Just a thought…

Privacy. Just one of these things that has me thinking a lot. Take for instance the new OV-chipcard (public transport card for the Netherlands). When the system will be operative, your travels are logged and identified. Hardly any public discussion on this. It’s just regarded as ‘handy for the customers”. TLS will own that data – why shouldn’t we get access to it too? We’re past the stage in history, it seems, where we can go back to an absolute notion of privacy. We leave too many traces. It will be about ownership and access to data. “I also own my Google-logs”. We have to start to reimagine our world, radically. A world where all your movements will be out in the open. Not only yours, but everybody’s movements – that of your boss, your friends, the prime-minister. Everybody will be a spook, a spy. Everybody will be surveilled. What will that mean? How would we behave in such a world? It will not be funny. (Or sometimes it might). And the new policy in the United States is not funny either with its “prior government permission” even for citizens of the US, even for domestic flights. Well, anyway.

blogging,en,research | October 24, 2007 | 16:49 | Comments (2) |

2 Comments

  1. There was actually a big discussion about the OV-chipcard last Friday at the Balie during the Recalling RFID event.

    comment by Anne Helmond | 24 October 2007 | 17:21 |
  2. Ah, I missed that. I was listening to the live stream at work, but didn’t manage to catch everything.

    On the other hand – what seems to lack is a ‘broader’ public discussion. The discussion seems to stay within certain circles. (Then again, i just might’ve missed it all…)

    comment by Arie Altena | 25 October 2007 | 10:57 |

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