[comments follow]

From the 'Daily Telegraph':

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/02/nspy302
..xml>:

(get the 'report' at:
<http://www.privacyconference2006.co.uk/files/report_eng.pdf>)

***BEGIN ARTICLE***

How they'll keep up with the Joneses

By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor

Last Updated: 2:52am GMT 03/11/2006

It is 2016 and if the clocks are not exactly striking 13 as in 1984,
George Orwell's dystopian classic, they ought to be.

The report issued by the office of the Information Commissioner today
into the surveillance society imagines what Britain will be like 10
years from now if current trends continue.

It traces a few weeks in the life of the Jones family. They have just
arrived back from a holiday in Florida. Both Britain and America's
immigration and border control services, along with those of all EU
countries, and other G10 industrialised countries, are farmed out to the
same private consortium, BorderGuard.

Passport control is now a series of cameras and scanners taking images
of face, iris and fingers, which are compared with those on the
standardised biometric passports, or in Britain's case, the ID card,
introduced across the G10 countries and the EU. The ID document is also
read by machine and the multiple data on the built-in RFID (radio-
frequency identification) chip that now includes all citizenship,
immigration, visa and criminal justice data, along with health
information. This is instantly compared with state and trans-national
databases, as well as a vast body of data-mined information on consumer
transactions that BorderGuard gets on regular subscription from
specialist companies.

At customs, everyone is subject to a full-body scan: a virtual strip
search using a millimetre wave scanner of the sort that John Reid, the
Home Secretary, was inspecting this week at a London security
conference.

On their return, the Jones family visit their local shopping centre,
which can access a huge shared database, modelled on reward card data,
to generate information about the flow of shoppers. The system relies on
RFID clothing tags, ubiquitous scanners and consumer datasets. Scanners
placed in the doors of participating shops log the unique identifiers
found in RFID tags embedded in the clothes of shoppers. Information
about the item of clothing, its brand, where it was purchased and by
whom, is compared against the consumer profiles of different wearers.
Intelligent billboards placed at eye level display advertising aimed at
that customer.

advertisement
The shopping centre mines the data to find consumers who are its most
frequent users to offer them membership in their "cashless" scheme. The
scheme enables more "valuable" consumers to get an implanted chip to
help them shop. They can load the chip with money, and pay by getting
their arm scanned. The marketing for the cashless system tells shoppers
that, as chip wearers, they get discounts.

Also, the children cannot get lost. Mobility tagging and tracking have
become commonplace following a series of high-profile cases in which
pupils were either abducted, injured or killed. Many primary schools and
even nurseries took this route to avoid legal liability.

Many schools have adopted drug testing in response to government policy
aimed at identifying problem children early, tackling poor attendance
and improving concentration in class. At school, children carry an ID
card, which is used to buy goods from the shop or canteen and monitors
what the pupil eats, to inform various "healthy eating" campaigns.

In 2016, residential areas are clearly divided between gated private
communities, patrolled and monitored by well-equipped corporate security
firms, and former council estates and low-cost housing. For the better-
off, the camera and identification systems in and around the community
keep insurance costs to a minimum. On the estate a private consortium
called Total Social Solutions is paid to monitor and enforce the multi-
level personal behaviour schemes, (PBS) of which everyone is a
"customer" from birth.

Many of those on higher levels of PBS scheme have RFID implants that
register automatically with sensors in their homes and at the entrances.
In residential areas, public area CCTV has almost entirely become open-
circuit television (OCTV).

In the centre of London, at an anti-war protest, marchers are monitored
by small, remote-controlled spy planes, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
introduced for the 2012 Olympics and kept on. Ministers call them
"friendly flying eyes in the sky".

CCTV is less noticeable than now. Smaller cameras are embedded in
lampposts at eye-level and walls, which allow the more efficient
operation of the now universal facial recognition systems. Morphing
software that combines images from multiple cameras to build a three-
dimensional picture is also being pioneered.

Almost universal wireless networking allows the cameras to be freed from
bulky boxes and wires. In addition, the cameras are linked to
intelligent street lighting that provides "ideal" lighting conditions
for recognition software, and also movement-activated floodlighting.

People who go online to play multi-player computer games are monitored
by police, who want to pick up on certain types of behaviour that could
indicate real-world criminal tendencies in their players.


***END ARTICLE***


banana notes:


1) if you don't realise mass forced microchipping is the plan,
        you need to wake up fast.

2) get the bit about a single company controlling all borders
        in 'EU' and 'G10' countries.

        It is obvious that if you control a country's security,
        you control that country. (Ask any pub landlord whether he
        receives 'protection').

        This reminds me of Amtrac's predominance as a provider of
        'telephone billing software' in the US; plus of course security
        set-ups at the 911 airports and on the London Underground...

        Hello 'Promis'...

3) 'keep up with the Joneses'??? What a stupid headline for an article
        on such an important matter!!!

        You're going to be chipped like a dog. What a hoot!

4) just look how strong the rulers feel on this! They are trying to
        'start a debate'!

        Is that a culture and 'political sphere' completely and utterly
        under central control, or isn't it? What do you think?

-- 
banana     "The thing I hate about you, Rowntree, is the way you
            give Coca-Cola to your scum, and your best teddy-bear to
            Oxfam, and expect us to lick your frigid fingers for the
            rest of your frigid life." (Mick Travis, 'If...', 1968)