they will watch. And listen. And examine.
I was talking with a friend last week about my concerns over the proliferating CCTV camera network in DC. He pointed out that there were no documented abuses, and that it seemed entirely sensible to put technology in the service of safety.  And I suppose that when you take it in the narrowest sense – that the cameras will only be used to investigate specific crimes that have occurred, it’s not entirely objectionable. But the problem is that the narrow purpose rarely stays narrow – if there’s a way for the state to expand its surveillance of citizens and collection of information, I think it almost always will.
Case in point: Britain’s MI5 intelligence service wants to regularly monitor the movements of London’s Oystercard users (an RFID pass used for Tube/public transport trips, similar to DC’s SmarTrip).  This isn’t a case of MI5 wanting to follow up on an individual already of interest to the authorities – they already have the power to access those records. Rather, MI5 wants to look at everyone’s trips, matching it to other information they’ve collected, ostensibly to identify patterns that might prevent some act of terrorism. Of course, any public transport riding terrorist could just eat the extra cost of paying with untraceable paper tickets.
So rather than addressing an actual intelligence need, I think MI5 is – without any real need – just automatically grabbing for as much as it can. And it’s this natural expansion of powers that we need to think about when agreeing to implement public information collection systems. The original purpose may well be perfectly sensible, but we need to consider what other purposes these tools can be appropriated for in the future.
And on that note, nothing could possibly go wrong with this, eh?
Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain’s most senior police forensics expert.
Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.
