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."

Comments

Everyone is a suspect then.

[Mactrope]

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.

Re:Everyone is a suspect then.

[joss]

I'm with you on the spying/freedom thing. Gas prices on the other hand:
its good that we pay so much tax on the damn stuff, gas should be expensive.
The fact that gas is so expensive means we have vaguely working public
transport and fuel efficient vehicles. You're paying $4 a gallon.. good,
you should be paying at least that, its just a shame you haven't been
paying that much for decades. If you had your infrastructure would have
developed in saner ways and you might be in a better position
to face peak oil. As it is, so many people live > 20 miles from where
they need to work, and food/goods distribution is so energy intensive
its really going to get ugly.

Re:Everyone is a suspect then.

[fredklein]

You'll still be able to buy single (or multiple) trip tickets for cash,

If you show up at an airport in the US with a ticket paid for with cash (especially a One Way ticket), you are marked SSSS for extra security. I'm sure the UK can do something similar. After all, only those trying to avoid surveilance would use cash, Right?

*sigh*

[theaceoffire]

"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 predict a new business coming

[zappepcs]

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?

Re:I predict a new business coming

[fastest fascist]

Your idea of a criminal appears to be someone who has already committed a crime. To the government, a criminal is someone who might commit a crime, also known as a citizen.

Pervasive surveillance

[realmolo]

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.

Re:Pervasive surveillance

[Colin Smith]

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. It's only strange if you believe that government exists to serve the people.

Two problems with that

[Jane Q. Public]

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.

Pay as you go variant.

[Angostura]

... 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.

Feature creep

[Mac Degger]

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.

That's not good enough.

[inTheLoo]

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.

Re:That's not good enough.

[moosesocks]

Well, his case is an argument for transparency, rather than against it... Really.... is it?

There's no doubt that what he did was wrong, and represented a massive conflict of interest. I have very little sympathy for him.

However, politicians have done much, much worse, kept their positions, and in some cases even been re-elected. (For crying out loud, the Valerie Plame incident could easily be construed as treason)

By all accounts, he actually was doing a fairly decent job governing the state compared to his predecessors. His own personal life had very little bearing on his actions while in office (ditto to Bill Clinton).

Do we want a President/Governor who steals candy from convenience stores? No. However, if he's doing an apt job of managing foreign affairs and the economy, it might do considerably less damage to ignore it, and turn your head the other way.

Re:That's not good enough.

[mi]

You are arguing for selective enforcement — a form of tyranny and, when the law-enforcer is himself a criminal, of hypocrisy. As prosecutor Spitzer hunted down "prostitution rings" (instead of advocating the legalization of the practice, for example) and — as Governor — just recently signed the law extending incarceration of "johns" from 3 to 12 months.

Although many politicians have, indeed, committed crimes, those who were caught have gone through major troubles. That Spitzer had to resign, unlike another infamous "star" of Democratic Party, is the sign, that he was not doing his job that well, i.e. "I'm a fucking steamroller, and I'll roll over you," — is not how a governor is supposed to speak/act...

By all accounts, he actually was doing a fairly decent job governing the state compared to his predecessors. His own personal life had very little bearing on his actions while in office (ditto to Bill Clinton).

No, that's not true — his tenure as a governor is just too short to judge. Many consider him a hero of public service for "going after" the financial firms as the State's chief prosecutor. But what those people don't realize, is that he has not won a single trial — only settlements. And those of his targets, who chose not to settle, have all won in court...

If such was the case of, say, anti-terrorism prosecutions, you would, I think, claim, the entire "terrorism" thing was drummed by the gubermint in order to put your favorite government evil here...

You seem to agree, he should've been thrown out, yet you come up with silly excuses and "yeah-buts". There aren't any — not in this case.

Do we want a President/Governor who steals candy from convenience stores? No. However, if he's doing an apt job of managing foreign affairs and the economy, it might do considerably less damage to ignore it, and turn your head the other way.

You know, you could've used this argument to, say, defend Michael Jackson: "should we not look the other way, if a great artist molested a few boys for inspiration," — or something like that. "His contribution to culture may outweigh the harm done to these kids." I would not necessarily agree, but that could be a valid opinion — if not regarding the actual molestation, than certainly regarding drug abuse, for example...

Yet in case of a politician, hypocrisy and absence of integrity are immediately disqualifying — a politician simply can not be deemed to be "doing a decent job", if he violates the law(s) he is there to uphold. Ditto Bill Clinton.

data trawling is ineffective

[Nomen Publicus]

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.

Re:data trawling is ineffective

[soren100]

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. It depends on what you are trying to do with the data.

If the methods being applied look very much like Orwell's 1984, then one obvious conclusion are that the motives of the authorities are very similar to the motives of "the Party" in 1984: political control.

Take for example the current downfall of NY democratic governer Eliot Spitzer just as he was fighting the gifting of massive amounts of public funds to the big financiers. By tracking financial records and listening to phone calls, the authorities were able to uncover a "crime" that many would consider harmless (having sex) and assert political control by making him resign. This frees them to continue their original agenda unimpeded and take down a rival in the process.

So once all the records of travel (license plates, rail, air, onmipresent cameras) are monitored by the authorities, then you can look at the movement patterns of politically active people and use indirect methods of control without ever revealing the true purpose, and without having to assign full-time agents to follow each person and record their activities. You could track large numbers of people without ever leaving the central office and just place a convenient call to a policeman to pick up the person for whatever crimes you uncover along the way, or arrange an "accident" if you want to be more thorough.

Re:D Filter error: You can type more than that for

[digitig]

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.

Re:6. Not of numbers, but of free men.

[fastest fascist]

Honestly, my main worry is not that criminals or other external parties will misuse the information a government gathers, but that the government itself will misuse that information. It should not be forgotten that an individuals liberty and a government's authority are always in conflict with each other, which is the whole reason modern, so-called free societies have systems to limit the powers of government. Many people seem to have lost sight of the importance of those limits, and would be willing to grant almost unlimited powers to the state, since they do not believe the state would ever misuse those powers.

It's a lovely display of trust, of course, but a woefully misguided one. If in any governmental system there is potential for abuse, then sooner or later there will be abuse. Simple probability. The more power a government has over it's citizens, the more potential for damage there is in cases of abuse. And any government will take all the power they are given, that is why they must actively be kept in check.

It was only today I read someone seriously wondering why people would complain about the police keeping a register of DNA samples and fingerprints of all citizens - their express point of view was that if it helps catch criminals, anything goes. At times like that, I tend to feel like I'm an atheist debating the existence of God with a deeply religious person. It's as if there were no common ground at all, no common logic to be found. Hopefully it isn't so.