The Times: Tech column - Oyster privacy/political websites/Amazon
By David Rowan
IF YOU HAVE used public transport in London recently, you will have seen the new "Oyster" smart cards being promoted as high-tech replacements for the Travelcard. Once you register, you can board trains or buses simply by waving your card near one of 16,000 yellow readers. Just the kind of convenience that modern technology can offer today's beleaguered commuter.
But what if the card were being used to monitor your movements, allowing the police or government snoopers to know where you were at any time? What if the card's radio signal could be automatically identified from a distance, not unlike the controversial radio frequency identification smart tags being introduced to track consumer goods after they have left the shop? You might want to inquire about these cards' intended use beyond ticketing.
By assigning each card a unique number linked to your personal details, Transport for London (TfL), the body responsible, can learn much about you by logging data generated wherever your card is read. The cards, TfL admits, will track individual passengers' movements in intimate detail, providing a personal data trail that will be stored. And though your travel history will ostensibly be used to "improve the journey planning process", it will also be available to law-enforcement agencies.
TfL's disconcertingly large entry in the Data Protection Register suggests just how intimately it may hope to get to know you. The entry, number Z5623601, shows that TfL stores personal data in 28 separate categories, collecting details such as individuals' political opinions, religious beliefs and even "sexual life".
Civil rights groups wonder which other bodies will gain access to all this information, especially now that it can be tied to our physical movements. The Information Commissioner has started asking TfL to explain itself.
The London mayor, Ken Livingstone, is an enthusiast for personal surveillance on the transport system, which may explain why the city's traffic-monitoring cameras become mysteriously unavailable to the public whenever the police have a street march to control. Other government agencies, meanwhile, are talking of expanding the Oyster card into a wider "London Citizen Card", to be used for everything from benefits claims to library loans. If that is starting to sound like a radio-signalling ID card, you might want to consider paying cash the next time you take a London bus.
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SOMETIMES you can wait months for a useful new website to come along. Then three arrive. The official Hansard website (www.parliament.uk/hansard/hansard.cfm) is a fine research tool, but it requires you to pore through endless columns of guff - parliamentary debates - to discover what your MP thinks.
Now some clever volunteers have built a website that does the searching for you. The Public Whip (www.publicwhip.org.uk) automatically analyses every MP's voting record, and presents the results in an easily searchable form. You can discover that Paul Marsden, MP, is the leading rebel and that the Prime Minister has a mere 7.7 per cent attendance record.
If you prefer your politics with a small "p", the BBC's bold new iCan! website (www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ican) may, as it claims, help you to "change the world around you". An interactive database of campaigns and single-issue politics, it tells you how to organise a local anti-litter campaign or what your maternity rights are.
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Amazon.com has launched a Search Inside the Book feature that lets you search the full text of 120,000 books. Unless copyright concerns make the various publishers rethink, this looks like being the ultimate literary archive.
(The Times, October 28 2003)
IF YOU HAVE used public transport in London recently, you will have seen the new "Oyster" smart cards being promoted as high-tech replacements for the Travelcard. Once you register, you can board trains or buses simply by waving your card near one of 16,000 yellow readers. Just the kind of convenience that modern technology can offer today's beleaguered commuter.
But what if the card were being used to monitor your movements, allowing the police or government snoopers to know where you were at any time? What if the card's radio signal could be automatically identified from a distance, not unlike the controversial radio frequency identification smart tags being introduced to track consumer goods after they have left the shop? You might want to inquire about these cards' intended use beyond ticketing.
By assigning each card a unique number linked to your personal details, Transport for London (TfL), the body responsible, can learn much about you by logging data generated wherever your card is read. The cards, TfL admits, will track individual passengers' movements in intimate detail, providing a personal data trail that will be stored. And though your travel history will ostensibly be used to "improve the journey planning process", it will also be available to law-enforcement agencies.
TfL's disconcertingly large entry in the Data Protection Register suggests just how intimately it may hope to get to know you. The entry, number Z5623601, shows that TfL stores personal data in 28 separate categories, collecting details such as individuals' political opinions, religious beliefs and even "sexual life".
Civil rights groups wonder which other bodies will gain access to all this information, especially now that it can be tied to our physical movements. The Information Commissioner has started asking TfL to explain itself.
The London mayor, Ken Livingstone, is an enthusiast for personal surveillance on the transport system, which may explain why the city's traffic-monitoring cameras become mysteriously unavailable to the public whenever the police have a street march to control. Other government agencies, meanwhile, are talking of expanding the Oyster card into a wider "London Citizen Card", to be used for everything from benefits claims to library loans. If that is starting to sound like a radio-signalling ID card, you might want to consider paying cash the next time you take a London bus.
++++
SOMETIMES you can wait months for a useful new website to come along. Then three arrive. The official Hansard website (www.parliament.uk/hansard/hansard.cfm) is a fine research tool, but it requires you to pore through endless columns of guff - parliamentary debates - to discover what your MP thinks.
Now some clever volunteers have built a website that does the searching for you. The Public Whip (www.publicwhip.org.uk) automatically analyses every MP's voting record, and presents the results in an easily searchable form. You can discover that Paul Marsden, MP, is the leading rebel and that the Prime Minister has a mere 7.7 per cent attendance record.
If you prefer your politics with a small "p", the BBC's bold new iCan! website (www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ican) may, as it claims, help you to "change the world around you". An interactive database of campaigns and single-issue politics, it tells you how to organise a local anti-litter campaign or what your maternity rights are.
++++
Amazon.com has launched a Search Inside the Book feature that lets you search the full text of 120,000 books. Unless copyright concerns make the various publishers rethink, this looks like being the ultimate literary archive.
(The Times, October 28 2003)
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