From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Thu Oct 17 2002 - 12:28:11 MDT
BillK wrote:
>>>>On Tue, 15 Oct 2002, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>
> My understanding of the present system is that the output is only blips
> on a screen. Bigger, faster blips would be vehicles, smaller blips -
> pedestrians. (Remember the radar screens from the Gulf War showing
> hordes of dots streaming back to Iraq?)
> This is fine for isolated areas, say around power stations, defence
> establishments, etc. Any blips that appear could have a camera zoomed in
> on them. And mobile military want to use a similar system to spot enemy
> troops hiding in the countryside.
These blips certainly don't show small-grain fast moving objects
like bullets as one poster suggested.
>
> If a Virginia shopping mall was being monitored when an incident
> occurred, then possibly a blip moving away at high speed would stand out
> as unusual. If it did then it could be tracked and followed from mast to
> mast until it stopped, or the tracking could be passed over to a police
> helicopter.
So we are following all the speeders? :-) The real culprit is
very unlikely to telegraph by suspicious moves. What I do
wonder is why the current systems in place in some locales in
the US that consist of acoustic devices on street corners and/or
cameras, especially the latter, can't be used to track every
vehicle that entered or left the area in a period of time. Find
the vehicles that were in all areas of sniping and then checkout
each driver/owner.
> Similarly if a suspect was being monitored then a visual sighting of him
> leaving home could switch over to use the system to track his movements.
>
> But the overall recording of dots moving around a city is not a privacy
> problem at present.
Having the feds know all my movements is "not a problem"? How
so? This could be used to build up strong circumstantial
evidence of supposition of association which is all that is
needed to label someone as a likely terrorist or aid to
terrorism these days.
> Now if they can add cell phone identification within two years, then
> recording the movements of every unique cell phone becomes possible.
> This data could indeed be stored for years. In theory, it would only
> be examined by human eyes if a crime was being investigated.
In practice every slightly to highly nefarious possible use
would be made of this data.
> As Samantha said there would be far too much data for everyone's
> individual movements to be examined.
> But once the data existed, then it could be analysed by computer and
> lots of 'interesting' items might be highlighted. What would be
> considered 'interesting' would, of course, depend on which
> agency/department/team/bureaucrat was doing the analysis.
>
And current highly questionable laws. Prosecutors! They would
have a field day with such a system.
> And I think there is no chance that the public would be given access to
> the data files so that they could check on the movements of politicians
> / spouses / business competitors / etc.
>
I am not worried about that compared to what the governmental
octupus plus its corporate favored could and would do with the
information.
> Somehow I don't think I'll be carrying a cell phone in the future.
>
Or maybe insist the standards are open and anyone can build to
the standards or have it built in order to know precisely what
they are carrying.
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