> Personally, I don't want to have a history of my travel stored in any > database. Right now, purchasing a one-time CharlieTicket is a 30 cent > surcharge per ride, but it is the only way to take the subway in Boston > without creating a travel history. Privacy in public transportation > should be equally accessible to all citizens, regardless of financial > resources.
I suspect that you, as do I, pay for as many things in cash as humanly possible though, of course, we are well past the point at which paying for an airline ticket, say, in cash does anything more than make you even more inspected than you would be if you used credit. That said, the 30c surcharge for having no record kept for riding the subway is at once a "price" for privacy that is at least expressed in the coin of the realm and, at the same time, not a guarantee, just a side effect. If the MBTA general manager were to say "For 30c more, we promise to forget you were a passenger" he would be out of a job in the morning at the Governor's demand and there'd be wide agitation against the idea that better off people get privacy when poor folks don't. Do you suppose that we can, just possibly, make privacy into a class warfare issue? We sort of do that already in that the people who make privacy law, legislature and executive alike, are afforded precisely zero privacy by both the courts and the press. As such, one has to be a truly addled optimist to imagine that those who have no privacy are nevertheless willing to grant you more privacy than they have, unless they are somehow nostalgic for what they themselves lost in becoming a member of government. Me, I think that the loss of privacy required to become part of government is a sieve for not caring about such issues because, if you did care, you wouldn't go into government in the first place. --dan --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]