Re: Brit Fascists To Track Motorists - DigiCash Obsolescent

[Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>]

At 08:15 PM 7/23/97 +0200, Name Withheld by Request wrote:
>  Well, I see on the news that the British Government are installing cameras
>with OCR capabilities throughout London so that they can track all the
>cars which pass by. Of course this is only to track 'terrorists and car
>thieves', not ordinary law-abiding citizens, no, no, no, not at all, guvnor,

I'm surprised the technology is reliable enough now, but if it's not, 
give Moore's Law another couple of years and the computers will get faster,
while the algorithms will also get tuned better, so it will be soon.
It's at least good enough today if you don't mind spending big bucks on
computers that'll be more affordable in a couple of years.

When San Francisco was going to close a major freeway for repairs,
they videotaped traffic, had people type in the license plates from tape,
looked them up in the DMV database, and sent them nice letters asking
them to take a different highway for the next few months.
Took a bit longer, but labor's cheap, and they didn't need instant results;
a computerized system fast enough to track cars on-line opens up 
a lot more possibilities, both for practical applications and abuse.

David Chaum's DigiCash was designed for applications such as tollbooths,
which would permit uncrackable payment while preserving privacy;
the technology's catching up enough to track everybody at a tollbooth
cheaply enough to make it obsolete before it's widely deployed.
You can already do it now with bar-code-like bumper stickers,
but when you can just bill for road use by license plate, there's
a lot less administration required.

And, yes, all of this privacy loss happens because somebody decided
it was convenient to put a car-ownership-tax receipt on the outside
of a car so police can quickly decide if you've paid your taxes...
The rest of it's just implementation details.


>  Odd that this was announced the same day as other annoucements of the 
>British Government joining an EU-wide system to track millions of European
>subversives (including, apparently, those who have been to rock
concerts?). I 
>bet it's just one of them coincidences...

Aren't those European Data Privacy laws great!


#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
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