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Iris Scans and Fingerprints Could Be Your Ticket On British Rail (silicon.co.uk)
Mickeycaskill quotes a report from Silicon.co.uk: Rail passengers could use fingerprints or iris scans to pay for tickets and pass through gates, under plans announced by the UK rail industry. In its current form, the mobile technology is intended to allow passengers to travel without tickets, instead using Bluetooth and geolocation technology to track a passenger's movements and automatically charge their travel account at the end of the day for journeys taken. The Rail Delivery Group (RDG), which represents train operators and Network Rail, said further development could see passengers identified using biometric technology in a way similar to the facial-recognition schemes used at some UK airports to speed up border checks. The RDG said more than 200 research, design and technology projects have been identified to increase the railways' capacity and improve customer service. Other projects include new seat designs that could improve train capacity by up to 30 percent and folding seats that could boost space during peak times, including tables that could fold into seats.
Just like in A Brave New World! I want to be a Beta. Those Alphas work much too hard. I'm happy to be a Beta.
With a semen sample, you can even get a free upgrade to first class.
Not surprising given the Brits obsession with CCTV and license plate scanners. It will probably be this way everywhere soon. I mean, you don't want to enable TERRORISTS, do you? And think of the children.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
...that can be stolen with any camera phone! What could possibly go wrong?!
hahahahahahahhhaha what a laugh
This type of government overreach is intended to track every one of us, everywhere, at all times. The whole point is to crack down on dissent. Every government is moving in this direction.
This has nothing to do with safety or security. Do nothing and watch your liberty disappear.
I'll walk. these fuckers can go fuck themselves.
This is a wonderful plan!
All tracking to our new glorious leader!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Actually getting on the train isn't where people waste time. It takes ten times as long to find the ticket you need to buy from the dozen or so alternatives with slightly different names and wildly diverging prices (that are all nevertheless exorbitant) as it does to walk through an automated barrier.
I had to travel from one end of the UK to the other recently and - this still baffles me - it would have cost about a third as much to fly from Newcastle via Paris to Exeter then back again than it would to get an off-peak return ticket for the train. I'd have probably had more leg room to boot. If I still had a passport I'd have been very tempted to accidentally miss my connecting flight. Think about that for a second... an international flight was significantly cheaper and only marginally longer than taking the train. Something about that just seems fundamentally broken.
And yet, after all this, one still has to have the train actually turn up; in the case of Southern Rail this is not a safe bet. If - and that's a big if - this ticketing system reduces the prices then I'll give it a try but the train companies do not have a good track record (sorry!) when it comes to refraining from bleeding their customers dry. Something similar already works quite well on buses and the Tube so who knows? I'll try to contain my amazement when the whole thing falls flat on its face and people go back to having to use price comparison websites to find a ticket without needing a mortgage to pay for the blasted thing.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
I would like my methods of payment and my physical being to be as separate as possible.
It is invasive enough at the moment that public transport wants to 'force' traceable and easily tracked methods of payment in the name of autonomy and convenience (see Data Collection) and while I doubt they have very little interest in my specific transactions or movements - this doesn't sit easy with me.
Again, my underwear drawer is clean - this doesn't mean I want to give everyone permission to look through it.
. .
or they could just supply an app for your phone or let you use your credit card as your ticket.
Nullius in verba
ctor...
Think about it. You start humping this little box that's attached to the door as the train comes by. You think you're going to be able to deposit genetic materials because that's easier than having your eyeball pierced by a needle. But instead, you get an error, and the doors close, and your penis ends being sheared off. That keeps you from ever reproducing and from ever being able to use the semenic biometric data, so you're forced to walk.
Really, the only thing left for those who are not incarcerated is, "Just give us a sample of your DNA. We already have everything else." I wonder long term what kind of effect this will have on humankind. If you develop a sense that nothing you do is private, then you become nothing more than a slave to those who have access to the data mine. These agencies have access to so much information, you must now assume that they know more about you than you. I have also wondered who audits this data and can they guarantee authenticity and integrity?
The problem with rail in Britain is not the lack of iris scans and other biometrics, but the lack of electric traction. They replaced coal with diesel after WW2 and got stuck there ever since. They decided the catenary costs too much and only realized a few showcase electrification projects. They are now paying the price several-fold for their short-sightedness.
> technology projects have been identified to increase the railways' capacity
The most effective technology to increase a railway's capacity (throughput) is electrification. Acceleration can be increased incredibly, so the sections are vacated much quicker for the next train to occupy it. In Japan, shinkansen star every 90sed during rush hour on the Tokyo-Osaka line.
The amount of power available in a single e-locomotive can be as much as 6400kW/8700hp. Show me any single diesel loco stronger than 4500hp? Even the mighty russians are playing tricks like joining two diesels with articulation and pretending its a single loco. On the other hand the swiss have 12000hp articulated e-loks working on the legendary Gotthard pass climb. There is no way to compete with 15-25k Volt feed at hundreds of Amps, when using an internal combustion engine. There are hydro dams and nuclear reactors and 4-chimney thermal power generating stations behind every e-lok.
Furthermore, diesel traction is not good for 200+ km/h (124+ mph) speeds and rather unreliable over 160km/h (100kmph). On the other hand, a universal purpose 4-axle electric loco can merrily pull an 8-carriage pax train at 230km/h or haul a 750m long freight train at 120km/h. A dedicated bulle train can do sustained 320km/h (200mph). Note: in Europe the leviathan sized / double stacked / super slow freight trains of USA and Australia are shunned, the focus is on moving smaller cargo trains quickly, intermixed with pax traffic on the tracks. A single 6-axle electric loco is stronger and faster than 3 american diesels together, even though it weighs only 115-125 tons.
It is mind-boggling that a rich county like Britain is refusing to electrify its railway, while piss-poor pariahs of Europe like Romania and Hungary hung up a lot of catenary and are now reaping the benefits every day. The lazydoms of Italy and France hugely electrified their railways, allowing their substandard heavy industries to compete very well on the world market and they have bullet trains for pax, like in Japan. Electrified railway traction are also one important reason while Germany pulled so far ahead of UK in all kinds of economy and industry. (More or less nothing remains of London and its subjects than stock exchange brokers and immigrant dish-washers. That's not an economy and the anglo-saxon don't have any hope to catch up, since they lack electrified railways.)
Bonus: e-loks can last 40-50 years in service, no cheating. In that same time, a diesel loco has been through 2 chassis, superstucture and dynamo and 3 engine blocs, as the ICE's resonance cracks and eventually shakes apart the structure. Bluntly said only the pennant plaques remain original, provided they are not stolen during the years...
and iris scans are an improvement, but there is something better (faster, cheaper, less abuse potential)...
Using fingerprints and allowing third-parties and governments to have access to that data is unacceptable. Not only because the government should have no need to track what people are doing but because the gov should not have fingerprint registration data (which will be horribly abused) . Once you give this data to the government (or big business), it will NEVER be erased or restricted, regardless of claims or laws- it will go into huge databases and shared between all agencies and used however they want for as long as they want. Even worse, with every crime investigation, you will be searched without probable cause.
There is only one safer and practical biometric I know of- that is deep vein palm scan. That registration data cannot be readily abused. It can't be latently collected like DNA, fingerprints, and face recognition can. You have to know you are registering/enrolling when it happens. You don't leave evidence of it all over the place. When you go to use it, you know you are using it every time. And on top of all that, it is accurate, fast, reliable, sanitary, unchanging, live-sensing, and cheap. If you must participate in a biometric, this is the one you should insist on using.
Example: http://www.m2sys.com/palm-vein...
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Regardless, we also need to realize that IT IS NOT EVERYONE'S BUSINESS WHAT WE ALL DO. The first step in securing freedom is privacy. When you are tracked, you are losing your freedom, whether you realize it or not. Anonymous purchasing and traveling should be a right, not a harassment.
The real problem with letting other people rummage through your underwear drawer is that they'll be touching your intimate things with their own grubby, unwashed appendages.
Fecal sample instead?
I have copies of your fingerprints and retina scans I can use at any time.
Oh wait...
That is a joke, just in case an authority reads it..
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
With the biometrics, we will all be in this situation.
The Archbishop is on a train to visit a local church to preside over a Confirmation service. The conductor walks past the compartment (this is the old-style train in England) and calls out, "Tickets, please!"
As the Archbishop is fumbling for his misplaced ticket, the conductor assures him, "That's quite alright, m'lord. We know who you are."
The Archbishop replies in frustration, "That may be fine for British Rail, but I have no way of knowing which stop is mine!"
Isnt it already enough that they do all but put a camera in everyone's asses over there? Gunless Gestapo wants more biometric data while under the guise of easing the lives of a public already too docile as it is. We bitch about the baby boomers, but their ignorance of tech is the only thing keeping governments from going too far. You can tell the population and life expectancy differences between the U.S. And GB.
Pressurizing the carriages will make the passengers smaller, so they can be stacked closer together.
Nullius in verba
British Rail: Founded 1 January 1948, Defunct 2001. Are we going back to the future?
They're doing it for their customers! Not so they can get a massive fingerprint and iris database from people who have never been charged with committing a crime...
Really? Northern Rail have recently introduced new paper tickets ahead of barriers that can read them. Consequently they have to have staff stood next to the barriers to check the tickets visually and swipe passengers through. Only recently have we got updated barriers at Bradford Interchange. I can't imagine them being able to introduce any modern system in an effective, efficient manner. The invest in new ticket machines would be crazy too.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, if the women don't get you the whiskey must
Posting anonymously for fairly obvious reasons.
If you have ever worked with any party to do with the railways you'll have a degree of scepticism.
For an IT project to proceed it will need:
(n+1) rounds of negotiations with Network Rail, the train companies, the rail regulators, rail safety boards....
n*(n+1) arguments to settle competing, mutually incompatible systems
several years of faffing around to draw up requirements of a quality/granularity of "it must accept fares" or "it must have a rapid response"
several more years getting suppliers to tender - and wondering why they won't go fixed price with the "requirements"
the selected tenderer will then have to deal with numerous conflicting fiefdoms within the many organisations and also deal with the numerous IT decision makers, review committees and various branches of the "Ministry of 'NO'"
if they do manage to deliver anything, will have several rounds of "it's not what we want"/"but it is what you asked for" and prolonged contractual arguments
then the Byzantine fare structures will change and there'll be complaints and questions on TV consumer programmes about "it didn't give me the 'when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, 47 day booked in advance special deal' fare"
Of course by that time the originators of the idea will have been paid and will have moved on.
Cynical? me??