RFID Shoes, whats next condoms?!

RFID Shoes

Posted by samc on August 29th, 2007

Chief: There’s no telling where they’ll be able to infiltrate next. May be even the Pentagon.
Maxwell Smart: You’re right, Chief. But even if they do get a man into the Pentagon, that’s not saying he’ll be able to get out. I remember one of our own agents was lost in there for three days.
Chief: Three days? Max, no agent could be that confused.
Maxwell Smart: Well, let me see. I went in on a Friday…

New Balance is trialing its first RFID deployment, reports RFID Journal, to improve operations inside New Balance retail outlet stores. Their two-stage pilot will track athletic shoes sold at the retail outlet inside the company’s headquarters in Lawrence, Mass.

The first phase of the project, which began in July and will last until September, involves tagging each pair of the men’s version of the 992 model — the company’s most popular style shoe. The women’s version is not being tagged so that the team can use the women’s inventory and sales levels during the trial as a benchmark to compare the effectiveness of RFID technology and Vue software.

Workers tag each box of the 992 shoes before sending it to the retail outlet. Avery Dennison is providing the EPC UHF Gen 2 passive tag applied to each box.

RFID interrogators, provided by Motorola, mounted around the doors leading into the store’s stock room, read the tags as the shoes arrive at the stock room and are taken from the stock room to the sales floor. The interrogators send all the tag data they collect to software provided by Vue Technology, an RFID solution provider focused on item-level tagging applications in retail environments.

The software generates a running inventory, based on the tag read events, of the 992s both on the sales floor and in the stock room. As customers exit the store, Motorola interrogators mounted at the doors read the tag attached to each box of 992s they have purchased, and the Vue software adjusts the store inventory of 992s accordingly.

Meanwhile, Washington State’s Department of Licensing is trialing RFID enabled driver’s licenses. The pilot, which will run until mid 2009, will also use passive EPC Gen 2 UHF tags. The license features an RFID inlay, digital watermark and authenticators.

It will act as an alternative to US passports which are used at land border crossings between Canada and Washington. The cards have a unique identification number. The state of Washington would manage a database where data with names, residency, age and other data is stored and interrogated. It could also link to other data, such as criminal history of the card holder.

In selecting EPC Gen 2 technology, DHS said the tags’ 20 feet of read range could facilitate speedy verification of PASS card carriers at borders.

Opponents say that EPC tags’ lack of security could lead to the tags being read by unauthorized parties, who could then encode the card’s unique ID number onto a fraudulent ID.

In related news, Cross Match Technologies has received an order from the Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs for 675 L SCAN Guardian fingerprint scanners and related software.

The deployments are part of the State Department’s Biometric Visa Program, designed to increase security in the visa issuance process by capturing fingerprints from applicants seeking visas to enter the United States and checking those fingerprints against government databases.

source : dailywireless.org