FC: Brad Templeton on surveillance column: "P-Day" is already here?

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2003 14:07:28 -0800
From: Brad Templeton <brad () templetons com>
To: declan () well com
Subject: Re: George Orwell, here we come
References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030106135535.02cb80a8 () mail eff org>
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.




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