[privacy] "Report warns of people-tagging madness"

[Gordon Darling <gordondarling () dsl pipex com>]

"Report warns of people-tagging madness"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/30/chips_madness/

<snip>
Within 10 years we will all be chipped "like dogs", according to a
report in the online version of London newspaper The Evening Standard.

........

It quotes a still-to-be published report for the Information
Commissioners Office, not yet seen by El Reg, which considers in depth
the social impact of an emerging "surveillance society".

The report, compiled by Dr David Murakami Wood, managing editor of the
journal Surveillance and Society and Dr Kirstie Ball, an Open University
lecturer in Organisation Studies, outlines how increased surveillance
gradually erodes trust and undermines social relationships.

For example, it explains that RFID tags have already been used in the US
to tag and track 70 people with degenerative brain conditions, and one
corporation has tagged two employees to control access to the workplace.

It also highlights the vast sums of money the UK government has spent on
CCTV over the last 15 years. In the 1990s, a staggering 78 per cent of
the police's crime prevention budget went on installing the spy cameras.
The CCTV-related cost to the public purse in the last decade has topped
£500m.

And if this goes unchecked, the paper says, the report's authors warn
that we'll all be tagged and tracked as a matter of course, and
near-total surveillance will be the norm.

...............

The full version of the report will be published to coincide with the
28th annual Privacy Conference <http://www.privacyconference2006.co.uk/>
on Thursday this week.

-- 
gordondarling<at>dsl<dot>pipex<dot>com

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