] Motorists are routinely driven to distraction by car
] insurance bills over which they have little control. A
] GPS based system aims to end all that, by introducing
] monthly pay-as-you-drive cover.

Surveillance makes things cheaper for you. And more convenient. Sign up now. Pretty soon, everyone will be hooked up and you'll be left out in the cold.

BBC NEWS - Could pay-as-you-drive insurance work?

] The Federal Communications Commission voted 5-0 last week
] to prohibit businesses from offering broadband or
] Internet phone service unless they provide police with
] backdoors for wiretapping access. Formal regulations are
] expected by early next year.

This is in direct violation of the deal the FBI struck in Congress to get this law passed in the first place.

FBI wins VOIP wiretapping debate

] Most Instant Messenger users broadcast when they sign on,
] sign off, go idle, and flag themselves as away. This
] presence information is typically innocuous, useful for
] knowing if your buddies are available to chat. But when
] monitored continuously, over long time periods, those few
] signals tell a lot. This website lets you record and
] analyze anybody's IM activity.

Somebody is watching you... for someone else.

IM Watching.net

] Rather than shooting RFID chips into people, people with RFID chips
] already in or on them will be shot. People with RFID chips in their
] clothing, books, bags, or bodies could be targeted by "smart projectiles"
] that will zero in on that particular Smart.

[Politech] John Gilmore's horrific, dystopian view of an RFID world [priv]

] One of the nation's wealthiest towns will soon have
] cameras and computers running background checks on every
] car and driver that passes through.

The license plate takes another step closer to it's destiny.

newsobserver.com - Florida town to use surveillance cameras

] The Pinellas school system is ready to approve a new
] technology that uses student fingerprints to keep track
] of who is riding school buses.

Children who grow up accustomed to this kind of surveillance on a daily basis will not question it when they are asked to do it as adults.

Tampabay: Have your thumb ready to ride the bus

] Finding the rightful recipient of the ticket could be as
] simple as sliding in a mobile phone-style SIM-card
] instead of a key. The card would contain
] details of the driver's licence and address.
]
] Wireless technology would allow the car to communicate
] with the speed camera, and the fine could be deducted from
] the driver's credit card before he or she even made it home.

Coming to a Singapore near you...

[Politech] Toyota's concept car rats out speeders to the police [priv]

] A test of an iris-scanning system is set to begin
] Saturday at the Frankfurt, Germany, airport, as part of a
] project involving 18 European countries.

Europe's response to our fingerprint requirement? Iris scanning...

Iris scanning to begin at German airport | CNET News.com

] Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber
] Crime Squad have been approaching O'ahu computer-repair
] specialists, network consultants and software developers
] and asking them to report any overtly criminal activity
] they find in customers' computers.
]
] The FBI primarily is looking for purveyors of child pornography, software used in
] the piracy of movies and music, and threats to national security.

Next time you send your computer in for repair you better hope the guy who repairs it doesn't think he's a junior FBI agent. Kazaa is right there on the list, between the kiddy porn and the terrorism.

The Honolulu Advertiser - Computer Repair Shops and the FBI

Rattle wrote:
] Here is a question for the MemeStreams community.. If you
] were proposing legislation for laws governing how venues can
] collect and user information from IDs, what would you propose?

Damn, Rattle, why don't you ask a complex question. A few thoughts:

1. Most pro privacy people are libertarians, and so they generally shy away from government regulation. This has resulted in the situation we have today online, which is that entities must disclose what they do with your data, and you get to make choices. This is good in the sense that entities have been more conservative with what they do because its visible and consumers have been able to apply market pressure to reign things in.

Should the government force me to be private even if I don't want to be? I don't think so. The government should create a framework in which we can make choices.

2. The best analogy I've heard here is to copyright. There are a great deal of very strict rules about what an individual can do with commercial information. On the other hand, the rules about what a commercial entity can do with a individual's personal information are very liberal. Looking at the situation in this light is illustrative of whose interests are upheld.

The relationship is direct. Congress approved "no judge" subpoenas that the RIAA can use to obtain your personal information in order to protect their copyrights.

Furthermore, when lack of privacy causes problems, like spam, watching the government react is a lot like watching paint dry.

The system is not responding to your interests.

One of the worst offenders, of course, is the government itself. They create all these IDs. Furthermore, they usually sell the databases to all comers. In Texas you can get the DMV database on CD-ROM. Someone took it and setup a website where you could search it. People got pissed. So Texas passed a law making websites like that illegal. They still sell the CDs and the website has moved offshore. Talk about missing the point.

We ought to curtain the data the government shares.

3. The most important thing that we need is awareness and sophistication about this issue with the general populace. Levels of understanding have improved a great deal in the last 20 years, but there is still a lot of road to cover.

There is no reason why Google can't discard the last two octets of your IP address. It will not impact their demographics at all, but it would provide enough protection against turning their database into a thought crime monitor. And they'll do it, but only if we demand it.

RE: Wired News: Great Taste, Less Privacy