Did anyone read this? I was wondering about what the people here thought

http://msn.com.com/2100-1107-980345.html

It is pretty irrelevant actually. With the e-911 legislation, the government always knows where you are, just in case (tracking phones through gps or radio triangulation). Also, have you ever driven through large cities with those signs that say "14-16 minutes to exit 147?" They have cameras on the roadside that track license plates so they can figure that out. Do you have a subway or toll road pass? Those things keep track of where and when you use them. How about using a credit card? Those things keep of record of what, where and when you purchase items. The same thing is true of those shopping discount cards that all the grocery stores use now. And detailed records are kept of your phone records.

And of course, let us not forget the government initiatives to track what you do online. They take myriad forms, but I bet most of you didn't know that every time you go to a webpage with double-click advertising on it that they know who you are (assuming you have ever filled out a survey or bought a product from a company they are affiliated with). This data is and much much more is collected by advertisers and access is sold to the government. There is also Carnivore, Son of Carnivore, and simple address logging to contend with.

Did you know that most airports and sporting venues are considering facial recognition software? There are already tests going on at a variety of locations. This is made possible by the digital photographs associated with most driver's licenses. Airports are also going to link this information to as many databases as possible.

The information has been available for some time. It is only now that it is becoming possible to use it meaningfully. Privacy is largely becoming an illusion. If we follow the path of Great Britain, it will be entirely gone. They are collecting a DNA database of anyone who was ever arrested for a crime (even if they were not charged or convicted) as well as anyone who crosses the border into Ireland. They have cameras on every street corner in populated cities. Not only that, they are planning on recording and storing all internet and phone conversations for a period of up to 7 years by everyone in the country.

You have nothing to fear, right? You haven't broken any laws. That time you accidentally stumbled into a homosexual pedophile beast-porn site probably won't show up, will it? Of course they won't enter your data incorrectly into the database or confuse you with the John Smith in the next town who is wanted for armed robbery. I'm sure you have never posted anything online that will come back to haunt you, and, of course, unauthorized people will never gain access to this information. Employers, banks, and government officials will THINK they know you by what background checks turn up. Bad information is almost impossible to get rid of.

Ignorance is bliss.

-Biscuits

Don't forget your tin foil hat!

Seriously though, I wouldn't worry that much about RFID tags. I've got a huge bag of RFID tags which are embedded in a plastic disc so they're easier to handle. All they've got is a serial number encoded inside it. I've got two readers, one only works very close up to the tag and is used to identify individual items. The other is a longer range one which just tells you what tags are nearby. You can't tell what the tag is attached to however. In theory you could encode the exact details of what the item is inside the tag but that involves a lot of extra complexity in manufacture which isn't necessary. They're basically equivalent to a barcode which you can read from a distance with RF.

One example the article gives is that thieves might use it to locate houses with high value items by the RFIDs on the packaging. Sounds like a lot of effort to me considering most packaging has already got all the information printed all over it anyway!

If you really want to worry about big brother then go search for information about Kevin Warwick. He's a lecturer at Reading University over here in the UK. He's got some odd ideas about cybernetics and likes to do big PR stunts. I personally find him annoying but that's just me Anyway, a while back he had the equivalent of a RFID tag embedded in his skin for a few days. A few rooms were then wired to detect his presence and would turn on and off the lights when he entered.

Last report I read about facial recognition systems states that they weren't that reliable. The chance of detection is fairly low as the software is very easily fooled. The latest iris scanner can scan you from a distance of several metres and with a very high level of confidence identify you from your stored pattern. Iris and retina are the two most reliable methods of implementing biometric identification. Iris is prefered however as most people find retina scanners too invasive.

I agree that technology could be misused but thats the price of technological advancement. *shrug*

- Trevor

Well, I think the original post was intended to express concern over the misuse of technology -- not the technology itself. I'm not worried about the "technology" itself. Technology is value neutral. Using (any) technology toward a particular end is not. I'm worried about a corrupt and totalitarian state using its considerable (and coercive) resources to deprive me of liberty and privacy. I'm more worred that people don't seem to care about this and diminish concern over them as "conspiracy theories" or "lunacy".

I am not a conspiracy nut. I do, however, feel that most people are not aware of the inroads being made into their privacy. If you can somehow make them aware, they don't see a reason to care. After all, we don't see too many evil things companies can do besides spam us. Nor do we believe that our governments are going to look like 1984 anytime soon.

Don't forget, however, that the United States had the McCarthy hearings not too long ago. J. Edgar Hoover certainly didn't use his information for good purposes. Instead, he used it to blackmail other people to maintain power and influence policy. It is remotely possible for something much worse than these things as well. Maybe we don't have much to worry about now, but who is to say in 5 or 10 years?

So, should you care that the FBI no longer needs a court order to get a wiretap? Or that the bill of rights is systematically being undermined?

-Biscuits

Relax, it will be 1984 in a few years. Nobody can stop it. It's progress. It's a relentless march of innovation which will be used to enslave the human race all for the purpose of the neurosis of the feeble minded humans in power. Whoever decided that one feeble minded human should have power over the rest of them, was a fool. And we are paying the consequences.

So, yes, eveyone knows everything about you. As long as you are aware of that, that's the best you can do. Enjoy what freedoms you have.

Now, the scary thing as I see it is how our freedoms (not our privacy) erode away. Like those people in Germany didn't get too terribly pissed off when they were asked to wear little gold stars on their clothes. And nobody in the book 1984 seemed to mind that food was rationed or that they had to do forced exercises every morning. That's because those changes happened graudally enough for people not to notice.

It's the gradual degredation of freedom that scares me. Children are born into this world not knowing the freedoms their grandparents had. Their grandparents were free to eat food grown on the free range. The children are forced to eat geneticaly altered, farmed, steralized, unnatural, preserved, biological slop. Ok, so the (united states) grandmothers couldn't vote and the kids can; that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how the grandparents could close a deal with a handshake and the children have to worry about the threat of litigation if the most infinite detail of a transaction is not recorded.

So, like in the book 1984, we will all be held hostige by our government, for no reason but that the government falls prey to the same human insufficiencies and inabilities that everyone else does. The scary thing is, they are closing our prison cell door so slowly that nobody notices.