Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
dishonoring the bill, then this fact may be added to a bad-credit file and trans-
ferred to other companies who also use this debit system.' We aren't talking
about trade-protection associations here! It might be enough for my account to
just happen to be in the red due to a fraudulent access when the store tries to
debit this amount. My name will then be 'going around', while I haven't done
anything wrong. Such information cannot be 'undone'.
The technical possibilities already available today go far beyond our imagi-
nation. For example, the Racal systems were introduced at a price of 2000
pounds per unit in Great Britain in 1994. These are cameras that acquire and
pass on vehicle license plates automatically. These systems form the
Ring of
Steel
around London: no single car can enter or leave London without being
reported immediately. These activities had originally been motivated by the
tracking down of Northern Irish terrorists. The telephone surveillance in the
EU is said to be on account of crime prevention.
Great Britain seems to be at the front when it comes to the surveillance of
individuals. Statistics have it that every Londoner is acquired and stored in 300
cameras per day on average. So-called stroboscopic cameras (like the Danish
Jai
camera, for example) can acquire several hundred faces in a few seconds.
Though face recognition is still relatively flawed, it will perhaps help to filter
suspect persons in a crowded stadium much faster than humans could in the
future. NeuroMetric, a firm based in Florida, says it can compare 20 faces
against a database with 50 million records per second. Luckily, there is still
a big gap between wish and reality: the error rate in face recognition in an
outdoor area can be 50 %.
Another characteristic that could be used for identification is the human gait,
as we know from the section on biometrics. Already today, microphones can
be integrated in chips, directional microphones can listen in on conversations
from a distance of hundreds of meters, and relatively cheap laser microphones
can make you understand conversations behind window panes from several
kilometers away. Does anything remain private?
Almost nothing. However, the methods mentioned last show only what can be
achieved using
unlawful
means. One has to know them, because data privacy
isn't as well protected in all countries as it is in Germany. If you take a connecting
flight at London Heathrow airport, your face is likely to be stored, and who knows
where it will land next? Data privacy at home won't help you much there.
But
lawful
means also help to continually create better and better profiles,
because the data track we leave behind grows continually wider. Whether you
