I just found this rather disturbing story on BBC, and unfortunately I must say it is not quite unexpected. The [BBC reports](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6044310.stm) that the University College of London is developing a technology to tag and track passengers at an airport.
>Dr Paul Brennan, an electrical engineer, is leading the tagging project, known as Optag.
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>He said: “The basic idea is that airports could be fitted with a network of combined panoramic cameras and RFID (radio frequency ID) tag readers, which would monitor the movements of people around the various terminal buildings.”
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>The plan, he said, would be for each passenger to be issued with a tag at check-in.
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>He said: “In our system, the location can be detected to an accuracy of 1m, and video and tag data could be merged to give a powerful surveillance capability.”
The article then adds that the system is currently being tested in a prototype installation in an unspecified airport in Hungary.
Let’s repeat this: Each passenger is issued an RFID Id tag, which is then tracked down whereever the passenger goes, and the entire airport is being monitored by video. Let’s go one step further, because this is pretty useless if you don’t do something with this data. Of course it will be coupled with the data the airlines already have, such as [the data they send to the US Government](http://www.geektravel.info/2006/10/06/what-the-united-states-wants-to-know-about-passengers/). They’ll add face recognition to the system “to find known criminals”. They’ll be analysing the people’s every move for suspicious activities, like they do in some car garages where a probability is assigned to a person being a car thief on the basis of their walking patterns.
This system is being field tested in airports first – because the evil terrorists (sarcasm intended) use that as their primary target, and of course because it’s a nice, closed high-security environment.
Then the subway stations will be next. Then regular train stations, and of course all kinds of public installations.
And then, yes, then they will start to roll this system out everywhere. City-wide. Because terrorists also go home in the evening.
This is, needless to say, an absolute nightmare to anybody who values civil liberties. Looks like 1984 will be 30 years late. The worst is that, unless something changes dramatically, these technologies will be sold to the people as a “necessary step in keeping our country safe”. And any criticism will be smothered with the usual, “only terrorists have something to hide” propaganda. When did we forget that our politicans **serve us**, and **do not rule us**? When did we forget that the criminals should be locked in, and not the people?
Unfortunately, I am at a complete loss as to what to do about this. Even if people realized what was happening, chances are they’d just cheer this development on. One could argue that they, then, as a society deserve no better than to get a refreshment course in fascism, but frankly I do not wish to live in such a society.
