[LINK] Surveillance in extremis

Geoff Ramadan gramadan at umd.com.au
Mon Aug 28 18:40:05 AEST 2006


I have just spoken to a Solution Provider that provides tracking solutions for bins.

The general experience from overseas is that solutions based on weight DON'T work.

All it does is encourage home owners to remove or damage the RFID chip, or 
dispose of garbage by some other means.

Geoffrey Ramadan


Howard Lowndes wrote:
> 
> 
> Kim Holburn wrote:
>> On 2006 Aug 28, at 5:12 PM, 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.
>>
>> I don't think Microsoft is the issue here.  It is possible to make 
>> even Microsoft databases secure (for example: by not connecting them 
>> to a network) and it is possible to make even enterprise grade 
>> databases insecure.
>>
>> The key is
>> 1) have people been told what's happening,
>> 2) what are the privacy policies in place in the council and 
>> contractors concerned,
>> 3) are all the concerned parties technically competent to adhere to 
>> the privacy policies.
>> 4) Look over there is a wookie!  What was your question again?
>> 5) Only terrorists would object to this, are you a terrorist?
>>
>> That said this is rubbish bins for goodness sake.  Does it really 
>> matter?  What's the worst case scenario here?  Someone in the council 
>> could weigh your rubbish?
> 
> The bigger problem is the bin that is tagged to you ending up in the 
> next street, but you still being tagged with 
> overweight/contamination/whatever.  This is liable to be a major problem 
> in stratas and condos.
> 
>>
>> Kim
>>
>> -- 
>> Kim Holburn
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>>                           -- Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Analog, Apr 1961
>>
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