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Smartcards to Track London Commuters 347

Posted by michael from the skip-the-orwell-references-please dept.
misterpies writes "Technophiles across London have been excited about the recent introduction of Oyster smartcards on public transport to replace old-fashioned paper tickets. Their enthusiasm might cool off now that London Transport has admitted that not only can the card be used to track your journey across London -- they're actually going to keep the data for 'a number of years'. Add that to their congestion charge cameras used for tracking car movements and pretty soon you'll have to stick to walking if you don't want your movements tracked. Until they implement those facial recognition systems that were such a great success in Tampa, Florida."
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Smartcards to Track London Commuters More

Smartcards to Track London Commuters

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  • Paying for privacy... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JohnGrahamCumming ( 684871 ) * <slashdotNO@SPAMjgc.org> on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:38AM (#7055132) Homepage Journal
    With the Oyster Card (official web site is here: http://www.oystercard.com) you can
    in a sense "opt out" if you are willing to pay more. Since the cards are mandatory
    for people who buy season tickets, you can choose to have privacy at a fee by buying
    individual tickets (which will remain on paper for some time).

    Here in New York the Metrocard system offers some opportunity for tracking users
    because the card have a unique ID and could be linked to credit card or debit card
    information (and hence to you) if you buy the card at a machine with card. You often
    see ads in the subway encouraging people to reuse their cards, for environmental
    reasons, of course, but that does seem to me to help anyone who wanted to get long
    term data on your travel habits.

    Luckily, most Metrocard machines still accept cash for the anonymous purchase, and
    then you can throw it away after your limited set of journeys.

    Similarly, you can pay extra for a little bit of privacy on road tolls, New York's
    EZPass system is cheaper (and quicker) than the cash toll, but less private. (Unless
    you count those little cameras staring at your license plate of course).

    John.
    • Since the cards are mandatory for people who buy season tickets

      I buy a monthly travel card, and this is the first I've heard of that. If you have a source for that, I'd love to know it, as none of the advertising I've seen has said anything about it - in fact, the closest I've seen is that Oyster card users will be charged the old price for their "tickets" when the price goes up in January, while those who continue to buy (real) tickets will not. That alone implies that they are not mandatory...

      For what

    • Re:Paying for privacy... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by corbettw ( 214229 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @11:03AM (#7055431) Journal
      "Similarly, you can pay extra for a little bit of privacy on road tolls, New York's
      EZPass system is cheaper (and quicker) than the cash toll, but less private. (Unless
      you count those little cameras staring at your license plate of course)."

      Seems the EZPass system has been a guest star on "Law & Order" more times than the woman who plays the original psychiatrist. From those appearances (only because I can't think of any real life instances, and Law & Order seems, in some ways, one of the more realistic cop drama shows on TV), I wouldn't worry too much about any tracking systems. The cops still need a judge to sign a warrant to get any of it, which means you have to be under suspicion for some crime, with some (at least token) amount of evidence already against you before they can start going through the logs to see where you've been. They need much less than the to go through your garbage, since once it's on the street, it's fair game.

      I'm much more concerned about laws passed by Congress, or Parliament, or the State House, or the UN General Assembly, or our new insect overlords, banning thoughts and political affliations, than I am the ability of some group to track what you're doing and where you've been. The truth of it is, noone really cares.

      Besides all that, let's say they do build a system to track every Londoner's use of the tube. There's, what?, 20 million people in London? Let's say 5 million use the tube everyday. Now let's say each record in the db uses 256B of space. Even at that extremely tight level of data storage you're still talking about a database that grows at the rate of over 2 GB of data per day, assuming each person who uses the tube uses it twice per day. Do you know how long it would take to go back in time and track one person's movements over a five year period? Do you *really* think that's going to be useful to anyone?

      Ask anyone with experience with datawarehousing: this kind of system is *great* for working with aggregates, but absolutely sucks for drilling down to an individual.
    • We have this in Chicago already.

      http://www.chicagotransitauthority.com/

    • jesus christ people!!! who the hell cares if they know where you are and where you go?!?! people i dont know see me doing this every fscking day!!!! the paranoia in the slashdot community frightens me. newsflash...there are satalites that can track movements of individuals already....there have been for years....there is nothing you can do to keep someone from spying on you or tracking you if they really want to do so....get over it...no one cares THAT much about you anyway
    • Here in New York the Metrocard system offers some opportunity for tracking users
      because the card have a unique ID and could be linked to credit card or debit card
      information (and hence to you) if you buy the card at a machine with card.

      With the Oystercard, you swipe it while entering and exiting. With NYC's MetroCards, you only swipe while entering (there being a flat fare of $2 for all subway rides, no matter where you go). Since they could only know where someone got on the subway, it would be hard to

    • Re:Paying for privacy... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) <Satanicpuppy@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Thursday September 25, 2003 @11:23AM (#7055611) Journal
      Same deal with the old E-Z-Pass system on the Turnpike.

      This whole privacy issue gets to me sometimes. Where is a right to privacy when you're riding on the subway? In your house, sure. But a right to privacy in a public place? What's the big deal unless you're going to kill someone, and you're worried that they'll track your movements (They did this in New York once, with the aforementioned E-Z-Pass system--proved that a person HAD entered the city at a time when they claimed they hadn't).

      If I'm doing something in public, I don't really care if someone sees it. If I cared, it wouldn't be public. This kind of stuff is only going to get worse, as methods of information gathering get more sophisticated. Might as well get used to it now.

      • Re:Paying for privacy... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kfg ( 145172 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @11:57AM (#7055945)
        Do I care if I'm seen when I go out in public? No, not at all. Sometimes I actually go out in public for the express purpose of being seen.

        Do I care if I'm stalked if I go out in public? Why yes. Yes I do. Very much.

        I care even more if they can do the stalking months, or even years, after the fact.

        KFG

    • And we can take this huge universe and put it inside a very tiny head; you fold it.

  • Smartcard jammers (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Brahmastra ( 685988 )
    How about wearing jammers that confuse the electronics trying to track you?
    • No, wear normal clothes so you blend in.

      There's crazy people who ride the subways in their jammers all the time. I saw a guy with scooby doo jammers on the other day.

      He was really easy to track because he looked like a buffoon.

    • Re:Smartcard jammers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Hieronymus Howard ( 215725 ) * on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:44AM (#7055208)
      How about wearing jammers that confuse the electronics trying to track you?

      This would be moronic. If you jam the smartcard, then the ticket gates won't let you on to the platform. The gates log the id's of the smartcards passing though them. Since they know the owner of the smartcards (which are season tickets), then they can track which stations you use.

      HH
      --

    • Re:Smartcard jammers (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BenjyD ( 316700 )
      How do you get through the barriers if you're jamming the smartcard signals? You have to wave your card at the detector to get the barriers to open in order to get on to the platform. They're only tracking you at entrances and exits.
      • > How do you get through the barriers if you're
        > jamming the smartcard signals? /me: "We don't need a card to pass the barrier"

        Machine: "You don't need a card to pass this barrier. Move along now"

    • And not carrying a smart card? It isn't compulsory.
    • tracking you outside the tubes with this thing. I am confused, the range on these is NOT great, we have a bridge fast pass set up here, and if I put it in the glove box the thing wont work, just keep it sealed away when you are not on the tubes, and big deal. The secret is NOT TO JAM the system but to create hundreds on duplicate signals, so it appears as if you are in multiple places at once, if lots of people did this...DoS due to system overload...

    • Yeah...reaaaal tricky. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by switcha ( 551514 )
      How about wearing jammers that confuse the electronics trying to track you?

      Ocifer 1: Sir, we just got a jammed card signal from Reader 4 on Platform 3.

      Ocifer 2:Check the security cams for Platform 3.

      Ocifer 1: Sir, it appears there's a man with a big battery and a 1337 light-modded black box hanging from his neck.

      Ocifer 2: Is that tin-foil on his head? Jeez...*Dispatch...pick up the weirdo on Platform 3 and bring him in*

  • George Orwell... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Erik_the_Awful ( 675368 ) * on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:39AM (#7055153) Journal
    ...AKA Eric Blair was from Britain. On the bright and happy side, I suppose it gives us another hacking project. Lets see how many times the Prime Minister can be made to transverse the tubes :>

  • Next: RFID Tags in condoms (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gr33nNight ( 679837 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:40AM (#7055165)
    A day is going to come when condom makes put RFID tags on the outside of them condoms. Then the British government can start taxing that too.
    Thats one way for population control, though.

  • You're tracked in London. Period. (Score:5, Informative)

    by vinsci ( 537958 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:41AM (#7055174) Journal
    London has the worlds highest concentration of monitoring video cameras. The average Londoner is caught on video tape three hundred (300) times a day.

    See also Central London webcams go dark for anti-war demo [theregister.co.uk] at The Register.

    • Indeed you are... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by irn_bru ( 209849 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:53AM (#7055302)
      However, you are also able to - under data Protection and Human Rights legislation - see a copy of all images which may have been taken of you by these video cameras, both those operated by the Government (Traffic, CCTV, etc) and comercially (Storecams, car parks...). In many cases this is subject to a payment of an 'appropriate' fee, not exceeding 10. The body in question then has to review the footage they have taken on a particular date and forward onto you a copy of all film/video which contains pictures of you. For more information take a llok at this [mtcp.co.uk] request form at Mark Thomas' [mtcp.co.uk] web site.

      The legislation is just as relevant in this case and it would be possible to request from London Transport a copy of all information they hold on their computer systems about you and your travel movements. Then it might be possible to decide just how paranoid to become. Alternatively - just take the bus.

      • However, you are also able to - under data Protection and Human Rights legislation - see a copy of all images which may have been taken of you by these video cameras, both those operated by the Government (Traffic, CCTV, etc) and comercially (Storecams, car parks...). In many cases this is subject to a payment of an 'appropriate' fee, not exceeding 10. The body in question then has to review the footage they have taken on a particular date and forward onto you a copy of all film/video which contains picture

      • Re:Indeed you are... (Score:3, Informative)

        by ichimunki ( 194887 )
        Thank you for the voice of sanity in this discussion. It's been my position for some time that the best way to prevent abuse of this type of data is not to try and abolish it altogether, but to put some public accountability into the system (i.e. being able to audit the records they hold on me). After all, understanding trip patterns or customer behaviors or whatever is highly valuable information for those providing services of this type. This allows them (hopefully) to model various situations and to atte

      • Re:Indeed you are... (Score:4, Informative)

        by kiwi_james ( 512638 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @11:20AM (#7055583)
        request from London Transport a copy of all information they hold on their computer systems about you and your travel movements

        Or you could just do it yourself at a ticket machine.

        Walk up to any of the touchscreen ticket machines and swipe your Oystercard near the big yellow card reader thingee.

        Up pop a couple of options mainly to do with renewing your card - however there is one to view your usage history. I was quite interested when I saw it - as I wondered how much they tracked - so I swiped the card and got a nice list of all my trips over the last week - bus, train and tube - all with dates/times.

        At least if they're logging it you can actually see for yourself what they're logging without a big effort.

        Does anyone know if this trip information is stored on the Oyster Card itself, a server, or both?
      • Alternatively - just take the bus.

        Actually, Busses take these cards as well. I don't know whether the machines they have in busses store that data to upload the main system once they get back to the depot, or whether they just check to see if you've got valid data on your card, or just increment the 'oystercard' count.
    • A good article with background info:

      BEING WATCHED. A Cautionary Tale for a New Age of Surveillance [interesting-people.org]

      "According to one estimate, there are 2.5 million surveillance cameras in Britain, and in fact there may be far more".

  • Profiling and tracking sucks. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:41AM (#7055175) Homepage Journal

    Simple solution: swap your transit passes with your friends when you get together.

    SCREW PROFILING, some ways to poison the well:

    Swap supermarket "discount cards" with friends. (friend and I swap Safeway Club Cards when we get together)

    Never give the right answers on surveys. Postage-paid mail in ones are the best. Make them think you go through 12 boxes of Kotex Extra Fluffy Pads a month even though it may just be you in your mom's basement.

    Air Miles cards? Flying is cheap enough without my purchasing info being pored over by scumbag marketers.

    Places that ask for your phone number? Give them a local massage parlour's number. (yes, I have one memorized for that purpose)

    When entering your name somethere use a bogus middle initial so you know which firm sold your info when mail starts coming in with a wrong middle letter. If you get junk, return it as "Moved".

    Bah, this is way off topic (mod me to hell) but it felt good. Time to check the tinfoil on my hat.

    • also:

      use cash instead of credit cards.

      at supermarkets with the odious 'card system' tell the cashier you forgot yours or are from out of town, often they have a number they can key in for you.

    • I just use my Air Miles at liquor stores.

      Maybe its just in Canada they accept it, but as a university student, I get quite a few air miles a month.

      I have also bought alcohol based upon what had an "air miles bonus". Imagine getting 8 free air miles just to drink a different kind of vodka! Like you can tell after the 10th shot!
      • 10th shot ... wow, after about 4 shots I stop caring and just grab the bottle. :)

        But then again, I have a weakness for vodka.

        I love getting free stuff for buying booze. Same with gas (shell) and food/living stuff (pharmaplus).

        Mind you, I work for another company that has their own customer loyalty card and I know what they do wit hthe data and how they profile people, so I never use any loyalty cards/air miles cards. After hearing about the 'direct marketing' and so on that goes on with those loyalty c

    • Another one (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Doesn't_Comment_Code ( 692510 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:52AM (#7055294)
      # When entering your name somethere use a bogus middle initial so you know which firm sold your info when mail starts coming in with a wrong middle letter. If you get junk, return it as "Moved".

      I did something similar to this once, but worse for the companies. I was living in a dorm, and we got a MASS mailing from a credit card company. Three bags of mail came in that day. One was completely filled with credit card offers. Many people got more than one.

      Well that was too much. So I rounded up everyone by the mail desk, and asked them to open their offers, tear out anything with their name on it, and mail the offer, and torn up envelope back using the postage-paid envelope sent by the company.

      That way, they have to pay the postage, pay someone to open the mail, and pay extra while that person tries to figure out exactly what he's holding in his hand.

      Sort of like calling telemarketers at home... The old -taste-of-your-own-medicine- ploy.
    • The simple solution won't work. For a monthly or annual season ticket, you need a photocard, and if the photocard number on your season ticket doesn't match the one on your photocard, or the face on the photocard doesn't match your face, then you're in trouble when there is a manual ticket check (which is common on buses, trams and the Docklands Light Railway, relatively infrequent on trains and almost unheard of on the Underground).
    • Places that ask for your phone number? Give them a local massage parlour's number. (yes, I have one memorized for that purpose)
      Nah, I just ask them for theirs. The younger salesclerks get quite embarrassed when someone old enough to be their father asks for their phone number. Strangely, the older sales clerks have no problem giving me their phone number.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • My GF uses the Metro Transit here in the Greater Minneapolis area. She has a U of MN busspass now but for a short time she was using a Metropass (or whatever they are called).

      It obviously tracked when you used it but through clever marketing it was USEFUL! You got to ride the bus system for 150 mins without paying again!

      So if you have to switch busses, you ride them for free. Ingenious. They probably make more finding out where you ride and selling it than they would if you paid again...

      The Minnesota
    • You forgot the tinfoil hat. I mean really... it's bad enought that the grocery store knows what brand of bread you like, soon, maybe they'll know where you live! Oh wait... they'll know your credit card number! damn... well, I'm sure they can find out some nasty stuff and ruin your life, so, remember... tinfoil hat!!!

    • Solving the wrong problem (Score:5, Insightful)

      by s20451 ( 410424 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @11:19AM (#7055582) Journal
      All these are excellent suggestions. But as technology becomes more and more pervasive, it will become nearly impossible to fool all the potential tracking systems, without either severely inconveniencing yourself or breaking the law.

      Ultimately this problem will only be solved at the political level. The government has to be aware that its citizens are concerned about privacy. Once enough people make noise about it, and once pro-privacy representatives start winning elections, the attitude of government and corporations will start to change. Strong legal protection of privacy is the only answer; voluntary "privacy policies" are a red herring.

      However, in the current political climate, this will be an uphill climb. Most people are willing to trade off security against privacy. To force the issue, instances where personal privacy was abused with catastrophic results must be made widely known.

  • I have one (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EnglishTim ( 9662 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:42AM (#7055185)
    I was thinking about this. I recently got one, and I was thinking that at the end of the month I would request all the data that London Underground holds on me. By law, under the Data Protection Act they have to give me all the info they hold for a small fee (capped at 10 if I recall correctly).

    It will be interesting to see what they store..

    (Also, they are not permitted to share that information with anyone else without my permission)
    • "...with anyone else without my permission."

      In Dr. Strangelove, a rogue Air Force general launches a nuclear strike against Russia. When the President of the United States objects "but I thought only I was the only person with that authority," and official pauses and says "... well... it appears as if perhaps General Ripper may have exceeded his authority."

      How will you know whether they are sharing that information? Are you certain that they are not permitted to share it with, say, law enforcement offic
    • Say, why doesn't the sign for Pounds Sterling work on Slashdot?

  • What I don't understand is... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by i_really_dont_care ( 687272 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:42AM (#7055188)
    why everyone these days actually gathers as much data as possible and saves it for very long periods. Is it actually useful to have this data after several years? I don't mean the statistics gathered (like how many passenger there were), but the raw, personalized, data itself. Or do they hope this will make them friends within the police/government?
    • I can see from the point of view of planning transit outlays how being able to link every trip to a specific user would be useful; say, it turns out that people who live in Islington tend to use the system only on weekdays, while those in the West End only use it on weekends. Of course, that doesn't mean it's not creepy and eminiently abusable, but there are uses.
  • What everyone needs...is some of that "smart tint" they have for rear view mirrors (so that at night if there is a car with its brights on you dont get glare). Basically what it does is darkens when a current is passed through it. Install some of this in front of your front/rear license plates. Enter your car, turn it on. See a police/po-po/five-oh, turn it off. Magically...they cannot track you!

    Everyone also needs one of those fake nose/sunglasses. Sure you look ridiculous, but they cannot track yo

  • Possible Fix (Score:3, Funny)

    by Doesn't_Comment_Code ( 692510 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:44AM (#7055201)

    Well, they can only track you by your smartcard ticket.

    So if you're worried, just take your card and smash it all up with a hammer. Far more effective and much cheaper than any sort of jamming device. And the results are virtually instantaneous. I've heard rumors that this method also works 99.999% of the time.

  • Sounds like a job for... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ejito ( 700826 )
    Angle Grinder Man [anglegrinderman.com]

    Maybe he has a brother, Card Scambler Man, for getting rid of those nasty radio tracking waves.

  • Degauss for Privacy (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:46AM (#7055232)
    http://www.degaussers.net/degausserVS250.htm

    In some cases, the data is not kept on the card, but more and more I run into places that want to 'swipe' various cards to input data into their systems. This is starting to become very notable in Texas, where everyone and their brother wants to swipe your TXDL while you're paying.

    Degaussing my driver's license and ruining the track 1 and 2 data stored on it means that the various POS terminals that want to scan it go balls up. The manager comes over and almost invariably says 'Hmmm... Treat this like a cash payment.'

    It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.

    Is inconvenience worth your privacy? It is for me.

    • Re:Degauss for Privacy (Score:2, Informative)

      by iainl ( 136759 )
      Why in God's name would you do this to an Oyster card? They wouldn't work then.
    • Yeah, that's nice, but this is a smartcard we're talking about. It's not magnetic. I suppose if you hit it bad enough to induce a ton of current in it, you could fry it.

      This type of card is a "get near the reader" RF induction read, not a "swipe through and read the magnetic track" read.

    • Re:Degauss for Privacy (Score:4, Informative)

      by 200_success ( 623160 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @11:55AM (#7055932)

      Degaussing the magnetic strip on your driver's license might be considered mutilation, and might be illegal. Besides, a store clerk who gets your license with a damaged magnetic stripe might just decide to hand-copy the information on it, which doesn't help your privacy. What you want to do is to refuse to hand over your license in the first place.

      The contracts that the merchants have with Visa, MasterCard, and American Express prohibit [gofso.com] them from requiring your ID to charge one of their cards. Furthermore, in some states it is illegal to ask for personal information when taking a credit card. (Texas is not among them.)

      The link has a number of other interesting facts:

      • Visa and MasterCard don't allow their merchants to specify minimum charges or surcharges for using their cards.
      • If a merchant doesn't comply with the above rules, you can report them to your credit card company.
      • Some states (Texas not among them) forbid merchants to write your credit card number on a check.

    • Re:Degauss for Privacy (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pmz ( 462998 )
      It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.

      I don't know, they'll probably just create ID cards that cannot be degaussed. What about a card whose entire surface is a hologram, where any portion of the card is as valid as the whole. You'd have to vaporise such a card to bypass it, which means you'd just have to go get a new card.

      I.e., perhaps the card itself is the issue.

  • Fixed that in Finland (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Neva ( 630016 ) <jneva@m b n e t . fi> on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:47AM (#7055236)
    We had an argument with the public transportation department (ytv) in the beginning of the year when "travel cards" were taken into use.

    The tracking info was previously put in store for months, now it isn't permanently recorded.
    Complain to your decisionmakers, it worked before.
  • While I can see there are privacy implications with the storing of this data (especially with name/address data stored for billing purposes), it seems to me there are also fairly large advantages in using such a system, both to the operators and passengers.

    Firstly, readers should remember that Transport for London [tfl.gov.uk], who currently operate the tube network are a publically run company whose sole aim is to provide cheap and efficient travel for Londoners and visitors. Even if the Tube did move to a public-pr

    • readers should remember that Transport for London [tfl.gov.uk], who currently operate the tube network are a publically run company whose sole aim is to provide cheap and efficient travel for Londoners and visitors

      That's exactly what they don't provide.

      HH
      --
  • Send them a tenner and demand to see all of the information they have on you.

  • What's new? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Larsing ( 645953 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:49AM (#7055253)
    And how is this any different from the ordinary magnetic strip paper cards which has been in use for years on the Tube?
    They, incidentally, also have a unique ID number linked to the registered owner's name, which is recorded together with the location and time of the exchange every time the card is used...

    • Re:What's new? (Score:3, Informative)

      by mikeplokta ( 223052 )
      The machines that scan the mag-strip cards do not record the timestamp, location and card number in a central database. The Oystercard machines do.
      • The mag-stripe machines certainly do store that info, at least for a short while, because the machines don't let you use the same card through the same set of barriers for a little while. AFAICT, there's nothing fundamentally different with the new cards, privacy wise, except for the storage medium.
        • Umm, the mag-stripe machines store the details of the card which has been travelling around the system. The oystercard is identifiable to you personally. That's the fundamental difference.

  • But.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by tarquin_fim_bim ( 649994 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:51AM (#7055282)
    "Until they implement those facial recognition systems"

    ...they already have in London Borough of Newham [theregister.co.uk].

  • It's understandable that people don't want third parties recording where they're going all the time.

    However, it's also very understandable how this data would essential for intelligently planning mass transit. It's not enough just to measure how many people enter and exit and each terminal. It helps to know where a particular rider begins and ends her commute. Knowing where most people start and end their trips allows for express routes.

    Instead of ranting about government intrusiveness, put all that

    • After a long day of logging and then processing the results... you need to know how many people travelled between any particular two stations on any given train.

      I strongly suspect that once you've distilled the raw data down to "From Stop A, 10 passengers travelled to Stop C, 5 passengers to Stop E" you don't need to know who those individual passengers are. There isn't any statistically valid reason of which I am aware for keeping that information.

      • No, you don't need to know that "Joe Smith" travels every day from A to B, but you do need to know that the same people are travelling from A to B regularly over time.

  • This may sound like 1984... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by canfirman ( 697952 ) <pdavi25 @ y a h o o . ca> on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:55AM (#7055331)
    ...but it is of some concern.

    Let's face it: in our digital age, privacy has become a scarce commodity. We just have to surf the net and wonderful items such as cookies and spyware are downloaded to our machine at no additional cost. Not to mention corporate internet tracking tools to see what employees are surfing.

    And what about credit card information? Why should I have somebody analyze my purchases to determine what I buy? Or, retail companies who analyze sales data by region (even right down to the household). If I want to buy from your store, I will.

    As much as people say, "You're information will not be shared with anybody else...", I personally don't believe it. That's like saying we can carry a water with a siv.

    The old addage of, "Well, if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear..." is a load of crap. Why should we have anything to track our movements? All we need is somebody to say something is illegal/unethical/etc, and they can find out who's been going to those "illegal/unethical/etc" places (whether on the net or on the street).

    People have been crying to governments for years for privacy, but it seems governments cannot keep up with technology. Heck, even governments allow this kind of activity. There's been quite a controversy over street cameras here in Canada, whether they be cameras to patrol the streets to stop crime, to photo-radar to stop speeding, to red-light cameras...with no proof it stops crime.

    I know this sounds too much like a rant, but what I'd like to know is what can we do about it? We cry when our privacy is invaded, but how can we protect it? I'm looking for some realistic and practical solutions (blowing up governments is not a practical solution :-) ).

    Thanks.

  • This is hardly new (Score:3, Interesting)

    by david.given ( 6740 ) <dg@cowlark.com> on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:57AM (#7055359) Homepage Journal
    Tube tickets are trackable anyway --- they're paper tickets with magnetic stripes. There's a serial number on the stripe. If you buy your ticket with a credit card, I have no doubt that the serial number gets linked to your credit card number in a database somewhere; which means it's easy to work out that card #2284752 left the Tube at King's Cross and was bought by J. Random Punter.

    Frankly, I fail to see what the fuss is about. The Tube is public. You have no expectations of privacy. If you're worried about being tracked, buy your tickets with cash --- but remember your trenchcoat and false beard...

  • (Technofiles') enthusiasm might cool off now that London Transport has admitted that not only can the card be used to track your journey across London -- they're actually going to keep the data for 'a number of years'.

    We are not technophiles. We are not citizens. We are not even humans. We are consumers to corporations and governments, thus the old-fashioned notions of rights and privacy no longer apply. We are fodder for marketing departments and government committees.

    Welcome to the 21st century.

  • A fairly easy solution would be to form a pool, preferably with people with little or no connection to you. You all buy Toll/Fare/Smart cards with the same amount on them and then switch amongst yourselves. This way, yes your movements are being tracked but the info is attributed to someone else.
  • Does this mean that DirecTV is now going to come after all London commuters? After all, according to DirecTV, the only reason anyone would ever want to own a smart card, is to pick up satellite TV service without paying DirecTV.
  • There was an urban legend in the mid-eighties regarding the Stockholm subway system (probably other cities as well) that amounted to the same thing - that your journeys would be tracked. It caused many people to avoid having magnetic subway cards (despite that they were purchased anonymously) instead opting for either the more expensive regular tickets, or freeriding.

    If you can read swedish, there's an interesting website on freeriders in Sweden [planka.nu].
  • The Brits are a funny lot (I'm British but haven't lived there for some years so I think I have both an internal and external view of them).

    Currently there are all these increadably Orwellian things going on in the UK. It's amazing to drive anywhere in the UK now, there are cameras everywhere. And I don't mean the ones that photograph you when you speed (although there are lots of those), I mean video cameras. When I ask people what they are for, people don't seem to have thought about it very much.

    And ye
  • I can't say that being tracked by my Tube pass really scares me. Pretty much anywhere in London you can look up and smile at a video camera. If I'm already being watched by a few hundred cameras a day and having my movements tracked by my cell phone, I'll take one more form of tracking if it means I don't have to wait in line as much.

    If you want privacy in London, get out of London. If you can deal with six ways of being tracked (as opposed to teh current five), then these seem fine.
  • For you privacy theorists/skeptics out there, what if I buy 7 of these - 1 for each member of my family and 1 for each of my 2 triplet brothers...

    Now, each of us travels around with some of those travel segments being with others using the cards I bought.

    Who are they tracking, the purchaser of the cards or the person using the card?

    Anyone that thinks they can accurately track anyone with this technology is simply wrong. They would have to assume that everyone that uses them buys 1 and only 1 card and
  • Anyone who watches "Law and Order" saw episodes where people were tracked from their Metro Cards. These are magnetic strip stored value cards. They're at least kind of disposable, but they allow you to purchase/add value with debut or credit cards, so they can track a name to a Metro Card ID.

    Chicago has the stored value card, though no ATM/Credit card is even possible - Cash only. Additionally it has had "Chicago Cards" for a while, though not heavily used. It's a Weigand (RF) card that you can add mone

  • We've had this problem for a long time (Score:3, Informative)

    by Inode Jones ( 1598 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @11:23AM (#7055618) Homepage
    Back in 1994, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) introduced annual transit passes. These were credit-card sized, with a magnetic strip to operate the turnstiles and your picture on the card for boarding buses and streetcars. You needed to provide your address when getting the pass in the first place.

    No smart cards or RFID needed - presumably each pass had a unique magnetic code, which the TTC can correlate with your photo and address at the time the pass is issued. I don't know if the turnstiles logged the use of the magnetic cards for any extended period of time. They do enforce the rule that the same card cannot operate the turnstiles at a station within a 5-minute time span, to avoid obvious sharing.

    This type of tracking was possible only with the single-card pass. Monthly pass users have a separate magnetic card and photo-ID, which are not correlated. You buy a new magnetic card each month, write your photo-ID number on it and away you go, so the mapping between magnetics and person changes each month.

    The TTC also had a monthly subscription system where you could give them a credit card number and they mail you a magnetic pass each month. Same problems.

    I thought I had a comp.risks submission about this, but I can't find it in the archives.

  • In Singapore.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by retro128 ( 318602 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @11:32AM (#7055710)
    I visited Singapore a couple of months ago and they already have a system like this in place. At the MRT station, you give them $10, and they hand you a card with $5 on it. The other $5 is a deposit that you get back when you turn the card in (I hope I remembered that right. Feel free to correct me if you know otherwise) They do not require any personal information, which seems to differ from the UK version. Other than that, the function appears to be identical.

    Singapore's MRT system is highly efficient and is all run on these cards. We did not need a taxi or a car to see most of the country, and getting around was a snap even though we were tourists and it was our first time in Singapore (I guess it helps that English is a primary language there :)). Obviously, the system works great without the need to tie personal information to the card.

    Draw your own conclusions as to why the UK goverment feels the need to assign names to the cards.

  • A Londoner speaks... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cally ( 10873 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @11:42AM (#7055820) Homepage
    Actually I recently left the Smoke for a nearby commuter town [streetmap.co.uk] and very dull it is too, so much so I comute back up to London most weekends to stay with friends. I also find myself inthe congestion charge zone during hours of operation (Mon-Fri, 7:30am-6:30pm) several times a month on average.

    I have no problem at all with the congestion charge per se - something needs to be done to improve public transport, and this is as good a way of raising funds as any other, now that the neocon regressive tax regieme instituted by Thatcher is now the default set up (the less you earn, the more tax you pay.) Encouraging people not to drifve into Central London (esp the City) is a Good Thing IMHO - I must say I appreciate the quiet & practically empty roads ;)

    However I've just had an extremely painful experience trying to pay the CC. Their website [cclondon.com] is absolutely atrocious, breaking just about every usability rule you could think of. eg navigation buttons implemented in Java??!! Why, oh why?! And trying to use it in Lynx (or links) - well, forget it. Then the actual navigation itself is completely b0rked. I imagine 90% of people arriving on the front page want either (a) a link to the "pay online now" form, or (b) the phone-number for paying by credit card. I encourage anyone with ten minutes on their hands to visit the above URL and try hunting for those bits of information. No points for getting half-way through completeing the form before realising they're actually trying to REGISTER you (as in, collect personal info) rather than just taking CC details and car registration number.

    So I fired off a somewhat ranty complaint using their (equally dreadful) "contact us" stuff. Yes we've got a fancy DHTML form with a font size set unreadbaly small which stops you typing more than a couple of hundred chars. Oh and of course let's waste 70% of the screen real estate on whitespace , pointless graphics etc etc.

    Today I got a response back. Of course it's a canned reply - what really put the icing on the cake was that the mail arrived with an attached HTML page (!) called something like "template.109797653-236" !! Have these people never heard of RFC822? I heard a rumour that the IT infrastructure was built by EDS, which might partly explain how utterly, utterly shite the site is.

    I have similar feeliongs about the Oyster card - in theory a smart swipeable card is a good idea, and collecting anonymised data on which journeys people actually make is obviously a Good Thing for planning, resource management etc. but why do I get teh feeling that a bureacracy is rolling and, in tune with the evil schemes of Mr Blunkett, is planning to violate all alleged 'civil liberties' BY DEFAULT? If only a few civil servants would lose their pensions when the inevitable review by the EU court of human rights throws out the whole scheme... ah well a man can dream can't he...

    I shall also miss the old cardboard tickets when they're finally phased out. Apart from the saddo-anal-retentive thing of keeping old tickets stamped with particular dates (elections, dead royals, and other days of special celebration) they're absolutely perfect roach material. I shall have to return to collecting old club fliers on Saturday mornings...

  • The only solution I see is the separation of the personal details and ID's. Like usernames: they identifie you, but don't give access to your personal information. The guvernment has, as should have your personal information. But I think a system could be made so everybody else( banks, shops, tube companies) only get your ID are not allowed to have your private information unless with direct consent from you. And for law enforcement you can always allow the combination of the databases with a warrant if you

  • I'v said it before and I'll say it again (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TyrranzzX ( 617713 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @12:24PM (#7056181) Journal
    The reason people have problems with any information gathering system is because the more information you have on a person, the more power you have over them.

    If I know all kinds of things about you I can then engauge in, for example, black ops to eliminate you if you do something I don't like. Slip some cianide into your food while you leave it in your car or the like.

    Point here is, nobody trusts the goverment and rightly so. More often than not the law is abused horribly. Plus, if a new law is passed and the goverment has computers than can instantly tell what you've been doing, and can then launch a lawsuit against you, what is going to happen to the rapists and real killers? The system's going to be so swamped it isn't even funny plus what if they decide they'll just abduct people at random without trial and throw them into prison labor camps?

    All you're going to do with this kind of system is creat criminals who are smarter and better equiped to fight the law. Plus, with the shotty record of large corperations; communisum failed becuase nobody was motivated to make good stuff, capitalism will fail becuase damn near everybody is so greedy they're trying to essentially bait and switch everybody into buying crap. What's more profitable? Selling you a watch that is a good one or selling you one that'll break in 6 months, is inexpensive to manufacture but looks expensive on the outside?

    So what do you want to bet that whever you're buying from goverment agencies is crap?

  • You Own Your Data (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tom's a-cold ( 253195 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @01:02PM (#7056501) Homepage
    The real problem is this: your everyday actions generate a (continually growing) stream of data. But, under the present system, you don't have ownership rights to that data. There has been some recognition that you're a stakeholder who can demand corrections to some categories of data (for instance, credit reports), but it still belongs to someone else.

    The law should be changed to explicitly state that you have an ownership interest in data that is derived from your transactions and movements. It may not be 100% ownership, but for the sake of argument, let's say it's 50/50. The only exception should be for journalism, since journalists are already constrained by libel laws. Then unauthorized dissemination of your personal information can fall under the increasingly draconian IP laws, and furthermore you will be entitled to a share of the revenues derived from sale of your data.

    This still doesn't help with governments, but will put an economic constraint on the privatization of totalitarian control that's been progressing unchecked in developed countries.

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