On 8 July 2010 23:05, Jim Croft <jim.cr...@gmail.com> wrote: > http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727670.900-virtual-prisons-how-emaps-are-curtailing-our-freedom.html
The only new thing in that article is the potential scale being hinted at, but this is merely an evolution of existing technology. As they point out, some people already have RFID transceivers installed in their cars for tolls, a few years ago cops in New York City lost their jobs because the company in charge of the tollway installed sensors along the length of the road way, not just at toll points so you could track where people went, and the cops in questions weren't where they should have been. The same company got subpoenaed by divorce lawyers to check up on cheating spouses. Same with GPS tracking technology, this stuff has been used for years to house arrest people in the US and also track sex offenders going too close to schools, but it was shown recently triggered alarms weren't acted upon, so no matter how well the technology is designed we can thank human complacency to limit the overall abuse. :) You also have various governments assuming that road usage can be tracked by GPS, this kind of system has been used in parts Europe for taxis for a while, the result is GPS signal is blocked or faked to abuse the system. _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
