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'How I Went Dark In Australia's Surveillance State For 2 Years' (cnet.com)
schwit1 shares a report from CNET, written by Claire Reilly: In 2015, during the transition from paper to Opal [contactless public transit cards], Australia passed sweeping new data retention laws. These laws required all Australian internet service providers and telecommunications carriers to retain customers' phone and internet metadata for two years -- details like the phone number a person calls, the timestamps on text messages or the cell tower a phone pings when it makes a call. Suddenly, Australians were fighting for the right to stay anonymous in a digital world. On one side of the fence: safety-conscious civilians. They argued that this metadata was a powerful tool and that the ability to track a person's movements through phone pings or call times was vital for law enforcement. On the other side of the fence: digital civil libertarians. They argued that the data retention scheme was invasive and that this metadata could be used to build up an incredibly detailed picture of someone's life. And sitting in a barn two paddocks away from that fence: me, switching out burner phones and researching VPNs. When it emerged that police had the power to search Opal card data, track people's movements and match this to individual users, it was the last straw. August 2016 rolled around, paperless tickets were phased out and I hatched my plan. The Black Opal. The concept of the Black Opal is simple. Buy your transport card. Pay cash. Top up with cash (preferably in a new location each time). Never register it. Never link it to your credit or debit card. Live off the grid. Stay away from The Man.
[Reilly discusses the problems she faced:] All the top-up machines at train stations, light rail stops and ferry terminals were card-only affairs. One tap on that baby and you were back in the system. So, if I was busing downtown for a work meeting, I'd have to factor in extra time to get to an ATM, get cash out and then find somewhere to top up my card. Running for the train with friends, I was the one who had to divert three blocks, change jackets, burn off my fingerprints and find a nondescript corner store to top up. Here's what I learned. No one likes the paranoid one. [...] I finally came undone last week. Racing for a flight, I forgot about my Black Opal. I'd had an unusually busy week on public transport, and my balance was low. On the train to the airport terminal, it hit me. Did I have enough money on my card to pay the AU$17.76 tap-off fee that they use to gouge tourists at the airport? As I rode up the escalators and the exit turnstiles came into view, my heart sank. No ATM. No cash in my wallet. Just a row of bright green Opal readers and a top-up machine. Card only. With one trip, my years of off-grid living were undone. I slumped against the top-up machine and swiped my debit card. I was just 9 cents short, but it cost me so much more than that. My Black Opal was dead.
[Reilly discusses the problems she faced:] All the top-up machines at train stations, light rail stops and ferry terminals were card-only affairs. One tap on that baby and you were back in the system. So, if I was busing downtown for a work meeting, I'd have to factor in extra time to get to an ATM, get cash out and then find somewhere to top up my card. Running for the train with friends, I was the one who had to divert three blocks, change jackets, burn off my fingerprints and find a nondescript corner store to top up. Here's what I learned. No one likes the paranoid one. [...] I finally came undone last week. Racing for a flight, I forgot about my Black Opal. I'd had an unusually busy week on public transport, and my balance was low. On the train to the airport terminal, it hit me. Did I have enough money on my card to pay the AU$17.76 tap-off fee that they use to gouge tourists at the airport? As I rode up the escalators and the exit turnstiles came into view, my heart sank. No ATM. No cash in my wallet. Just a row of bright green Opal readers and a top-up machine. Card only. With one trip, my years of off-grid living were undone. I slumped against the top-up machine and swiped my debit card. I was just 9 cents short, but it cost me so much more than that. My Black Opal was dead.
This is exactly why you have TWO cards. One that you use only occasionally that is traceable and used only for emergencies, and one that you use mostly, which you top up with loads of cash (and cash only), and keep frelling topped up. If you're really paranoid, you cycle the cash-only one every month or two for a new one, and don't frelling worry about the last dollar-and-a-half when you ditch it.
Basic engineering: make allowances for cockups.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Why did she hold onto one single card for so long and keep topping it up?
You'd think somebody who was truly paranoid would have multiple cards, and routinely discard older cards and acquire new cards through unorthodox means. For example, if you hang out at the airport outside the "tap off" exit from the train, you can find a lot of tourists who are flying out and just want to discard their old transit card. Or put just enough to "tap on" (there's usually a minimum balance to enter the train station) on your old cards, and then find homeless people who have a near-zero-value card and trade with them-- they get into the station, you get a new anonymous card with some random travel history on it.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Australia doesn't actually require ID to fly domestically in all cases so manifests may or may not be accurate. Also, there are plenty of non-flyers going to the airport on any given day. Contractors, interviewees, people meeting friends/dropping them off, etc.
Buy your transport card. Pay cash. Top up with cash (preferably in a new location each time). Never register it. Never link it to your credit or debit card. Live off the grid. Stay away from The Man.
Ya, because acting like that isn't suspicious. "The Man" knows someone is paying for that unregistered, un-linked card w/cash, at different locations. They know the card number, they know where and when it was reloaded and used. They have CCTV cameras. They have a picture of you from somewhere you used it and, if you have any official ID -- driver license, passport, etc... -- they can match them up. They know who you are, what you're doing and where you're doing it. They have devices to identify the mobile phone(s) you're carrying and can track them if they want to.
Either they've been tracking you all this time or determined that you're an idiot and have been ignoring you all this time.
Why do you think businesses and governments encourage, and make it easy to use, electronic payment systems over cash? Identification and tracking.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
If anything, Europeans are MORE concerned about privacy than Americans.
The EU actually put data-privacy and retention limits in place. Germany is still largely a cash economy BECAUSE people value their privacy. (holdover from WW2?)
They called me the nameless one, the ghost who commutes, the silent passenger who refused to get an Opal transport card.
I doubt "they" called you any of those things -- especially since you actually *had* an Opal transport card (that you simply paid for w/cash).
I'm going to call you "pretentious".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The original card's entire history was tied to a real person with one single card transaction. That's the big loss.
I only read the headline (mea culpa) but...
Don't be too hard on yourself; that probably saved you some brain cells. TFA is either a joke, or the woman is literally an idiot.
Here's an excerpt (really):
My email address (that is, my real email address, not my burner address) doesn't use my birth name. I am no fun at birthday parties, but you'd never know it... mostly because I won't reveal my actual birthday.
But I'm not alone. For someone who was mostly educated through the received wisdom of Hollywood movies, I learned a lot about what The State could do to me. I watched "The Net" as if it were a documentary. I didn't brush my hair for weeks after watching "Gattaca." I spent months walking around my house, narrating my life after watching "The Truman Show," just to give Ed Harris more material to edit.
I wish these stories weren't true. But in the grim near future of "Demolition Man" I know I would be the one hiding in the bathroom, away from the countless surveillance cameras, trying to stop people stealing my eyeballs.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It's a choice, a free choice, one that should not be taken away, the individual right to live a private life, ohhh, the sheer outrageous evil of that thought apparently.
Trying to live a private life is difficult at this time because of just so many psychopathic control freaks in position of power, being able to pry into others lives, feeds their ego, their sexual perversions, it is their nature, from primary school to adulthood, the same perverse behaviour, a real sickness.
In this age, you stay private by creating false information a flood of false data and preferably get your electronic device to do it for you. Create 100 times as much data, as your actual behaviour would generate, 1% truth mixed in with 99% lies and let them try to datamine that. False associations, false behaviour, false contacts, a sea of bullshit they have to wade through at high cost, only to discover they have eliminated the truth by accident along they way because they were looking for negative outcomes and created them, only to find they were not real.
More FOSS tools need to be created to poison databases and hopelessly corrupt data mining. Every venue of digital contact should be flooded with 100 times as many fictitious data contacts. A ocean of data motion, rather than just tapping into your private stream, of data flow. All you social media should be done in fantasy mode, a toon you create to interact with others toons or a broader scale (a really imaginative toon, that you express yourself with, so nothing wrong with presenting yourself as a blue century egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... with no gender as yet, with a bent for space piracy and a fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton for World President and all who oppose her are deplorables and should die horribly, it should make no difference in reality, something to laugh at and have fun with, to mock and deride, not life or death), linked to alternate encrypted contact methods.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Australia has a horrific past for human rights, especially if you're born black and native.
Even now they're terribly nanny state and I wouldn't be surprised to find out there continue to be dodgy policies that just aren't being made public.