Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/p-04284.html --- Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2003 14:07:28 -0800 From: Brad Templeton <bradat_private> To: declanat_private Subject: Re: George Orwell, here we come References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030106135535.02cb80a8at_private> Organization: http://www.templetons.com/brad Perhaps to scare you even more, we may have already passed "P-Day" a symbolic end to privacy. Why? Well, snoops don't yet have good facial recongition software or the other biometric tools you spoke about to track everybody everywhere they go. But storage has gotten cheap enough -- and it continues to get cheaper -- so now or soon they do have the capacity to _record_ what the cameras see, even if they don't have the technology to decode it. The computer industry, following the trend declared by Gordon Moore, will soon give them that power. Give a few doublings of power and more research into algorithms and eventually it will become possible to do that tracking. Not just then, but backwards, _into the past_. Yup, they will be able to call up those old recordings, from the ATMs and the zillions of other cameras, and, using the tools of the future, create records of everywhere you went and everything you did in view of the cameras back in time, before they had the real time face recognition. So you're already being watched. The computer that is watching you just hasn't been born quite yet. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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