On Thu, 17 Apr 2014 22:09:36 -0400 dan@geer.org wrote:
| | It may be possible, in the not-so-distant-future, to record | people in ultra high definition from a mile away, but the | 'technology' can be rendered rather useless with somthing | like...this | | http://ramitia.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/japan-face-masks.jpg |
At this time, it is possible to do facial recognition at 500 meters, iris recognition at 50 meters, and heartbeat recognition at 5 meters. A newspaper open on a table can be read from orbit. DNA samples can be matched in under half a hour. Your smartphone can identify your gait, your face in that selfie, the idiosyncracies of your typing, your fingerprint and/or anything else you wish to lay on the screen. Light fixtures in public venues provide light but also house a camera, sensors for CO/CO2/pollutant emissions, seismic activity, humidity & UV radiation, a microphone, wifi and/or cellular interfaces, an extensible API, an IPv4 or v6 address per LED, a capacity for disconnected "decision making on the pole," and cloud-based remote management. Every cow you eat is tracked cradle to grave with RFID tagging under the National Animal Identification System, the infrastructure for which handles 100 million cattle and works for any mammal, of which you are one. Any newish car is broadcasting several Bluetooth beacons as is your newish iPhone. Forensics can now match photo to camera as crisply as matching bullet to barrel. The Smart Meter soon to be imposed on your electric tap will know everything you own, and report. More and more people you meet will be part of the system -- that wearables like Google Glass are so readily detectible is just a brief moment in time. Cars are soon to be mandated to implement wireless vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communications using extensible protocols intended to include route-based payment now that too many people are driving green cars. Your various insurers will buy your data for a pittance of discount but will also know when, say, blood pressure for everyone in the house or the neighborhood rises together. A wife may not be impelled to testify against a husband, but cannot her digital exhaust be subpoenaed to the same effect?
But you know all that, paper hospital masks notwithstanding.
Well, the scenario you paint is scary and looks a bit like science fiction. On one hand I do get your point. On the other hand I can't help but mention again that your iris-recognition-from-orbit can be defeated with $5 contact lenses. Other 'technologies' can certainly be more intrusive. >The Smart Meter soon to be imposed >Cars are soon to be mandated to implement Mandated by?...by jesus...or by the american government, which amounts to the same thing. Anyway, all this is of course a political problem and so it requires a political solution. A solution that government, which is the driving force behind the problem, isn't going to provide.
--dan