[LINK] Airport to tag passengers

[Adam Todd]

Hey reckon they will give you the ID code of your Lugguage and personal 
tracking device and then let you use your PDA to browse a web site so you 
can see where you bag is!

CHECKIN COUNTER:

Hi, I'm about to board this flight, buy the tracking on my PDA says my 
luggage is on a flight to Russia.

...


At 03:52 PM 13/10/2006, Glen Turner wrote:
>Howard Lowndes wrote:
>
>>Colin Brooks, Optag co-ordinator, said the trial would determine if the 
>>tags would be feasible in the light of obvious problems, such as the 
>>possibility that people might ditch their tags to avoid detection, or 
>>swap them with another person.
>>One solution might be to require people to use their tags to get through 
>>gates placed throughout the airport, he said. Perhaps a little like a 
>>shepherd might gate off his pasture and check the tags on his sheep as 
>>they passed into this field.
>
>Quite simply, they are solving the wrong problem.
>
>The issue is tracking people and their possessions through
>the airport, and this suggestion does neither.
>
>The one obvious use -- requiring staff to wear the tags
>and raising an alarm if a tagless person enters somewhere
>they shouldn't be -- isn't really considered.
>
>Oddly enough, developments aimed at solving the right problem --
>tracking people directly from video, identifying odd behaviours,
>and identifying suspiciously placed luggage -- seems to be
>progressing well.  For example, Heathrow runs its cameras into
>a luggage system, a suspicious behaviour system (such as entering
>the airport through a public door but entering a secure area),
>and a "show me person X now" system.
>
>That should raise exactly the same privacy concerns as the proposed
>RFID tag system.  But really, there is no privacy in airports
>these days.  I doubt there has been since the Red Army Faction.
>
>So the concern is, how effective are these systems.  And any
>tagging system for the public in airports obviously just isn't
>good enough.
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