Topic(s): Data Protection
Electronic tags – usually reserved for expensive perfumes, bottles of spirits, clothes, or even you dog or kids – are now being attached to whole chickens at a grocery store chain in the UK. The move follows a rise in shoplifting of the chickens – both the top-of-the-range organic birds at £9.60 ($19.24 US) and the cheap £3.60 ($7.22 US) chickens, as the soaring food prices forces some individuals to avoid paying for their groceries. (Should we tag our data in the same way?)
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A yellow sticker on each chicken tells customers to "please remove prior to putting in microwave,” since you really down want to scrape chicken parts off the microwave walls. You might even ingest the yellow tag and be tracked. Imagine walking down the street only to look behind you and find a van with antennas and a dish bearing down on you due to the chicken lojack system! Customers who try to steal the birds will set off an alarm as they try to pass through the store doors. Yeah, whatya got there mister? One such customer who was nabbed trying to lift a few birds indicated it was a compulsion he could not resist (see below) :
Apparently, the organic chickens are being sold on the street by men in trench coats with the stolen chickens attached to the inside of the coats (more cosly chickens are in the back). The cost of food has risen to the point that chicken stealin’ is leading to chicken lojack. What’s the shelf life for an organic chicken anyway? The shadowy group behind the thefts have already instituted chicken lojack jamming devices hidden inside the trench coats as discovered during the first arrest.
The owner of the grocery chain, Mr. Leghorn, (pictured below) indicated he will prosecute the chicken snatchers to the fullest extent of the law. “We take chicken stealin’ quite seriously here in the UK.” Mr. Leghorn seems to believe the problem is a Yankee import and something no upstanding Brit would do. If only data got the same attention...
Adding insult to injury, J Sainsbury PLC, parent company of the grocery chain had routers, switches, servers and other devices stolen from their (Cable and Wireless) outsourced facility causing outages to their online shopping sites. "If I can steal them, nobody can order them online!" 
Maybe it is the Colonel wrecking havoc here?
