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UK's MI5 Wants Oyster Card Travel Data
Boiled Frog from a Nation of Suspects writes "The Oyster card, an RFID single-swipe card (which was recently cracked), was introduced to London's public transport users purportedly to make their lives easier. Now, British Intelligence services want some of the benefits by trawling through the travel data amassed by the card to spy on the 17 million Britons who use it. The article notes, "Currently the security services can demand the Oyster records of specific individuals under investigation to establish where they have been, but cannot trawl the whole database. But supporters of calls for more sharing of data argue that apparently trivial snippets — like the journeys an individual makes around the capital — could become important pieces of the jigsaw when fitted into a pattern of other publicly held information on an individual's movements, habits, education and other personal details. That could lead, they argue, to the unmasking of otherwise undetected suspects."
They should make records like this for all MPs and their families pubically available, updated daily and hosted on the interweb.
After 6 months, they can decide if they *REALLY* want the intelligence services (and anyone who picks an MI5 laptop up on a train) to have the same.
What the honest hope to unmask is criminals by considering everyone a suspect.
What they will do is discover and harass political opposition. Dark times for the UK.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216934&cid=17629948
"That could lead, they argue, to the unmasking of otherwise undetected suspects."
Translated: We want to be able to spy on you. We are not sure why yet.
I steal signatures. This one used to be yours.
You can't have one until you show you are responsible enough to look after it
Would the anonymised version of the data be any help to them? They could have all the travel data but not tied to any actual names but just to the anonymous IDs of the cards, and then if that data implicates one of the anonymous travellers, or if there's a reason to belief one of those are tied to a suspect, they could get a warrant or something like that for the name tied to it?
Here is my pass, and an additional 100 pounds Sterling. Now, just travel around London for the next 7 days, sightseeing or whatever you like. When you are done, mail it back to me. Wow, now that is a really good tourism plan. What? Why am I being arrested at the airport? No, I did not rob a bank. No, I am not muslim. Oh, that's why? hmmmm
Or better, stick it inside someone else's bag and you look like you were traveling with them. The downfall of all of this is that there is no physical link between the tag and any human being. This is just stupid. Tracking people will not work, and will ONLY inconvenience the stupid criminals and honest people. When will governments learn?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Spying on everyone, and having everyone spy on *each other*, is a fabulous way to run a civilization. As we all know, the former Soviet Union and China are the closest we've come to paradise-on-earth.
What the fuck is wrong with England? I mean, Orwell *showed* them in "1984" how bad it could be, but they keep moving towards it. It's very strange.
First, apparently what they are asking for is not "anonymized" data. Second, as was very clearly demonstrated by the AOL data-release scandal, it is sometimes possible to get an awful lot of personal data on people by putting enough "anonymous" data together.
... and I have to say that stories like this are exactly the reason why I opted out of using the original Oyster where you have to register and hand over personal details. I use the anonymous pay as you go version. Though, thinking about it, I'm sure with a little effort they could associate the card id with the debit card payments used to top it up.
Shanghai metro for one has an oyster type card that is anonymous. To top it up you pay cash at the ticket office.
There are logs, and you can check them yourself by inserting the card into a reader; same for your wife who took your card to see where you've been. It is anonymous in that your personal details are not tied to the card ID, so no fishing expeditions by the authorities.
It seems to me that they are hell-bent on making sure that the movie "V for Vendetta" becomes real life.
And this is why you should be wary of ANY data collection scheme...just like it used to be that any application would eventually evolve to a point where it incluided a webbrowser/IRC client/email reader, data collections like thses evolve until the government wants it.
And what happens when the database gets hacked (this is INEVITABLE) and your personal data is online, never to go away? Jack shit is what. The government won't reimburse you, the data will never dissappear (like they say, real men don't do backups, they archive to the internet!) and identity theives (including, you guessed it, terrorists) will have a field day with easily used personal data which can't be 'taken back'.
This is one of those cases where the certain (not potential, this shit is ionevitable) consequences are much worse than any 'problem' you are trying to solve.
Personal data will hit the net, identity thieves will have fun and you actually make tracing terrorists MORE DIFFICULT.
God, people are dumb sometimes.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Ok, get it over with already. Just wirelessly transfer the data from the implants to the grid network so we can record everything...Then we could root out all the "SUSPECTS"...I just want to have editing rights over the data...I'd be insanely wealthy then.
Oh man, I never saw this coming! Did you? Such a surprise. And here I thought they'd stop at the public cameras! Ha ha ha, boy is my face red.
Oh well. I'm sure this time they'll be satisfied with their new powers.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
...because if you're going to be planning to commit some kind of 'terror' act, you're not going to be traceable by your oyster card. In fact, you're more likely just to pay cash at the ticket machines and be untraceable. I don't have anything to hide, but I won't use oyster - or own a customer loyalty card, or pay with debit/credit card when I can just pay cash. If it's not your own government spying on you, it's marketing companies working for corporations!
I can understand your face being red -- whatEVER inspired you to do that for them anyway?
One does wonder just how popular it's become to wank (etc.) for the camera crews.
PS: Anyone else notice that previewing clears any edits made to the "Subject:" line?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
People in power really don't have as much to hide. Political dissidents, on the other hand, have to watch out for reprisals. Would you risk having anything to do with an opposition group if you knew your affiliation would be noted? Symmetry of information is not always the same as symmetry of power.
The best way to oppose this is to note that there's no real law enforcement benefit.
No calls now, I'm
From TFA:
The fear of cyber-warfare has climbed Whitehall's agenda since last year's attack on the Baltic nation of Estonia, in which Russian hackers swamped state servers with millions of electronic messages until they collapsed. The Estonian defence and foreign ministries and major banks were paralysed,
Except that these were done by some Estonian script kiddies, so it wasn't "CYBERWARFARE!!!11@@!"
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Your sarcasmometer is overdue for recalibration.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Unless you are already tracking a suspect, data trawling is ineffective. The bigger the database, the less effective it is as more and more false positives occur and have to be investigated. This wastes huge amounts of time and resources and starves real investigations that could well turn up real suspects.
What can you say? That you didn't saw this coming? Really?
In the Netherlands there will be a travelcard that can be used in the whole country. Train, bus, tram, subway, everything.
They come in two flavours. One, *cough* anonymous, wihthout reduction and one, personalised, with 40% reduction. It appears anonymity comes at a price.
But who cares. They wouldn't do anything bad with it. They wouldn't use it to datamine your behaviour.
Recently I heared this story. I can't tell if it's true, but it sounds likely. They are still running trials with the cards and there are "some" flaws in the system. Somebody, with a registered card, described his traven from A to B and back again. After that trip, he found there was more money on his card than before and he wrote a story about is. Anonymously.
But surprisingly enough he got a call from the card company, so he asked how he got his phonenumber. The answer was "what do you think?".
I find this disturbing.
Privacy is terrorism.
Of course anyone with even a tiny measure of tradecraft will not synchronize their travels with co-conspirators, and the crazies they've been dealing with are all receiving enough training to take simple countermeasures. They'll disembark from other stations and walk the remaining distances. They won't travel at the exact same times, or will put extra time on the beginning and/or ends of their trips.
Anyway, this map is going to be so vast as to be utterly worthless -- adding 500,000 people to the suspect list just because they happen to have work schedules that match the conspirators' meeting times just isn't going to help anyone.
John
At least in the "West", government DOES exist to serve the people, not the other way around. When a government ceases to do so, then it is time for the government to cease to exit... or at least to be put back the way it was.
Someone at the CIA got really offended when he was told that 1984 was a comedy not a blueprint and decided to get even. This is why the BBC has produced great comedy like "Benny Hill" and why the UK is always on the cutting edge of police state technology. He proved both that people in the UK really do have a good sense of humor and that 1984 is serious political science, then he defected to the Soviet Union. The program, unfortunately, has a life of it's own.
No calls now, I'm
Unless they take annoying steps to prevent it, this will just lead to the same response that a lot of people in the USA used: trading. People swap loyalty cards all the time, which I'm sure leads to some amazing connections turning up.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
You make good points, but I refuse to allow terrorism to be excused. It's bullshit rationalization. I don't care how much you hate the US or its policies, if you choose to attack, to make things physical, you've fucked up. Doesn't matter how justified you feel. Plain and simple.
Even if the data is totally anonymous other than boarding and unboarding the trains, just having a log of what people went where for "everyone" can make it easy to identify an individual from their riding habits. For example, while many people would go to work in the morning and go home in the evening, the odds of any particular person boarding the same train at the same time variance over a few weeks dramatically decrease. If I can see that there is a person boarding at 7:37 on mondays, 7:39 tuesdays, etc. then the more of these I am able to produce, the smaller a group of people it will be until I have the exact individual boarding at their "regular" times. Imagine if you're the only person that's 15 minutes late on a wednesday because you happened to get robbed, etc. this type of statistical tracking might have the granularity to pick you out based on when you usually would've boarded.
stuff |
This system could have been designed not to store travel data, or to store it only for a short time (enough to, say, calculate a reduced fare based on number of segments recently-travelled, etc). The surest way to prevent MI5 from gaining access to these records is to not create the records in the first place.
An identical observation applies to the privacy-destroying US "EZPass" system for highway tolls, of course. Sigh.
The very concept is crazy: organised terrorists who have something to hide KNOW BETTER THAN TO TRAVEL USING IDENTIFIABLE METHODS OF PAYMENT. This is police-state logic at its worst. The obvious next step is to prevent any method of payment that isn't identifiable. Would you be happy with being FORCED to reveal your identity for every financial transaction in your entire life? We may choose to do so now using credit cards, but most of the time we have the option of paying cash.
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
Potentially more worrying is the attitude of future govemernments to UK Biobank. At present they're trying to engage millions of UK citizens in an ongoing medical research programme tracking their health over decades and attempting to correlate it with lifestyle and genetic patterns (the latter courtesy of a retained blood sample). I can't really believe that a database containing the DNA of a sizeable proportion of the UK population is going to remain off-limits to the security services, despite Biobank's assertion that
We will not grant access to the police, the security services or to lawyers unless forced to do so by the courts . After all, think of the children. Just not the ones who might benefit from the medical research that privacy-conscious individuals might choose to opt out of...Why does the system need to collect any personally identifiable data in the first place? Apart from the obvious surveillance uses, that is.
Incidentally, in Helsinki the public transport system uses an electronic pay card system, which is also used to create statistics on travel for use by the transport authority in designing their services. This data used to be personally identifiable, and was indeed used by the police to track the movements of the Myyrmanni bomber prior to the bombing. There was a bit of a fuss about this, however, and nowadays the system can no longer be used to track the movements of any given individual. Or that is what they say, anyway.
OR is it just a bunch of sheep?
For all the outrage on the US about privacy issues, it seems like the UK has been leading in the "Surveillance society" field.
Are there no protests about this sort of thing in the UK? Do the people not care? Or are they already so afraid of being singled out that they'd rather stay silent?
In England, you can, as a Member of Parliament, actually hold the same seat indefinitely. There's no maximum term, no maximum number of times you can be elected, so if you have a constituency where the majority of people support you, you can be in power forever. This is certainly the case where I live where the local MP has been in control since the mid 1960s. This is why I do not vote as he is unbeatable since he gets voted in by most of the over 60s (as well as others, since there's no good competition as you'd never win against him.)
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but the whole War On Terror (tm) is founded on the idea that the Bad Guys are too stupid to use any of the fifty thousand or so obvious attacks that we have no way to defend against and instead will attack where the Forces of Truth and Justice (tm) have spent billions on security theater.
It's a really good thing, for instance, that Al Queda was never able to recruit anyone who knew anything about engineering.
Oh, wait ...
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I wonder where they got the 17 million stat from? Is that the number of Oyster cards ever issued? Given that there are only 8 million people in the whole of Greater London (which is the only city the oyster card exists) and only some of them (i've no idea how many but I'd guess about 50%) use public transport that seems a touch high to be current users.
It's already anonymous if you want it to be. You can buy an Oyster card over the counter for cash without giving any personal details. You can optionally register the card, so you can top up the pre-pay online and so on, in which case it ceases to be anonymous, but the default is anonymous.
Of course, if you really have something to hide, you buy individual tickets, which would only be traceable with a lot of work correlating the CCTV images (no change from the present). Ok, it's £4 per Zone 1 journey instead of £1.50, but I bet the terrorists can afford it. In other word, this isn't a measure against the terrorists -- it's too easily circumvented: it's just more monitoring of the ordinary reasonably law-abiding citizen.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
... government has lost trust in the people due to it's lack of moral authority, and so, rather than encourage family values and street police, it is allowing people freedom to do as they wish, but use technology and fines (citations) to tax bad behavior. Think a combination of Minority Report and Demolition Man. And those of is who care don't intend to let them get away with it or stick around. You fight, or you flight.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
It's a silly thing to ask for, since any terrorist who isn't a complete idiot is likely to use the anonymous version. Of course, anyone willing to blow themselves up is probably some kind of idiot to start with...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's because of the whole Muslim terrorism thing. The riots that happened there, etc ... so the people don't care because they're afraid of the Muslims - that's who's really going to be tracked in the beginning anyway.
Also, the IRA has been sitting around so the the MI5 guys need something to justify their cushy Government jobs. When the Muslims chill out, MI5 and the Government will think of some other reason to monitor their citizens.
In other news, a coil has been wrapped around Orwell's grave ....
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
...is an utopia like the Communist state. It's the kind of state where the all-seeing, all-knowing state only acts in the best interest of the people and all the workers are incorruptible and never abuse the surveillance powers they're given. Where the state doesn't interfere with any democratic rights and has no bias to supporters or opponents to the current regime. Where everyone can say and do anything, associate with anyone and the state will not react unless there's anything illegal happening. Where these powers are solely used to enforce the law and protect the innocent in an equal and effective manner. In short, a system where you really have nothing to fear if you have nothing illegal to hide.
Of course, you can start arguing against this and that the system can surveil itself to catch corruption, at least up to a certain level (who watches the watchers) and that it could have some sort of division of power or democratic oversight on top. The first one doesn't work, like the Communist Party in the Soviet Union all you'll get is a superclass of citizens taking advantage of the others, and democratic oversight means that the very people the system has a massive power over is supposed to police it, that's not going to happen. In short, you need to think that power doesn't corrupt, and near-absolute power still doesn't corrupt. I'm not nearly that much of an optimist.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The problem with that is it's self perpetuating... and why voter turnout has dropped to 15% in local elections at ties.
Really you should be voting for your chosen candidate *Even if he has no chance* because one day the other 85% might decide to do the same thing, and they need your support.
One vote means little, but for example in this seat I'm in which is a very safe labour seat... the majority is only 600 people. That's not a lot of people that need to change, and it's a good thing to break the apathy and actually give the system a chance to work.
As soon as the Oyster card was launched, I knew this sort of thing would happen, just like I knew the police DNA database would expand to the ridiculous degree it has despite government assurances to the contrary. This is why we must vigorously oppose every since little infringement of our privacy, because if we don't the problem will just get much worse.
How about a "Boycott Oyster" campaign?
We have a substantial number of permanent politicians here in the U.S. as well. Theoretically they could be voted out but it never seems to happen. The good news is that, eventually, they die of old age.
Al Gore was once asked his opinion on term limits for Congresspersons. He was wide-eyed with astonishment, and replied, "But that would deprive the American people of the benefits of professional politicians!"
Dubious benefits indeed, no matter what country you hail from.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
People now walk around cities around the world with RFID passports stuck in their pockets. That spooks can read from any distance, using "RFID rifles" and the like. Multiple RFID detectors can even see stereoscopically just where in 3D space the RFID tags are, and correlate their locations with data mined from retail transaction logs like buying in stores, paying for gas etc.
How does someone zap their passport with an RFID embedded in it, without damaging the passport itself?
--
make install -not war
My MP takes 48% of the vote with a majority of 10,000. But, yes, I'd certainly do what you suggest if I supported any of the other candidates, because what you say makes sense. That said, I'm not a supporter of democracy, so have resigned myself to not getting involved in any significant way (a bit like not going to church really) unless a party that'll transition us to technocracy arrives!
:)
Back to democracy though, I dare say that getting Proportional Representation implemented would drive up those turnouts since every vote would count, but what party with a chance at winning First Past The Post is going to support that?
A couple of things spring to mind:
Even a not so well funded terrorist can still by a paper ticket (although at Mr. Livingstone's prices maybe they would need good funding).
I can get a pay-as-you-go oyster and pay for it with cash.
While I am sure that this might provide useful information it would also be so easy to mislead - say substitute your oyster card for someone else's and let them develop a pattern of innocent travel for you while you frame them etc...
So although it might generate a lead it would not be enough on its own to stand up in court (if we still used them for terror suspects in the UK), but have no fear we can still fall back to trust cctv.
I am guessing that winning hearts and minds is a better strategy rather than letting this ever more pervasive invasion of our privacy continue!
Why does the London Transport store a history of destinations per card? It seems to me that you don't need to centrally store anything card-specific. I believe that BART here in San Francisco stores the value and entry point on the card itself; when you exit, your balance is deducted. I don't know if the entry point is retained, but it's on the card, not stored in some master central database.
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
Okay by me as long as they stop persecuting that guy on Usenet. I'm sick of hearing from him.
Please.
Knowledge is power. Shared knowledge is power multiplied.
I'm more surprised they have waited this long! I thought the whole idea behind the oyster card was for this very purpose, under the thin vale of "making our lives easier".
Let's just get it over with, and fit everyone with a GPS bracelet that sends the authorities your position 24 hrs a day. Add a microphone and a chemical detector, and you're all set. While you're at it, add cameras to every tv and consumer electronic device so they can watch you whenever you're at home or near a camera.
After all, we're talking about TERRORISM!!!!!111one here. And think of the children, definately the children. And the terrorists.
And just think, some day when people decide to vote out someone in office, we can find out who discussed the vote and even who went to the polling stations, so we can deal with the traitorous bastards who voted out the people in power. That'll show them for being traitors. Better yet, when they meet we can arrest them even BEFORE they vote! How great would that be? Get the traitors before they get a chance to actually BE traitors by voting against the government in power. That would be awesome.
> There are two versions of the Oyster Card.
This is wrong. There is only one oyster card but it may or may not be registered (i.e. tied to your name/address). Unfortunately you have to register it to use discounts (young person's railcard, student discount etc.) They almost certainly record the credit cards that are used to top it up if you don't use cash.
Ha, like MI5 don't have access to this information already. They just don't have access officially.
To be honest, though, it'll be the Metropolitan Police that are really hankering for it. And HRMC. Actually, probably more HMRC than the Police. Benefit Fraud is the new Al Qaeda.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
They have these in the US too in most metro areas.
The Wikipedia article on the Oyster card mentions the New York MetroCard, the Washington DC SmarTrip, and the Boston OMG-It-Involves-LEDs-So-It's-A-Bomb.
OK, maybe not that last one.
In any case, the US ones work basically the same way: totally anonymous if you use only cash, but once you use a credit card or if you get a monthly pass, permanently IDed to you.
I'm pretty sure that just like the UK, the US metro areas claim they don't track people, but you can bet they do. Partially because I can't imagine a city planner not using the data in aggregate to help plan route schedules, and partially because it's been shown time and time again that if the data is collected, the police will be given access.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
I have a better idea to track specious people. Let's put CC cameras every-fucking-where, period. In every room of every house including the closets, and the bathrooms, on for the tube, one for the toilet, and one behind the mirror.
Go ahead, rise your police state, you know you want it.
You see, once you accept the idea that "if you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to hide" is that it makes compromises unjustifiable. You simply cannot be too intrusive because there's nothing wrong with public surveillance.
Any sort of balance must start from the assumption that privacy intrusion is wrong. That it hinders progress by fiercely protecting the status quo, that the establishment abuses its power, that privacy is a natural human right that etc, etc...
Supposedly our culture already works like that, politician presumptively care about our privacy, all this surveillance is presented as a compromise, a shamelessly increasing compromise, but the moment you start tracking innocent people you have already crossed the "if you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to hide"-line. And its all down from there.
But... the future refused to change.
Most of the data will be anonymised anyway. You buy an Oyster card at the station and can put credit onto it at pretty much any corner shop for cash. Lots of people do it this way because cash is pretty convenient, so doing so isn't going to raise any suspicion.
Cell Phones. Almost everyone leaves them on. While cell phone are on they ping the cell network to make sure you can receive a call. Look at your cell phone and see the nice little reception bars on it - yes, the phone network knows where you are. Investigators nowdays subpona phone companies internal tracking info on phones to determine whether suspects were in certain cities on certain days. Yes you are being tracked.
Ah yes, I sense someone about to say that it is only the phone company tracking you. First the phone companies want to play nice with the government and will quickly and quietly hand over records (phone companies need the government permission to operate, and I can think of several agencies that can make it a nightmare for phone companies to operate, starting with the FCC). Secondly if the government was *really* curious then they can put up their own cell towers tuned to the same frequencies as the cell networks. These hypothetical towers wouldn't be for sending or recieving, just monitoring the various cell frequencies (which is of course registered with the government). Then the government can listen to the pings. They wouldn't know who but they'd know the phoneid and location. They don't even need to put these hypotetical towers everywhere - just in interesting places, say like various bridges. We aren't even talking about tall towers. A good eight foot antenna near a government building will probably pick up the pings from every cell phone within 500 feet or so, more than plenty for tracking nearby people. This stuff is very very easy.
And before your paranoia alarms goes off, so what?!? I'd hope the government is doing imaginative things to protect us. If a person visits three nuclear power plant, several major bridges, and hangs around a Times Square armed forces recruiting office I'd hope that this person would be flagged for further checking (gun permits, nationality, criminal history). I think it highly unlikely they'd care about the boring lives of everyday people (went to grocery store, filled up car, went home, went to work, went to fast food joint, went home...)
I personally am a application programmer. I work with live databases all the time, and pick off personal records that are interesting for testing and monitoring. Interesting for me are records that test certain system aspects or that can help answer a question (why is this persons transactions not showing up on January's non-redeemed reports?). It has to be the same for the government - it's not personal, it is in the patterns.
Whenever the Americans do something stupid, we tell them to write to their senator or whatever. They don't: they order a pizza and watch TV, safe in the knowledge that increased consumerism will balance out any loss of freedom.
Will you do the same? Or will you read the article, go to http://www.writetothem.com/, put in your postcode, click the name of your MP, and send him/her an email (or print it post a letter)? That's the only reasonable way to get anything done about this most MPs probably don't read Slashdot, and most don't read the Guardian either.
Excellent point.
But worse, as important as their confused idea of what a criminal is, is their notion of what a criminal is not. A criminal is not someone who might have the savvy to take this large mass of personal information and use it for ill. Only the government will have access to the information and the knowledge, and the government is known by its nature not to contain criminals nor people who are friends of criminals nor people who are susceptible to criminals nor any form of leak that might reach criminals.
To put it another way, they seem to think that what will preserve our status as "free men" is to be "pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed and numbered!". Something seems suspect in that, since those are exactly what the criminals will want, too, and while there's a lot of discussion about the criminals they'd like to catch, there's never any acknowledgment that they might be breeding new kinds of criminals in the process. And never any discussion of how a foreign government, having successfully infiltrated this information, might use this information about a citizenry against it in, for example, planning a highly targeted attack.
Advanced knowledge of the details of people's souls is powerful, the government is right about that. What they seem to forever overlook is that it is beyond the power of the state to reserve such power to itself. All they can do is write words in laws that are wishful thinking about how they'd like to reserve such use to themselves.
If the day comes when someone starts to systematically use this helpful information gathered by the government against itself, as it surely will, let's hope there are still a few Max Headroom style "blanks" waiting in the wings to help us out.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Now the brits are going to see that so many peoples patterns are actually part of a larger criminal conspiracy.
Why does the system need to collect any personally identifiable data in the first place? Apart from the obvious surveillance uses, that is.
Because they are trying to implement "implicated-by-association" reasoning. If you have one suspect who attends a particular location on a regular basis, then that might tip them off on other suspects.
Link Discovery tools
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
"In England, you can, as a Member of Parliament, actually hold the same seat indefinitely."
I think you mean the UK (or Great Britain, which consists of England, Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland).
Yes, well, that would tie in with the obvious surveillance uses. I was wondering if there are any reasons relating purely to the functioning of the transport system - I sure can't think of any. If there are none, then it seems like a mere formality that the MI5 are asking for permission to use the databases, since the police and intelligence agencies would be the only people for the benefit of whom the system collects personal data, anyway.
I remember the first time I saw a russian tube ticket - it had the date & time of every stop where you'd used the card printed on the outside. "How typically Russian," I thought. The Washington DC tickets just showed your account balance - so you could tell that a $1.50 ticket had been taken, but not the exact stops, nor the time/date.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I always pay cash to top up my card. Thus there is no way to link it to me
Now if i can figure this out and do it even though i have nothing really to hide, do they honestly think criminals and terrorists will not figure it out
It's only silly if the actual purpose is to catch terrorists. It makes perfect sense if they just want to spy on people.
I expect that the next step will be to make everyone show ID or give a fingerprint (or both) when they buy a card.
Alas, I have corrupted their data set by ending all my journeys at Morning Crescent.
Ahmed: I fear that our plot is finished
Abdul: Oh great imam, why is that?
Ahmed: Those infidels, MI5, are now collecting information form Oyster cards. That will force us to buy travelcards or even full price tickets. As we only have a budget of 10 pounds and thirty seven pence for the entire year we cannot afford to place our instruments of terror at the key locations across London.
Abdul: Oh wise one, you are so right. With the help of Saitan, the imperialist infidels have defeated us with this plan. Now the people of London can live without fear of vengeance for their transgressions.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Even if the card is not directly tied to your personal details, it is still quite useful to the powers that be. It contains all of your travel information, even if it's not linked with your name. All that's required is to make use of any of the numerous CCTV cameras all around London (particularly in the tube) to get a photo as you swipe the card of interest, then ID that photo (which, assuming you are a person of interest in the first place, would be quite easy). Sure, it's more work (for _them_) than having your name right there, but having an anonymous card (not linked at any point to a credit card) is far from the privacy heaven you dream of.
Any terrorist who isn't a complete idiot will be using ye olde magnetic strip cards paid for with cash. So these changes will serve to catch catch complete idiots, while letting the masterminds get through.
Actually, even smarter terrorists would use an anonymous card that's been topped up with stolen credit card data (one or more cards) which would send the spys looking in the wrong places, and possibly highlight the dangers of relying too much on data.
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
Actually, there are two types of oyster card, but not the types you've described.
You can buy photocards or topup Oysters. The latter is as you described, you top it up a bit like a mobile and enjoy reasonably priced travel. You can add auto-topup to it, but it's still fundamentally the same.
The other type is the photocard, which is for season ticket holders. I have a student photocard, because I'm a smug git.
It's not really that stupid if the terrorist keeps on using it. If you know where they've travelled, you can fit it to CCTV data, and see what they look like. Then, next time they use it, you can apprehend them. It is useful. If worryingly Orwellian.
I've got the spirit, lose the feeling.
I cannot see, why the British police & government do not get it over with once and for all: Give everybody an RFID implant, make sure you cannot go anywhere in public without being traced, keep the records forever, make them available to any (semi-)governmental institution including the police and MI5 -- remembering that they will keep your data safe.
...
No need for beating around the bush and small steps in the direction of total surveillance.
It is just like removing a plaster, do it swiftly and the pain will soon be forgotten!
Honestly
PS: It will, of course, due to fact that crimes could be committed by foreigners, be mandatory for people visiting England to have an implant too, maybe just a temporary one that is removed at the border. Naturally, nobody in their right mind would object to that.
The obvious next step will be for the government to assume that anyone who uses anonymous cards, paid for with cash, or worse yet, individual tickets, is up to no good.
Have gnu, will travel.
From TFI (TF Intro):
As an opponent of calls for more sharing of data I argue that apparently trivial snippets - like the journeys an individual makes around the capital - could become important pieces of the jigsaw when fitted into a pattern of other publicly held information on an individual's movements, habits, education and other personal details. Are we sure we really want this?
The issue is not even so much that data is being - or can be - collected. The real issue is that, as soon as data that previously was not available becomes available, some party will want to access it. Parties such as MI5 are lucky in that they have it easy to get what they want, but they are not even my main concern (yet). When collecting data that can result in privacy breaches, one should not limit oneself to looking at those parties that may have a legitimate motivation for wanting access and may be willing to play by the (current) book (for now). Once the data set is there, any (future) government agency becomes a potential abuser. This includes those formed or reformed after a change of regime: please be aware that democracy has a key flaw: it can be used to abolish itself!
Linux user since early January 1992.
They could be taking DNA samples of five year olds.
I think you mean the UK (or Great Britain, which consists of England, Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland).
You've got it the wrong way around.
Great Britain consists of England, Scotland and Wales. The United Kingdon consists of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
--- Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity
Then we should add the entities within Wall Street(the kind who wanted Spitzer replaced with a yes-man ASAP) and organizations such as The Burke Group(and similar to in practice) for their contributions to the mix. Then see how well they can all tolerate millions of people with Spitzer's zeal watching over them.
Should they want to be watched after the trial on them first, there may be something a bit wrong with how it's being done.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I know of no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
... about my foresight of never having registered my Oyster card and changing cards every 3 months.
It was plainly obvious that such a juicy database full of travel data would sooner of later be in the hands of a shady organization with secret objectives and little accountability to the public in general.
Expect some "leaks" about some not-in-the-government politician's visits to their mistresses or something such in the near future.
The main use of having personal information on a smart-card is, depending upon your perspective, to prevent fraud and theft, or to maximise profits. Some families would just buy two oyster cards and share them around depending upon who needed to go out on that day, much to the dismay of the ticket operators. So every card must have a registered user.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
So there's this terrorist that is unknown to MI5, and if they could just get access to everyone's Oyster data they'd figure out who he is? Sounds far fetched to me. Does this mean that everyone who travels to/from Finsbury Park at a certain time on Fridays is going to get their door smashed in, or perhaps followed onto the tube one day and shot 11 times in the head at point blank range?
Using any given card (any variety) over time, will build a profile. Anonymous or not, magnetic stripe or not, stolen credit card data or not.
... But that's like getting folks to change their password regularly, isn't it?
A new card each time may well be tracked ("show the pattern of anonymous new card usage"), but is useless individually for profiling.
Certainly, but linking a card to a user is not the same thing as making the usage statistics traceable to the card, and thus the owner. Or maybe collecting such stats anonymously is harder than I think. I guess if the cops got hold of a person's card, they could use it to make a log entry on the system and see under which usernode in the stats database that information is entered, even if the system itself didn't store the identity of a user with their usage statistics.
Every card has a serial number, so there isn't any need for an address or user name for administration purposes, except that it helps when returning lost cards. Although any person could just use a friend's, neighbour's or their work address, and I'm sure they could just make up a name anyway. But if anyone was of particular "interest", and paid by cash, I'm sure the bus drivers could just radio back to their base station.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Hang on. You're putting words in my mouth. I'm just saying you can see how it'd be a useful tool, another way to cross reference suspects and their movements. I certainly don't think it's worth the severe breach of freedom or the potential fuckups that may ensue, but I can see why MI5 would see the data as useful.
I've got the spirit, lose the feeling.
When I picked up an Oyster card for several days being paid to be in "The Smoke" (why else would you go to such a smelly, unpleasant city?) I got my Oyster card and registered it to "Osama bin Laden". When I have to put more coin onto it (not for over a year, I must admit), I use cold hard cash.
I don't claim originality. The only thing that would astonish me is if there are less than several thousand other Oysters registered to Sheikh bin Laden.
If I forget the card next time I'm paid to go to London, I suppose I'll have to register the next one to George W. Bush.
Hey - I wonder if I could make a profit selling matched pairs on eBay? George and Osama; John and Yoko; Paul and Heather; Paul and Yoko?? That might actually be worth a laugh. Probably illegal though.
Yah boo, sux!