[LINK] myki - a tracking device (was Re: more myki pain)

[andrew clarke]

On Sun 2010-04-11 17:36:31 UTC+1000, Stilgherrian (stil at stilgherrian.com) wrote:

> On 11/04/2010, at 5:24 PM, andrew clarke wrote:
> > If someone has a particular reason for their destination to be unknown
> > they could choose to not touch-off.  
> 
> This does, of course, represent changing the default position of
> "government entity may track my movements" from "if I am reasonably
> suspected to have committed a crime" to "always". I'm not sure we
> should flip this switch without a serious public policy discussion.

I'm curious who "owns" the Myki logs, is it the government or a private
company?

Anyway, time will tell if and how Myki logs can be used for the
obvious things such as law enforcement and as court evidence, and
whether it can be used in real-time or only retrospectively.

At this stage I'm not sure many people are too concerned about privacy
issues, particularly when it's not clear at the moment whether Myki
will even survive for more than a few years.

I'm guessing about 10% (or less?) of Melburnians use trains regularly,
and last I heard, currently less than 10% of train travellers were
using Myki.  So unless I'm mistaken, only a very small number of
people in Melbourne will be giving privacy a second thought.

But it's certainly something to consider if the system is ever widely
implemented and successful.  That seems like a big IF at the moment!

At least any travel logging will be largely transparent, ie. the card
owner should know their card COULD be used to track their movements,
at least to some degree.  Of course, their card could also be
misplaced (or stolen) and used by someone else...