RFID chips and Levi Jeans-Coming to a store near you

SPYCHIPPED LEVI’S BRAND JEANS HIT THE U.S.
Levi Strauss Confirms RFID Test, Refuses to Disclose Location

It may be time to ditch your Dockers and lay off the Levi’s, say privacy
activists Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre. New information confirms
that Levi Strauss & Co. is violating a call for a moratorium on
item-level RFID by spychipping its clothing. What’s more, the company is
refusing to disclose the location of its U.S. test.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a controversial technology that
uses tiny microchips to track items from a distance. These RFID
microchips have earned the nickname “spychips” because each contains a
unique identification number, like a Social Security number for things,
that can be read silently and invisibly by radio waves. Over 40 of the
world’s leading privacy and civil liberties organizations have called
for a moratorium on chipping individual consumer items because the
technology can be used to track people without their knowledge or
consent.

Jeffrey Beckman, Director of Worldwide and U.S. Communications for Levi
Strauss, confirmed his company’s chipping program in an email exhange
with McIntyre, saying “a retail customer is testing RFID at one location
[in the U.S.]…on a few of our larger-volume core men’s Levi’s jeans
styles.” However, he refused to name the location.

“Out of respect for our customer’s wishes, we are not going to discuss
any specifics about their test,” he said. Beckman also confirmed the
company is tagging Levi Strauss clothing products, including Dockers
brand pants, at two of its franchise locations in Mexico.

McIntyre was tipped off to the activity by a mention in an industry
publication. The article indicated Levi Strauss was looking for
additional RFID “test partners.”

Albrecht believes the companies are keeping mum about the U.S. test
location in order to prevent a consumer backlash. Clothing retailer
Benetton was hit hard by a consumer boycott led by Albrecht in 2003 when
the company announced plans to embed RFID tags in its Sisley line of
women’s clothing. The resulting consumer outcry forced the company to
retreat from its plans and disclaim its intentions.

Levi Strauss can little afford similar problems with consumers. It is
one of the world’s largest brand-name apparel marketers with a presence
in more than 110 countries, but has suffered through several years of
declining sales as younger consumers gravitate to new brands. The
company has also been hurt by Wal-Mart’s decision to cut back on
inventory in a bid to shore up its own declining sales.

While Levi Strauss reports that its current RFID trials use external
RFID “hang tags” that can be clipped from the clothes and the focus is
on inventory management, not customer tracking, the company isn’t
guaranteeing how it will use RFID in the future.

“Companies like Levi Strauss are painting their RFID trials as
innocuous,” observes Albrecht. “But this technology is extraordinarily
dangerous. There is a reason why we have asked companies not to spychip
clothing. Few things are more intimately connected with an individual
than the clothes they wear.”

“Once clothing manufacturers begin applying RFID to hang tags, the
floodgates will open and we’ll soon find these things sewn into the hem
of our jeans,” Albrecht adds. “The problem with RFID is that it is
tracking technology, plain and simple.”