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typodupeerror

Comment and the road to "total" information awareness? (Score 1) 700

Sadly, unlike your driving (home to work, and back again); the road to "total" information awareness is a vector quantity with constant acceleration.

Every year more and more companies/institutions are gathering more and more different types of information. Currently this information is separate (buying habbits for groceries and general merchandise, flying habbits, driving habbits, etc) with little or no cross referencing. As, processors become faster and more powerful, storage becomes larger and cheaper, and communication "roads" become faster/larger/more connected (WIFI, RFID, Internet, satelite, electrical, cable, phone line, etc.) this will change rapidly.

And when your cross referenced habits (read "profile") puts you on an FBI warning list? Errors of 1 or 2 percent sound great until you are the 1 or 2 percent.

Also don't forget data accidents are a fact of life, and often are hard and/or slow, and somethines even impossible to correct. I myself encountered a data accident when I refinanced my mortgage 2 years back. I was initially denied a loan because of an eronious account (not mine) appearing on my credit report. After many phone calls, dead ends, 2 written requests, 3 months, and 1/2 an interest point more I was finaly approved and refinanced. Of course when comparing notes with friends, family and co-workers my problems seemed petty.


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