[LINK] Surveillance in extremis

[Jan Whitaker]

At 05:12 PM 28/08/2006, Howard Lowndes wrote:
>Jan Whitaker wrote:
>>At 10:26 AM 28/08/2006, you wrote:
>>>stick to the facts Ma'am...my source on the ground in Ryde has passed on 
>>>a copy of the local paper
>>I hope you weren't suggesting that I was stating any facts or even 
>>attempting to. I don't live in Ryde, or even NSW! :-)
>>BTW, these tags are being used in Ireland as well. One of our Aust. 
>>Privacy Board members just sent a note that it is being called 'bin 
>>brother' there
>>
>>>Just saw a paper here in Galway reporting that 500,000 Irish rubbish 
>>>bins (wheely bins) have been implanted with sensor chips from a German 
>>>company, with no discussion by most councils which went along with it. 
>>>Why? For efficiency, to reduce neighbour disputes, and potentially to 
>>>monitor how much recycling you are doing. Privacy advocates noted 
>>>potential to hack into the related remote database and track who is home 
>>>by changes in rubbish volume etc. Being called "Bin Brother".
>>so I'm not alone in my concern.
>
>It's about time privacy advocates stopped drawing very long bows and 
>realised that not all databases run on Microsoft, and that many databases 
>can be made very secure.

huh? who said anything about Microsoft?? I see that they have used the word 
'hack', but that isn't required if you have someone on the inside looking 
at these data sets. Quite lucrative, one would suspect!


Jan Whitaker
JLWhitaker Associates, Melbourne Victoria
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
personal: http://www.janwhitaker.com/personal/
commentary: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/

'Seed planting is often the most important step. Without the seed, there is 
no plant.' - JW, April 2005
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