronic data processing director at the Benetton Group, said in a prepared statement.

Anyone else confused as to why a company I bought my clothes from needs to track them “thoughout their lifetime”? This is a little too 1984 for me. All they have to do is turn off the RFID tags after the purchase. But they aren't doing it. They know exactly what they are doing. The worst part is that the customer gains absolutely zip from them doing this. If i have to give up a little bit of privacy, it has to A)Be my choice and B)I would have to gain something in order to do it. Otherwise fuck off.

Read what WIRED.COM has to say about it.

I do not want my clothes purchases tracked. I do not want stores knowing where I got my clothes from or what I am wearing for that matter. I do not want my clothes to have an individual signature. I want my privacy.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2003 at 4:01 am and is filed under Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.