] 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

] In general, people would be well-advised firstly to stay
] well clear of all address-book and 'social networking
] systems', and secondly to prevail upon their friends,
] colleagues and acquaintances that they should avoid
] making any data about them available to service-operators
] like Plaxo.
]
] There are two qualifications to that general statement.
] Firstly, a service that was subject to reasonable data
] protection laws would be less objectionable than services
] located in the U.S.A. or other havens such as Australia
] or a third world country. Secondly, it is feasible to
] design a privacy-sensitive address-book service or social
] networking service. Unfortunately, none of the services
] referred to in this paper have demonstrated sufficient
] understanding of the issues to suggest that they could
] mature in that direction.

On the privacy of social networking sites

] Google notes and saves information such as
] time of day, browser type, browser language, and IP
] address with each query.
]
] Please be aware, however, that we will release specific
] personal information about you if required to do so in
] order to comply with any valid legal process such as a
] search warrant, subpoena, statute, or court order.

While everyone is freaking out about their Tivos, Jeremy mentioned a much more serious issue. The fact is that TV only shows you popular culture. There are limited circumstances where surveillance of TV watching habits would really be problematic politically. TV is the soma. The Internet, on the other hand, makes your local library look tame. Google knows everything that you've thought about seriously in past 5 years. And what Google knows, the police know.

If they don't need permission or notification to pull your records from the library, how long before they can do the same with your Google records?

Google Privacy Policy

] TiVo estimated that halftime viewership among its
] customers was up 12 percent from 2003.
]
] The play-it-again company also reported that usage of its
] replay technology spiked a whopping 180 percent, the
] biggest surge ever measured, following the broadcast TV
] debut of Jackson's right mammary gland "as hundreds of
] thousands of households [TiVo'd] to view the incident
] again and again."

TiVo maintains records of everything that its customers view, including everything they ask for replays of! Is the FBI now going to be accessing this information to determine who's watching which TV shows??

TiVo's records of viewing habits

] This brings up a first major point: legislators do not
] pass laws in the expectation that everybody who violates
] them will automatically be caught and punished. Rather,
] they often pass new laws in order to send a message -- to
] their voters (that they're doing something about their
] concerns) and to the criminals (that if caught they will
] be dealt with harshly). There is a well-known presumption
] that criminals are acting rationally (in the economic
] sense) and their behaviour is influenced by the perceived
] reward for a successful crime, and both the risk and
] severity of punishment. This theory is implicitly taken
] into account by legislators when they draft legislation,
] because in our current state of affairs most crimes go
] undetected and unreported. A panopticon singularity would
] completely invalidate these assumptions.

This article contains little material that ought to be new, although some of the links are nice. I recommend it because I said this exact thing before. People tend to believe you more readily when you can reference someone else who has already said it.

The Panopticon Singularity