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Take Big Brother on Vacation with You
An anonymous reader writes "Book a flight or a rental car, and that trip and your companions' names, where you stay, what you eat, your bed size preference, in-room movie preference, and just about anything else you get a receipt for is etched in stone."
Here is another stunning example of why we need true e-cash. Anonymous E-cash, just like good ol greenbacks but useable in the new (and still under constant development) E-conomy.
Sure they say they will only use systems and tracking and cataloging and databases for limited uses and data types. Yeah right! Since when has the govt ever been handed a power and has handed it back after its orignal purpose has been fulfilled. I can't think of one sitting here writing this post. Once the system is built and limited powers have been granted, kiss off the rest 'cuz it is only a matter of time before the system/govt gets its fingers in the whole pie...
Right, wrong, irrelevent. What is, is.
Sure, much of that info can come out of your garbage, but there are a few differences. First, I can take steps to control what gets put in my garbage. If there is something I really don't want people to know, I can take steps to dispose of it more securely (ex: burn it).
Another difference is that collecting info by going through a garbage can takes active steps on the government's part. They don't have the resources to go through everyone's garbage, so they focus on those they are really interested in. When they are actively focusing on a particular individual, they are more likely to get the data correct (if a mistake is made, someone is focusing on it and is more likely to notice it). On the other hand, with a passive data collection system like this, they just throw bulk data into the database. Nobody is paying any attention to 99% of the data that comes in. If it contains bad info, nobody really notices. Then when your name erroniously comes up in a search later (due to bad data), nobody knows anything about that data. Nobody knows the context in which it was entered (you only bought Catcher in the Rye as an English class reading assignment), or whether you actually did buy the Anarchist's Cookbook (that wasn't you). Next thing you know, before you even have a chance to sort things out, you're a "material witness" in solitary confinement in a federal lockup.
This reminds me of the ancient city of Babylon, where the authorities also collected information (to govern better...). What happened was, that at some point they couldn't handle it anymore. The information they collected was out-dated already after the request was issued. In the end, their bureaucracy dealed mostly with collecting and storing information, not governing. Oh yeah, and they wrote it all on clay plates, which they kept in large storehouses. When the city fell and was burned down, the storehouses were burned, too - effectively preserving the clay plates for thousands of years (they were discovered in the 20th century - real datamining ;).
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
With so much information passing through Government data banks, a major problem that's gonna crop up sooner or later is how to sift through the junk and get to the significant data. I mean hey, if they're just going to be anal retentives and spend all day keeping track of people's sexual preferences, they're going to miss out on the juicy stuff (like who's been buying nitroglycerine by the quart.) So, maybe the sheer volume of information they get is going to insure us our privacy in the short term. If this sort of thing continue's, look out for data mining becoming the next big thing 2 years from now.
I have found a truly wonderful proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, but unfortunately this sig is too small to contain it.