Technology Impacts

The larger issue being overlooked is the growing use of tracking devices in the U.S., and how willing most people are to be tagged and set loose in the “wild” where their movements and spending habits are monitored, recorded and filed away for someone’s future use.

Ann Bibby Care2.com May 5, 2010

Northern Arizona State will soon track class attendance via an RFID (radio frequency identification) chip in student ID cards. The system, which is similar to one used at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, will use sensors to detect students as they enter classrooms. The data collected will be recorded and shared with professors.

Predictably, students are unhappy and, with equal predictability, have taken their discontent to Facebook via the protest group although some of the more energetic have started petitions against the proposed practice.

University officials say their aim is only to increase student attendance and improve performance though, with enough sensors, they could easily track students’ whereabouts on campus at all times. Students counter, correctly, that they are adults and whether they attend class regularly, on time or pass at all is not the university’s business. [More]

Internet cafes in the United Kingdom are the latest victims of privacy invasive counter$terrorism measures. Scotland Yard recently asked Internet cafe owners to monitor customers’ use of public computers. The authorities are encouraging owners to check activity on their computers and keep an eye on any suspicious activity.

Yet police say it’s not about asking Internet cafe owners to spy on their customers.

These measures seem unreasonable and privacy invasive, and are likely to be ineffective.

This is similar to monitoring calls on a public phone, it has been pointed out.

Surely a criminal or terrorist using an Internet cafe would be savvy enough to hide their tracks. Read the rest of this entry »

Somebody’s fibbing in the case of a Pennsylvania school that using Webcams in loaned laptops, and now the FBI may have to sort out the truth.

CNN reports that federal authorities are investigating the case of 15-year-old Blake Robbins v. the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania, a class action lawsuit uncovered by BoingBoing last week. The FBI hasn’t confirmed the investigation; CNN’s report comes from an anonymous police official, who says the feds will look into whether federal wiretap or computer intrusion laws were violated.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/022210-school-spycam-case-raises-fbi.html

It sounds like something from a sci-fi film, but one in four Germans would be happy to have a microchip implanted in their body if they derived concrete benefits from it, a poll Monday showed.

The survey, by German IT industry lobby group BITKOM, was intended to show how the division between real life and the virtual world is increasingly coming down, one of the main themes of the CeBIT trade fair that kicks off Tuesday.

In all, 23 percent of around 1,000 respondents in the survey said they would be prepared to have a chip inserted under their skin “for certain benefits.”
http://rawstory.com/2010/03/germans-microchip-skin-poll/

Every police force in England and Wales will be equipped with mobile fingerprint scanners to check the identity of suspects in the street.

Up to 3,000 devices, the size of a mobile phone, will enable officers on patrol to cross-reference prints with national records.

Senior officers claimed the scheme would speed up criminal inquiries, bring more people to justice and save thousands of hours of police time.

But fears have arisen the technology could contribute to the so-called “surveillance state” and encourage random searches.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-to-be-equipped-with-mobile-fingerprint-scanners-1916123.html

London - Monitored by millions of cameras and spied on by a secretive domestic intelligence network, Britons could be forgiven for feeling up in arms over the latest threat to their privacy: Intelligent garbage bins that can monitor how much they throw out.

Although the technology is already nearly a decade old, a U.K. privacy rights group says the number of local authorities fitting their trash bins with sensors of some kind has risen dramatically in the past year - affecting at least 2.6 million British households.

Big Brother Watch says the practice could lead to Britons being charged for how much they throw out - and effectively allow the government to go through their garbage.

“Placing microchips in bins capable of monitoring the content of weight of household refuse produces yet another piece of data for the state on an individual’s private life it has no right to have,” the group said in a report published Friday.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-eu-britain-waste-watchers,0,3791290.story

Google is now “personalizing” results even when users have not logged into its web-dominating search site. And SEO types aren’t too happy about it.

Personalization is a euphemism for a Google-controlled practice that involves tweaking your search results according to your past web history. Mountain View was already doing this with users who had signed in to a Google account so they could use non-search services like Gmail and Google Calendar. But now it’s targeting results for all users - whether they’re logged in or not.

Webmasters fume as Google profiles signed-out searchers • The Register.

The European Commission’s study into feasibility of fitting black box recorders to cars to record 20 types of data in case of accidents looks set to recommend the devices are fitted to all European cars.

Project Veronica, which began in 2003 and cost £2.4m, has dismissed privacy concerns because the boxes only record data in the event of an accident. The boxes will be triggered by sudden deceleration and will only record movement in the 30 seconds prior to an accident, and a few seconds afterwards.

via Europe plots black boxes for cars • The Register.

As part of a major research project, scientists are currently working on a closed-circuit television (CCTV) system that could be able to predict suspicious behavior usually associated with crime in bus travelers. The cameras would relay information back to a control room, where operators would be able to watch suspicious characters, and then intervene even before an attack happens. If emergency-response units cannot get to the bus on time to prevent the harmful actions, then they will be just in time to catch the perpetrators, the creators of the new system believe. According to scientists at the Queens University Belfast – who are in charge of developing the system, and the software associated with it –, the CCTV cameras could lead to a significant curbing in the rate of public-transportation attacks, to which many innocent travelers fall victim, the BBC News reports. Although the new system is still in its theoretical stage, the scientists say they could have it ready for implementation within five years. By that time, every person that boards a bus could be profiled when they climb the stairs. The work is being conducted at the QUB’s newly founded Center for Secure Information Technologies.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Home Office is to spend over £500,000 this year on a marketing campaign for the identity card which features cartoon fingerprints

A departmental spokesperson told GC News that it is planning a public information campaign to alert businesses on the need to prepare for the introduction of the card, which will initially be made available on a voluntary basis.

It will be focused primarily on the north-west of England, reflecting plans to make the card available to residents of Greater Manchester later this year, with some nationwide marketing.

The campaign, one advert for which features a cartoon fingerprint unveiling the identity card to an admiring audience of other fingerprints, is expected to cost £544,000 between September and December.

“This will help businesses with ‘know your employee’ and ‘know your customer’ checks,” the spokesperson said. “The National Identity Card may be presented to businesses across the country any time after launch, as proof of identity. Businesses need to ensure that their staff are ready to recognise the National Identity Card, and know how to check the security features.” Read the rest of this entry »