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.

*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.