ID tags in rental / high-priced retail suits? (was: Administrivia: Noise and Politics)

[l8km7gr02 () sneakemail com]

> The funny thing about embedded chips growing more popular, is that
> most people don't even realise that they may already be monitored.
>
> For example, a company I used to know well used to hire mens suits
> and sell very high priced suits.  It started with the hire business -
> if you have several hundred thousand sauits that have to be
> dry-cleaned, sent, received or whatever every week - you need a
> mechanism of uniquely identifying the suit.  Since barcodes and other
> printed forms won't survive too many dry-cleaning trips - they
> embedded RF readable/scannable chips into every suit... that way you
> could litterally have a box of suits, throw them through the
> warehouse scanner door and know what you have.
>
> ...
>
> Just to think - this has been going on for over 5 years already in
> one of the largest high-street retailers.

/me motions at the '[Full-Disclosure]' banner in the Subject line.

Would you be so kind as to provide the name of this retailer?

Have you any information on the RF tag?  Scanners?  Why haven't we heard
about this before?  Do you have any of these tags in your possession?
Do you know anyone who does?  What about photos?  Would you consider
wandering down to the retail location and snap a few photos of the door
scanning devices?

Without more information, claims like these are impossible to verify and
tend to amount to no more than half-baked conspiracy theory -- fodder
for the next generation of urban legends, but little else.

If you (or anyone else) is uncomfortable attaching your personal
identity to 'whistle-blowing' type statements, might I suggest a
pseudo-anonymous e-mail remailer / Internet cafe?

Please forgive my skepticism and don't take this post as a personal
attack -- there are many, *many* current examples of privacy erosion in
this world, and I think it's important to keep the world abreast of
them.  Repeating unsubstantiated friend-of-a-friend type rumours,
however, do more harm than good.  I have absolutely no desire to provide
strawmen for the oppposion to knock down.

Sincerely,

Cael

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