Comment This system is inevitable. Goodbye, privacy. (Score 1) 914
This is the beginning of the permanent end of all privacy.
Suppose this doesn't get built; will that help you? Not for long. Consider a (near) future in which wireless webcams cost, say, a dollar, and Internet-accessible disk storage for a year of images, another dollar. Now even children, let alone police, are going to stick cameras absolutely everywhere. Add some recognition software (license plates, faces, whatever you like to track) and index the heck out of it. Now anyone on earth can name anyone else on earth and see a complete, photographic log of nearly everywhere they've gone during the past couple of years.
Unless technological trends show a surprising change, this WILL happen. Even if England's insane government doesn't do it, it it will still happen.
Want to be more scared? Fast forward 20 more years, to when those cameras cost one cent and are the size of a grain of sand. Buy a thousand and scatter them all around someone's home, maybe tossing them in the window or tracking them in on your shoes.
Do I really want cameras everywhere, watching everything? No. Do I know a way to stop it? No, but we sure as heck out to slow it down until we figure out how to limit and control it.
Suppose this doesn't get built; will that help you? Not for long. Consider a (near) future in which wireless webcams cost, say, a dollar, and Internet-accessible disk storage for a year of images, another dollar. Now even children, let alone police, are going to stick cameras absolutely everywhere. Add some recognition software (license plates, faces, whatever you like to track) and index the heck out of it. Now anyone on earth can name anyone else on earth and see a complete, photographic log of nearly everywhere they've gone during the past couple of years.
Unless technological trends show a surprising change, this WILL happen. Even if England's insane government doesn't do it, it it will still happen.
Want to be more scared? Fast forward 20 more years, to when those cameras cost one cent and are the size of a grain of sand. Buy a thousand and scatter them all around someone's home, maybe tossing them in the window or tracking them in on your shoes.
Do I really want cameras everywhere, watching everything? No. Do I know a way to stop it? No, but we sure as heck out to slow it down until we figure out how to limit and control it.
