Olympic Tickets Contain Microchip With Your Data

OMNIpotusCOM writes "Tickets to the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies will contain a microchip with information about the ticket holder, including a photograph, passport details, addresses, e-mail, and telephone numbers. The stated intent is to keep troublemakers out of the 91,000-seat National Stadium so that they cannot cause disruptions while China is on world-wide television, but it brings up serious concerns for privacy and identity theft."

Uhm... Why?

[MaliciousSmurf]

If it's for one event, it strikes me that they could have a unique ID number for each ticket, and then just cross-reference that number with an external database. Methinks that'd take care of a lot of problems.

Re:Oh the irony.

[mrbluze]

And the question still remains, how is that irony?

There is an incongruity or discordance between what a speaker or a writer says and what he or she means [wikipedia.org]. China is touting itself as a country that is reforming and ever more foreigner-friendly, yet this is what happens. Ok, it's not surprising, but it's still ironic. That good enough for you?

Re:So What?

[momerath2003]

I literally keep mine wrapped in aluminum foil. Let's see the scanners get through my paranoid Faraday cage.

Re:Just wait this is only the first

[Marillion]

They already did .... http://www.pcworld.com/ [pcworld.com] and http://networks.silicon.com/ [silicon.com]

Counterfeiting was the public reasoning for the RFID chips in the 2006 World Cup tickets.

Re:Why bother with photos?

[Anonymous Coward]

Canadians all look the same: Beady little eyes and flapping heads.

Re:Just wait this is only the first

[Splab]

They are already planning on introducing it to soccer games (not passport information though) for purpose of tracking violent fans in Denmark.

Re:China does not have to be nice.

[vux984]

I don't find wal-mart to be particularly worse than the vast majority of stores in terms of amount of crappy Chinese goods. The others, for whatever reason, make people feel good for paying more for the same crap they could have gotten for 20% less (and a different brand stuck on said products coming off the same assembly line with the same materials).

Sometimes yes they are the same.

Sometimes the materials going in aren't quite the same quality. (using lower quality steel, or cheaper plastics, or whatever...)

Sometimes the goods coming out are held to lower standards. (ie stuff that would have been rejected for the 'premium brand' is good enough for the 'walmart brand'.

I recall film in particular was like this some years ago. The brand name stuff and the generic stuff was indeed made in the same factory on the same line from the same stuff. But QC on the brand name stuff was higher. Flaws in batches that didn't meet the brand's QC levels but were still 'ok' were sold under the generic brand.

Bottom line, knowing a product came from the same factory and even assembly line as product X means squat. It might be the same product. Or it might be highly inferior.

And If I go to the US (rant/troll)

[aepervius]

I get finger printed, photographied, sometimes interrogated, paper-ed, belt & shoe stripped , and in future even technically stripped with some Tera-hertz waves. They can also snoop my laptop, require that I give my addresses where I live, and as far as I know, I have to have my passport ready at any time. The only difference I see, is that the chinese want to keep the same info on a stadium ticket and most probably in a database, whereas the US keep it in a database.Big. Effing. Deal. Sorry but you both suck for foreigner on privacy ground.

Re:Well That's It

[BananaPeel]

Yep definately.

Just go to the 2012 event

After all in 2012 in the UK you'll have:

Tracking technology is being developed that can enable a spectator to be tracked from the venue to his or her home with the tickets, what Assistant Commissioner Ghaffur calls "end-to-end tracking of tickets".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7340174.stm [bbc.co.uk]

I am sure that can't be abused

Re:Well That's It

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on who wins the next election. The only major political party to support the UKID scheme is the Labour party. Even the Tories think it's too much of an imposition; they rejected a nation wide scheme back when our terrorists were both better funded and reasonably effective.

As long our glorious leader continues with his plan to alienate every voter that isn't employed by the Civil Service, there's still hope that the whole thing will be dropped. It's just a shame that we're reliant on the Conservatives to act as the bastions of liberty.