By Andy McCue, 2 November 2006 00:01
NEWS
UK citizens will be tracked by RFID tags embedded in their clothes and have their movements monitored by unmanned "flying eyes in the sky" using facial recognition systems within 10 years, the nation's data protection watchdog has claimed.
In a new report entitled A Surveillance Society, information commissioner Richard Thomas predicts a world in 2016 where technology is extensively and routinely used to track and record people's activities and movements.
He said in the report: "Two years ago I warned that we were in danger of sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us."
In 2016 Thomas predicts shoppers will be scanned as they enter stores and their clothes recognised through unique RFID tags embedded in them. This data will be matched with loyalty card data to affect the way they are treated as they do their shopping, with some given preferential treatment over others.
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In 10 years time he claims facial recognition systems will also be used to monitor people using tiny cameras embedded in lampposts and in walls, and unmanned aerial "friendly flying eyes in the sky".
Other surveillance scenarios for 2016 include:
- Cars linked to global satellite navigation systems, which will provide the quickest route to avoid current congestion, automatically debit the mileage charge from bank accounts and allow police to monitor the speed of all cars and to track selected cars more closely.
- Employees being subject to biometric and psychometric tests combined with lifestyle profiles and diagnostic health tests, with jobs refused to those who are seen as a health risk or those who don't submit to the tests, and staff benefit packages drawn up depending upon any perceived future health problems that may affect an employee's productivity.
- Schools introducing card systems to allow parents to monitor what their children eat, their attendance, record of achievement and drug test results.
- Older people becoming more isolated as sensors and cameras in their home provide reassurance to their families who therefore need to pay fewer visits.
Thomas warned: "As ever-more information is collected, shared and used, it intrudes into our private space and leads to decisions which directly influence people's lives. Mistakes can also easily be made with serious consequences – false matches and other cases of mistaken identity, inaccurate facts or inferences, suspicions taken as reality, and breaches of security."
Comments
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1. Daz
I've the answer to RFID tags in clothing - stick them in the microwave.
Thats what I did to the "Spy Chip" in my rubbish (trash) bin.
(note: sticking anything other than food in a microwave is dangerous !)
2. Bruce
in which case I'll wear a mask and walk around naked.....
or maybe just not buy any clothes with chips in, just keep the ones I've had for ages, can't afford new clothes anyway....
3. anonymous
Maybe people who wrap themselves in tin foil to protect themselfs from being monitored watched are not that paranoid after all, its just that they are ahead of their time, and it is us and not aliens that are do in the monitoring.
4. anonymous
I wonder how far this will go, government approved toilet cam anyone?
It seems that even the illusion of freedom is starting to wear thin; I suspect that when it becomes completely unsustainable it will merely be discarded as a part of an obsolete toolkit.
5. Haydn Rees
Children of a Lesser God
“The swaggerer of the innocence constitutes one of the noblest legal principles and first guarantee of the criminal proceeding. Society that forgets it transforms beings free into slaves - of the duty to prove that they are not guilty - and it sacrifices its rights in the altar of its mere suspicion”.
6. Martin Anderson
So true, and it is now almost impossible to stop. Is this where we want to go, with all out knowledge and capaility to become rats in a huge laboratory watched over and manipulated by those who have taken power over us?
7. Valentin Danner
I am seriously worried about the psychological effect of all this at every level of our society. Our everyday life will be a living nightmare. People will become completely paranoid of being watched, monitored, automatically fined, etc. There will be no private life and I think rioting will become more common then as people will try and escape from this world where every move is controlled. I am not sure this would go down well at a European level and hopefully we will never see this dark scenario unveil.... or will we?
8. anonymous
Since when did we become the property of the government?
We seem to have forgotten that they only exist to serve us.
9. Haydn Rees
If you want an open society, you can have one, but crow-baring it open makes people resentful.
The advantages of an open society are compelling, but to achieve them, government must lead by example; government completely transparent (with very limited exceptions e.g. intelligence, negotiations, policy under development where you need freedom to say the unsayable).
10. Haydn Rees
The DNA database is the same, but if anything more sinister.
I don't necessarily trust the police, but they can be completely relied upon for certain things, e.g. as a bell weather for when civil rights are in jepardy.
I'll know the national DNA database is completely consistent with civil liberty, when the last police officer assents to have their DNA held on it indefinitely (I believe that they currently resist having their DNA added very strenuously indeed).
11. Haydn Rees
Heaven and Hell have the same postcode, and we are sleep walking into the bad one. It's not too late yet, but its getting close.
Government could reset the entire tone of the debate, but only by very strong inspired enlightened democratising leadership.
The public can only know that they expose their digital footprints to the most benevolent interpretation consistent with the facts if the Government become completely transparent, and ask to be judged charitably to establish the ground rules first.
Let's have a 24/7 microphone and webcam coverage for every MP before we have any more speed-cams.
12. anonymous
Getting more like the Matrix or Orwell's visions (1984/Animal farm etc.) every day !
13. Haydn Rees
Information symmetry.
The maze is OK if the rats run it for themselves. Ubiquitous microphones and CCTV, but screens and speakers too. Input and output. If I'm on camera and mike, I want free universal video-conferencing, and access to the to the web-cam beind the dude in the surveillance center watching me.
I want to be able to speak to my MP at any hour of the day or night. Car transponder? Sure, if it's a lo-jack/tachograph, tracking and logging my position, speed, and mileage I can use to prove I wasn't speeding.
Give me so Data Protection Law with big sharp pointy teeth to make sure information gathered at Public Expense can't be used against the interest of the public. Show me the benefit.
14. Haydn Rees
You can install a CCTV camera for every VDU you have. Ditto microphones and speakers.
I want to be able to connect to the web-cam behind the dude watching me from the surveillance centre, from anywhere.
I want to be able to look straight down the lens of the CCTV camera, say "Hi, Phil. Your eczema was looking a bit fierce this morning. You need to get some more fresh air", and see the harrowed hunted haunted look on his face.
I want "CCTV Surveillance Operator" to be the second most stressful job in History (after being an MP), because of the complete lack of privacy it affords.
15. anonymous
I think i might just emigrate to Iraq!
16. Big Rob
I heard about this Satalite Navigation System being used to track speeding etc a while ago, basically a device is fitted to your car and when you speed the sensor automatically detects it from space and sends you a fine/points etc.
So it will be no more 140mph up the m4 for me then - damn
17. ian paterson
But without all these extreme human rights violations, measures, the 'War on Terror' could be lost!
(and we couldn't find any other way to sneak it all in through the back door)
18. John
Good. The only people who should worry are the people who are doing things they shouldn't.
19. Graham Coles
If the only people who should worry are people who are doing things that shouldn't then let the government start worrying.
But of course, we are not allowed to find out what they are doing because all of this surveillance is one way.
Freedom for information only applies to 'other things' and cannot be used to find out what our increasingly closed government don't want us to know. If we want this sort of open society, then start with the party currently in power instead of allowing them to force it on the rest of us yet remain exemp themselves.
I for one will ignore any defective arguments along the lines of 'if you have nothing to hide ...'; human beings require privacy, the convention on human rights both recognizes this and attempts to protect it. Unfortunately, I don't think the government have ever actually either read or understood it (or, for that matter, their place in society which, as someone has already commented, is to serve the people, not enslave them).
20. Tim Jackson
This is supposed to give us more security?
Last month I went clothes shopping.
Bought spome clothes in one shop, walked *into* another, carrying the bag, and their alarm went off. The shop's security officer duly searched our bags and found nothing. However while we were being searched, one of our bags was stolen. Brilliant. The supervisor then said "Oh, it often happens that [store name] bags set off the alarm."
21. Haydn Rees
Scope creep.
The following may be an urban myth; when you drive into the London congestion zone, the company running the congestion charge check for car insurance.
The Bill from the Bill arrives, (Met Police letter-head), and if you had none, it includes a strong letter telling you to buy its (expensive) insurance.
Information gathered at public expense for one purpose is used it for a commercial sideline. Nobody would tell because it would be an admission of guilt (unless you knew about the IT Project).
Driving without car insurance is wrong. Using access to that information for that purpose is insidious.
22. Bill Wood
lol the next thing you will say that the easter bunny is part of the Bush plot to rule the world and santa and the tooth fairy are really planting id chips on us all
23. Dan F
It's all very well moaning on forums like this, but the reason the government get away with crap like this is that we (the population) are too lazy to do something about it! As a result, this will all eventually boil over in a big way, ending in much bloodshed which still won't guarantee the return of our freedoms.
24. anonymous
This kind of stuff will never stop, the battle is lost. The main problem we have in this country is that the majority of the population are idiots and the government knows this. Why else would the labour party get back into power considering what a state the country is in and the amount of sleaze they've perpetrated since coming into power. The masses have short memories and can't think for themselves, which makes them easy to control.
25. Radical Meldrew
Daz, you might achieve more by microwaving a politician !!!
26. Carl Gohringer
Britain is not the most watched society; it is the most recorded society - a subtle but substantial difference. Less than two percent of all recorded video is actually seen by a human eye, and so many of the benefits of CCTV cameras to pro-actively respond to security alerts and provide a more protected society are therefore lost. Technology now exists to monitor what the CCTV actually sees - in real-time - and act on criminal or prohibited behaviour as it happens; a massive improvement over simply looking back to try and solve a problem after it has happened. Currently most of the video from the 4.2 million CCTV cameras is simply recorded and archived in case it’s needed in the future. Citizens have little to fear about a joined up and intelligent CCTV network being used to monitor their behaviour.
27. Richard Percival
Precisely why are there no webcams inside police stations? (Please someone correct me if I am wrong)
As we all know, people who do nothing wrong have nothing to fear from the possibility that their activities could be observed. Therefore all surveillance cameras should be (a) archived abroad and (b) given an IP address.
Or has the human race not grown up enough to be given real freedom of information? I dream that people who live in glass houses may even stop throwing stones...
28. John Smith
Branded like cattle.
You know it's over when the government start treating people like inventory.
29. anonymous
this is so stupid and also very frightful i wont have any privacy but i guess ill just have to learn to sew and make my own clothes if they don't put the chips in the fabric to. now that is just crazy!