Smartcards to Track London Commuters

misterpies writes "Technophiles across London have been excited about the recent introduction of Oyster smartcards on public transport to replace old-fashioned paper tickets. Their enthusiasm might cool off now that London Transport has admitted that not only can the card be used to track your journey across London -- they're actually going to keep the data for 'a number of years'. Add that to their congestion charge cameras used for tracking car movements and pretty soon you'll have to stick to walking if you don't want your movements tracked. Until they implement those facial recognition systems that were such a great success in Tampa, Florida."

Comments

I will now nitpick

[stratjakt]

While this may affect the rights of the hated redcoats, I fail to see how it affects their rights "online".

Everyone keeps reciepts and records for years, and after you apply that data to tracking, I fail to see how it's useful.

Are the smart cards actually personalized? Do they know that Phil McBucktooth went from picadilly circus to the moors of wankershire on Oct 12th, or do they just know where card #5479013-31235234 is?

If not, this is no different than the EZ-Pass rf based toll-paying system we have in maryland.

Re:RTFA!

[stratjakt]

Well I cant RTFA if it aint working now, and noone has been polite enough to karma whore, can I?

Bitch and whine for pre-paid anonymous cards.