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Total Information Awareness, For One
Jason writes "This guy has created his own TIA program for his electronic transactions around DC. He writes, 'Conceptually, I decided to create a personal TIA program to track my own electronic movements... and to document every single electronically-recorded transaction I've made.' A small vignette into what could be done with your electronic droppings."
He even included his online porn purchases!
Disappointing for ./, this isn't news or interesting.
as they spy on you.
Wasn't it: " We'll spy on *them* as they spy on us"?
Thanks in advance.
myselfmusic
looks like he just took quicken or MS money or some equivalent application and added addresses and posted the locations on a map. This doesn't seem to be nearly the scope of ashcroft's wet dream come true (TIA).
Just like those people afraid of John ashcroft.
In Soviet russia, only old Koreans profit from pictures of Natalie Portman stored on Beowulf Clusters.
You seem to be suggesting that perhaps it is wrong for the US Government to operate a repressive and opressive system like the TIA. Well, you are entitled to your opinion. After all this is America. At the same time, this is America, so your implication is treasonous. Please remain seated until federal agents have come to a complete stop and John Ashcroft has arrived at your domicile.
Where everyone knows all your secrets...
When personal data is confidential, only governments and big business will have access to it. When personal data is public, even corrupt officials will be forced to behave.
The genie is out of the bottle, and it seems that only laws to mandate total and full access to all data by anyone who wants it will protect us from those who would seek to use such power against us.
Yes, I know it'd be a nightmare if anyone could monitor my phone records, but the nightmare could become quite fun if it went both ways.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
> a personal TIA program to track my own electronic movements
So is he an Autobot or a Decepticon?
Why does this surprise him? It need not take that much work to figure out that writing checks or using the "card" can get you mapped out, especially if the govt. has the warrant to track you (and with the patriot act, it shouldn't be too hard). Redundant to say the least.
A blog like any other.
From the looks of his "trail", it doesn't look like he goes out too often
I can't help but come to the conclusion that; You don't get out much, do you?
There's more info on LifeLog here and here.
nms
Secrets are overated, it is better having everything out in the open.
Only fuckers with anything to hide are terrorits and SCO.
There is no god
Now, what was that late-night dining escapade into south-east for?
If I were you, I'd watch myself real close, in case I turned out to be a real terrorist.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So, while this is interesting, from an illustrative standpoint (how much info can be retrieved from receipts and such), the site seems superficial and a little voyeuristic. I was hoping for some insight into the problem such as how to fight TIA, or from a CS perspective, even how to deal with disparate data from medical records to dinner transactions.
:-)
However, this site should illustrate to us that one should realize that because of TIA, once these databases are created, they never really go away. They will be mined eventually by corporations looking to expand market share by tracking individuals shopping or lifestyle decisions. In fact, there is already precedence for this in recent history. And they will be used for alternative governmental purposes other than that originally intended. There is again precedence for this as well already.
Finally, perhaps its the medical training but every time I see TIA, I think of transient ischemic attack which conceptually I suppose, total information awareness could induce in some folks.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I too have been working on this sort of thing out of interest, but to a much larger degree. Since all my emails, chat logs, financial transactions, contact details, photos, etc. are digital and I have a record of them, I am able to place keys between them and come up with all sorts of useless info (which I will not share :P). Such things as:
Can look at a photo, then see how much money I spent on that date, where I spent it and what I said about it to my friends online using regexps.
Can map out (like this article) my location at any one time, with photos if it was since July 2003 (when I got my digital camera)
Can at-a-glance see all communication with any one person, and who that person knows through CC'd emails, group chats, etc.
Can get a calendar style day by day breakdown of time spent online, amount spent and where, amount I spoke to people online that day, etc.
The system is pretty cool but needs a bit more work before I am happy with it, and it is probably going to be just for me since it is a mess of SQL, shell scripts, perl and java.
Needless to say, the amount of data and stuff I can do with it is very scary. I cannot factor in recorded phone calls, precise supermarket purchases, etc. TIA and it's inevitable bigger brother (think patriot act then patriot act2) could store a lot more of my life than I would ever want to give out.
Warhammer forums
I don't think I've seen this mentioned before so here goes...
As an act of civil disobedience, as a group flood TIA, Carnivore, etc with false information. Start referring to your online contacts as "terrorists", make references to "picking up the fertilizer and diesel", instant message each other with false meeting points you never actually go to, and generally throw a wrench into the cogs of the machine by making the signal-to-noise ratio more noise than signal.
Some may call this unpatriotic, others may see it as patriotic, it's a personal judgement call as I see it.
I was hoping for some insight into the problem such as how to fight TIA
Umm... just a shot in the dark here - but how about not electing governments interested in implementing a defacto police state and pursuing imperialistic foreign policies to prop up an obsolete oil-based economy?
But, hey, what do I know. No pity for you. My government tried this shit and enough people cared to stop it.
Or.. perhaps you welcome your new overlords.
I don't really think he needs a computer program to do this. Judging from some of my male coworkers, this sort of thing has been going on for years. If anyone wants to know exactly where he is at any given point in time, he should just get married... and then they can call his wife. ;)
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
is that where he took a dump ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
And he isn't even wearing a button.
I pay cash for pretty much everything now, but that's just because I don;t have a credit card yet (i'm too lazy). I'm wondering exactly what else the Total Information Awareness thing will be collecting; if I take out a big chunk of money from a ATM every week (like I do now) and pay in cash for everything that week, how much can they learn? i'm afraid of being a suspected terrorist now; I "hide my tracks" from the government, read slashdot, and am learning chemistry "to make bombs". That, and I've started encrypting some stuff I send
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
I'm often wondering just how much of a profile people can make from me just by googling up my comments on Slashdot and linking them with my real name.
And no, this is not an invitation...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
This kind of data is what more of us should expose. We should also protect it with the GPL. Anyone would be free to use the data (source) however they like and extend it with their own analysis adding more data, as long at that data also carries the GPL.
This would eventually build a large data set that could be used by anyone both for evil marketing/spying or good counter advertising, like revealing the real cost of goods and services.
It really seems like the only option to overcome the large private databases that, in a large part, control our lives.
The ability to gather the data about you has long been there. Commercial sources have been able to do this for nearly two decades, anyone remember the late and not lamented Lotus Marketplace ?.
The real trick is to turn the raw data into meaningfull information. Its that lack of discrimination thats truly scary in letting the government assume that kind of power.
I have no wish to have storm troopers drilling holes in my ceiling because my name is one letter off from a terrorist, or because I bought a pint of humous at the supermarket. Untill there is sufficient discrimination in the system to be intelligent about who it singles out, and Unless there is further the mandatory requirement for human investigation and discretion before acting this type of technology will be nothing but a loose cannon.
As things currently stand this type of information will just be used to harrass and persecute people that have been flagged by or have annoyed some government beureuacrat. Terry pratchet in his truly insightfull manner summed up the relationship between the populace and the law, "Commander Grimes surveyed the crowd of people and amused himself by trying to figure out what each one was guilty of". Everyone is guilty of something, with the current level of litigation and legality within our society most people are guilty of many things they aren't even aware of.
If TIA raw data is available for call up on any individual, suspicious material will be found, and nominally innocent people will have their lives made a hell. If however it can be predictive and then mediated with severe limits it could actually serve a valuable purpose.
This guy should would have an even more interesting map if he would use Loran or GPS to track his actual movements too. Especially if he could create an animated map allowing him to retrace every move of every day. That accompanied by his actual ATM/grocery store/etc transactions, itemized receipts and all, and it would make for an impressive "journal" you would never have to write a word in.
gpspda
Explain again why this particular article is interesting. What exactly do you now know that you didn't know before you read it?
This sounds like a good idea; if every /.er did this, it would be an overwhelming show of opinion from the American public. Let's see what they do then. Maybe we'd better not, though. What if they decide that /. is a terrorist organization?
any ideas? comments?
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
can get you mapped out
What happens with non-comercial events?
A party.
A visit to your parents.
You read a friend's book.
No comercial transaction => No track.
Do you think terrorist go to "Terroristrus.com" with their credit card?
I don't see what the big deal is...you can find out where someone has been based on what they've purchased...BFD.
Granted this info is electronically available if you use a card or a check, but who didn't know that already?
He didn't even do the site very creatively...scanning in receipts and placing the location on the map isn't particularly interesting. You get receipts when you pay with cash too. Just sift through the garbage of someone who doesn't shread their receipts. Now if he'd obtained the info electronically and presented it in real time, that may be cooler and scarier.
Find a way to correlate the above info with all the images taken of you by known public cameras within the vicinity of your purchases and you may even have a 1984 experience.
So, what bothers me, is not so much the fact that the data's out there; face it. Every time you use plastic, you become a foreign key in SOMEBODY's database. Every time you spend money and get a receipt, somebody knows that somebody fitting your biometric patterning bought $X worth of FOO.
That's irrelevant.
What's worrying is the potential for abuse. If, say, I spend $800 in a certain part of town by withdrawing it from an ATM, then make no transactions for 24 hours, what are the conclusions that 'they' are going to come to? What are the thresholds between when you are merely a 'statistic' to when they decide that you are a 'statistical anomaly' and look closer at what you are doing?
We need to be seriously campaigning for stronger privacy reform (no, the toothless australian 'Privacy Act' doesn't cut it.) CC info should be DESTROYED every 7 years (7 years being how long companies need hold onto information for ATO purposes, not sure about the 'States), and CCTV recordings should be kept for a maximum of a week unless there's an incident which needs to be investigated (viz, somebody setting up them the armed robbery, etc.)
I'm worried.
You're doing it wrong.
Oh, I'm a Republican
I got a small schling
I like to bomb niggahs
and make a lot o' bling
I got a bunch o' friends
in high up places
They helps me get dem
government graces.
You think I'm smart
I just know who's who
I couldn't run a fruit stand
without the red white & blue
I fancy myself
A brilliant tactician
But neither me nor m'buddies
Could even pass basic trainin'
See, I'm above all that
A fightin' and shootin'
I just say "Sic em!"
Then run the other direction
Don't need no history
Don't need no schoolin'
I got my ideology
To keep me a shootin'
Liberals! Faggots!
Commies and queers!
Socialist hippies
Full o' pussy tears!
I'll drop some crap
about Jesus the Christ
You'll buy it all
and vote for me twice
'Fact, Jesus is comin'!
Real soon, now!
So we gotta prop up Israel
That ol' sacred cow
Propaganda's m'friend
But I calls it "fact"
Even though I don't read
'Cept for Chick tracts
Facts? No! Don't need em here!
We're conservatives! We work on FEAR!
Don't like what we say?
Well FUCK YOU, bud!
We'll shove it down yer throat
and tell ya it's good!
If you live outside the USA, you should take special interest in [former TIA chief] [and felon] John Poindexter's recent open letter in the New York Times.
It's pretty handwavy, but he makes a couple of interesting claims:
responsible for discovering what is possible; other agencies will be
responsible for determining its correct use. I'm all for free exploration,
but this is calculatedly naive. I think this project in particular was
created with use in mind, and I think tax funded research should reflect
what taxpayers feel is in their best interest.
American hotspot, claiming that American financial data isn't analyzed).
I doubt this*, but even if it's true, citizens abroad should be letting their governments know about how they feel about the US accessing their data.
*: DARPA funds a lot of research into how to appease American privacy laws while conducting surveillance.
Mod this parent DOWN. I hate motherfuckers who don't even read the article. The guy has EVERY RECIPT SCANNED IN FOR CHRISTS SAKE!
I did this on myself also, and I found out the following:
- 5 visits to 8-ball's bomb shop in Harwood
- 45 visits to various branches of AmmuNation around the city
- two purchases of rocket launchers from Phil's Army Surplus
I don't see what the big deal is. What could anyone infer from that?
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
. . .up your own ass?
Wow...what slashdot moderators consider "funny" is about as obvious and simple as a 5 year old's sense of humo.
The amount of data thatis available is much to large to even store on a single or any group of machines available to the kind of money that has been allocated to the project.
In fact, I was involved with a project to capture the billing records of AT&T for a 3 month rolling store some years ago. The largest theoretical system at the time was too small to handle the amount of data, by a factor of 1/3.
Scale this up to all transactions by all people. No computer in existance can handle the volume of data, even before the government tries to determine which data is important.
I'm not really worried about this program for that reason. It will never fly.
Bush's essay is really fascinating to read: he envisions a magical desk that could record all a person's thoughts & encounters, and provide the ability to browse that library through a special screen on the device. Keep in mind that this was in 1945, right at the beginning of the computer era, when these machines were the size of buildings, far more complicated to operate, and nowhere near powerful enough. Now, half a century later, Bell feels that the technology is finally at the point where Bush's ideas can be implemented. Think what you will of Microsoft, or of the "big brother" implications of such a machine -- the very fact that this sort of thing is being put into practice is quite impressive.
Anyone working on such omnipresent recording & retrieval systems needs to be aware of this prior art.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Sid Odgers, why do you make it so easy, if you are so worried?
Born on the 11th of August, 1981, in Melbourne, Australia (best city on earth), I have interests in almost everything. I drive a 1988 Ford Falcon, own several indoor plants, and operate a bunch of servers out of my third bedroom. When not being a geek, I'm interested in billiards (and pool, snooker,) cultivating indoor plants, cheap philosophy, and working on the same book I've been writing for almost three years.
Then the data are sent to the bank. OF COURSE they track all this info. THEY HAVE TO! THEY'RE BANKS!!! There is a money trail/information trail that is left behind any time you ever do ANYTHING with electronic banking.
If the FBI or local police get a subpoena, they have access to all this information NOW. STOP THE PRESSES!!!
What blows my fuse is that people think that this is NEW, and it is being put in place by the Dept of Homeland Security. Can you say FUD?
If the data is already out there, and its already retrieveable once they get a warrant/subpoena. What is wrong here?
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
You mean hard liquor. For his late-night transient chainsaw killing spree celebration.
When I first looked at this, I thought (as a lot of people here have commented) that this wasn't much of a big deal: so what? This guy scanned in a few receipts and plotted them on a map, big deal...
However, as I started to look more closely at his patterns, I thought to myself: wow! Based on just this tiny swatch of information, I already know the aproximate area where he lives. If I wanted, I could find the average household income in his neighborhood. I know what he eats and I can tell if he's going to have a party next week based on what he got at the grocery store.
I know what date and time he went to the market, so if I had a few more data points, I could probably predict when he's going to be there.
He got a map of Central America at Borders, perhaps a statistical model shows that people following his patterns are likely to be terrorists who want to commit atacks in Central America? Or perhaps we can market cheap airline tickets to him?
While this may just look like a guys random map, you can piece together a whole lot from this.
Anyone notice the fact that this guy leaves some pretty shitty tips?
----(o)----
In a way, I think it's incredibly appropriate that his electronic trail puts hime just a few blocks from the White House...
-- This sig for rent.
http://vilimpoc.org/research/map-safeway/
And I thought the transatlantic tide only came one way...?
Get your own free personal location tracker
Pay cash.
MR. FLEISCHER: Well, I think that the President supports his efforts to prevent terrorists from engaging in any attacks against the United States, while making certain that the constitutional rights and liberties of the American people are protected. That's what the President is going to make certain what is done.
Q Specifically on that program, that's been a bit controversial, much like TIPS became controversial, has he waited at all on --
MR. FLEISCHER: You'd really have to talk to Department of Defense to get a clear understanding of what that program is. I think there's been some misrepresentations of what it is. The President knows the importance of working carefully and respectfully to honor the rights of individual Americans while at the same time remain concerned that terrorists are stopped from attacking us again.
From the 11/22/2002 White House press confrence.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
insert rim shot here
Take a look at his purchasing behavior at Safeway - Goya rice, three separate purchases of mangos.
And what's this? Kim-chee? Bean paste, pickled bamboo, and guava? Any connection to North Korea here? Has he purchased any maps of North Korea lately?
Also appears to be an avid news reader, and heavy user of public transportation. Definitely a troublemaker.
So, the rights of the people must be respected to the extent that the people want them to be respected. If the people, as a whole, don't feel like they're being treated fairly, they'll elect officials who will change the laws to suit the people.
Obviously the people don't make all the decisions. If it were supposed to be that way, we'd live in a democracy (no, we don't) rather than a representative republic. The people only decide on really big issues. The rest is left to the politicians' judgement. Politicans can do things people don't want them to do as long as it doesn't make an impact large enough to warrant electing a different official.
So, the TIA initiative, in order to work, must remain unused and unabused enough that most people won't care. Unlike most people seem to think, nothing like this will ever create an undesired change in our lifestyle as a whole. It will instead be either exactly what most of us want, or a dark secret kept out of public view both in implementation and effect. Well-known and unapproved abuses of power in the eyes of his constituency mean political suicide for any elected official.
Big brother may be watching, but he's not allowed to touch if we wants to keep his power.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
DARPA officials are calling this top secret project ARPAnet and they believe that it could possibly grow into a world wide network of interconnected computers, whereby they can use a central search engine to cull information about every single person that participates on this 'internet'.
Privacy advocates are in an uproar stating that the government officials could access online journals written by American citizens and that all this information could be indexed by 'search engines' and could be viewed not only by the government but by Joe Sixpack sitting in his La-Z-Boy.
----
I've given up a certain level of anonymity just by getting on the net. If you plug my name into Google, you can find articles I've written, and find out pretty quickly where I work. Plug that info into an online phone book and you've got my home phone number and my home address. Stop by sometime and we'll have some coffee, but please call first.
Banks already keep an audit trail of every single purchase I make on my credit card. They have to, they're banks. So, what is the big deal if they index that information to discover that I've gone and purchased five tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, in discrete 500 pound increments, and then I went and purchased 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel in 100 gallon increments... Should I be investigated? You bet!
If my office building gets blown up by some muslim extremist and we later find out that these terrorists left a clear documentation trail showing the gradual purchase of the supplies, I would hope and pray that my wife would use my entire life insurance policy to sue the holy piss out of the government that didn't do every single thing possible to prevent such a preventable attack.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I'll just leave it at that. :-)
After reviewing this guy's purchasing habits:
(a) He needs to withdraw more than $40 at a time. As it stands, he's paying 5% service fee for the convenience.
Withdrawing $200 at a time and only paying a 1% service fee makes better monetary sense.
Then again, he does work in D.C. The city that couldn't balance a budget if our lives depended on it.
(b) He really needs to learn to tip more.
It is very evil TIA. I call it a (muahahahahaha) DIARY!!!
Now give my slashbot headlines.
The one thing I noticed about this guy, from his receipts, is that he pays for very inexpensive items with credit cards. I didn't even know they would accept a credit card at Subway... for one sandwich? Or using the credit card for one mango smoothy for less than five dollars? Don't the cashiers give him dirty looks?
The one piece of advice I would give is to carry around a little bit of cash with you. The rest of us don't want to stand in line behind a guy buying a quart of milk with his AMEX Gold card.
--
RumorsDaily
Bill Gates: Yes, Mr. Senator, it will be called Total Information Technology, or TIT. And when you're sucking on the tit, I have you by the motherboard!
Senator: Mr. Gates, but what about Monopoly rules?
(In tiny, ridiculous voice)
Bill Gates: Monopoly is a game, Mr. Senator. I want to control the fucking world!
Or something like that...
-----
Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton
While interesting, I lose no sleep over TIA because it simply won't scale into any sample size big enough to actually be useful for catching terrorists. As with baggage screening, face recognition, and pretty much every other system the US Goverment has been thinking about or implementing, the false positive rate is far too high. If terrorists were 50% of the population and easy to identify, it might be useful. And what does this example prove? If you "game" the system, in other words, actively try to thwart being tracked, you will find it is easy to do. It would be easy to make the system think you are out getting groceries while you are actually off committing a murder in another state. The perfect alibi!
Didn't Robin Williams talk about this during his recent comedy special?
It went something like this:
Now we have Total Information Awareness, and soon we'll have Total Information Technology, T.I.T. And when you're connected to the T.I.T., we have you by the motherboard!
For example, Claire at the Brickseller must be good looking because he gave her a good (23%) tip.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
I'm surprised how much hell this dude is catching from you all. First, he's not coding something for a competition, it looks like a project he's done on his spare time just to put a picture to how easy it would be to compile info and track people. He's not claiming anything about its quality. Second, to the bright one who wrote "sounds like a terrorist to me," just because someone buys oriental food, doesn't mean they are from N.Korea. And in case you are still prone to unhealthy non sequitur, if someone is from N. Korea, it doesn't mean they are a terrorist. And third, to those saying he should get a life, you're the ones spending your time conversing through /. He's doing research at a think tank in DC, no doubt an advocate for stuff most slashdotters only complain about.
So, let this be a bit of encouragement for you to put the code somewhere where it can be looked at and experimented with.
Every time you use plastic, you become a foreign key in SOMEBODY's database.
Um, no. You've created a new row in the purchase table, which has a foreign key to the customer table, where you have a single row, referenced by the primary key.
1) Spy on yourself
2) Chase your own tail
3) Go to line 1
No one thought of this? In soviet russia, you spy on yourself!
Yo! Taco! THAT IS NOT FUNNY!!!!
+5 Insightful actually.
At least you gave it a 4...
This is actually really scary, look how badly the media and news outlets stateside literally got whipped to report the Bush/US Government line on Gulf War V2.0 and the whole terrorist affair.
I was watching Larry King Live on CNN around the time of GW2, a caller called in and identified herself as the editor of a weekly magazine for current members and vetrans of the US military. She spewed the Bush line almost word for word on the war and terrorism.
Excuse me, but you are a member of the press, your job is to QUESTION this, not regurjitate it back to the masses!
The duty of The Press(tm) is to promote change and improvement in the society. Within this mandate is to bring to light the decisions and methodology used to make decisions at the politcal level and question those decisions.
The litany of the reporter and the entire news industry: Who, What, Where, When, Why.
In my mind, the biggest is WHY.
I suggest you all read "The Light of Other Worlds" by Arthur C. Clarke (co-authored with someone else).
A technological event occurs that ultimately destroys the entire concept of privacy, but destroys it for *everyone*, all the time--you at work, your wife at the store, the president in his shower, you having sex...
The real question to me is, how long until they do away with the TIA blocker: cash? I use cash to by stuff I don't want tracked (2600 at B&N, lunch with a friend I don't want someone else to know about, etc.).
I'm not really worried until they decide to abolish cash. Then you'll have no choice but to have everything you purchase or anything you go being tracked (think toll booths, subways, buses, taxies).
Of course, all they really have to do is just strap a GPSr on the bottom of your personal transportation device. Not warrant required (ask Scott Pederson).
Hmm, and don't even get started with what is tracked with cell phone calls.
BIG FAT WOW! Sweet baby Jebus, if I mapped my electronic trail, you wouldn't even be able to see the map!! I think the post should actually go something like this: "I'm a scared person with too much time on my hands. I don't trust the US Government, so I made this lame map." The only thing worth mentioning is that the US government has entirely too much INTEREST in what her citizens get up to. Frankly, who gives a toss what electronic trails you leave behind? It's a TRAIL for goodness sake, and it tell ANYONE where you are NOW! You think the police couldn't create a trail like this without any electronic information whatsoever? Man, if you are paranoid about E-data on you, then you better move to Bumfuck, Africa, and live in a mud hut. And get a life!
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
is to get a government job right away as a TIA analyst. They're gonna need a lot of em and you don't have to fear big brother if you are big brother. ...under the spreading chestnut tree...i sold you and you sold me....
I'd like to see more people doing what the various news stations do occasionally and take all the relevant steps to build, say, a rocket launcher, or bomb etc, but not actually use it of course!
So you build your "bomb", buying parts etc you would need to actually put it together, then put it together in inert form and take it somewhere. Write a clear, concise notice of intent on the device, and before you begin the project, sign and seal a letter describing the same and give it to a solicitor to hold. Once you are in position, raise the "BANG!" flag and point out that the TIA system failed in its stated goal of preventing you doing exactly what you just did.
It would be interesting to see what percentage of people were caught, and what percentage got away with it.
Visceral Psyche Films
I paid my toll through an EZpass at midtown at 12.00 paid a toll at NJTP at 12.45 and 1.15. Used my credit card to pay some movers at 3.15. Went to the ATM at 4.00 in Rahway NJ. Used my credit card at a restaurant at 4.45 on Route 22. and so on. All this information I thinks tells you at least this much: I drove from Long Island to somewhere around Rahway NJ. Probably i moved from Long Island to NJ as I had paid the movers. Looking at the amount one can guess if this move is from Long Island to NJ and how big is my house and so on and so forth.....I sometimes use my chronologically ordered statements to track my own movements. Its fun but easy.
With the advent of RICO laws in the US, the mere holding of a large amount of cash is subject to extra scrutiny. If you choose to pull your entire paycheck out as cash each week and pay things off in cash, you run the risk of: losing the cash, getting the cash stolen, or...
getting the cash confiscated as possible drug money. Charges do not have to be pressed against you, but the cash, and there's little-to-no recourse in retrieving the money. Get pulled over for a minor traffic violation at the end of a quota month, and that could be the end of it.
There's been some noise being made by courts and pols about it being overly broad and being used as a supplemental source of money for local police departments, but given the more recent and broader laws on the books, I don't think this cash cow is going anywhere, soon.
Also, making any purchase (such as a car) of $10K or more warrants all sorts of paperwork with the treasury department to the effect that it is NOT illicit money, and making frequent large cash transactions of just under $10K - to escape scrutiny - is referred to as "stacking", and can also result in all sorts of nasty investigations and seizures all on its own.
What's next: RFID money?
WRONG! The duty of the Press is not to counter every action of the government. In the opinion of this editor, she (and many others) believes that the government is taking the right steps in reducing the public's risk to foreign terrorist interests.
Perhaps after questioning the policies, this editor found that there were indeed serious shortfalls in the security of this country, and that hiding our heads in the sand is no longer a viable option.
It is NOT the press's job to promote change; this is a fallicy of the late 20th century. Their job is to report the FACTS, and whatever falls out is the correct action for the public to take. Sometimes the best course is the one you're currently on.
Besides, if you want critical questioning of the current government, turn your ear to NPR, CSPAN, CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC... If you think they are "whipped" into the party line, you obviously are not taking an objective view of the sitation... Curiously, all of these agencies were silent during the last presidency, when most of todays geo-political problems were taking root.
I don't see the problem here for law abiding citizens. I have nothing to hide. I follow the law. It would protect me in the long run if ever I did get accused of something I didn't do.
The problem is that once the information is collected, there's no telling what it's being used for, or by whom. You have completely lost control.
A case in point: A national nightly news program last week outlined a situation where a woman had her car insurance cancelled. The reason? Well, it seems as though the company associated with one of her credit obligations made an error, which resulted in some negative information on her credit report. Her credit score was lowered, and because of this, her auto insurance was cancelled. She was able to eventually clear this up, but now, instead of here original rate, she's paying almost twice as much for the same insurance coverage. Interestingly, none of this has anything to do with her driving history.
So, if you think all it takes is being a law-abiding citizen is all it takes (actually, you're not really law-abiding, you're just beyond suspicion), just wait until someone decides, based on what you've bought or where you've been, that your insurance needs to be cancelled, or that you're not a good enough credit risk, or that you're not quite the "right" candidate for the job. Then tell me you don't see a problem with the collection, and most probably, misuse of personal information.
"The amount of number crunching needed to integrate these systems together would be astronomical even for a small island like the UK (unsure of the current population)."
s /1055527123 .html
Take a population of 10G at a 1000 tpd each transaction 1kB ==> 10^15B - 1 PB/day ==>365 PB/y
1kB does not seem like a lot but all it needs to be is a link to the store where the data is kept (2^1000 should cover foreseeable address space needs).
Your life history is 36.5GB.
Compare CERN LHC:
otn.oracle.com/products/oracle9i/ grid_computing/CERN_Grid
"There will be four such experiments. Each experiment will generate one petabyte of data per year" ==> 4 PB/y
So the technology need to record 1kB about 10billion people assuming 1000 transactions per day (1 transaction every 86.4 seconds), does not exist yet. It falls short by 2 orders of magnitude, assuming diskspace and bandwidth follow CPU performance and improves like Moore's law (dodgy assumption maybe) doubling every 18 months - technology will be buildable at cost of CERN LHC data processing in 10 (2^6.643857=100, 6.643857*1.5=9.9657) years.
The ArsTechnica story url below indicates that my LHC data processing assumptions may be on the low side (making it more practical to scale to my assumptions above - sooner and/or cheaper).
http://www.arstechnica.com/archive/new
Worried or not - it may be practical within 10 years to track you for life at a cost within that of a major science project - could you hide it in USD87b? What about as part of the next expedition (against those pesky cyberterrorists we hear so much more about these days)?
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
The Government has not considered anything about the amounts of storage that may be required. The only quibble I have is the 10 year calculation. I see where your numbers are coming from, but the performance curve has some other obsticles that it is running into that your calculations haven't shown.