Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!rex!uflorida!gatech!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!abvax!iccgcc!herrickd
From: herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: The end of privacy... and so what comes next?
Message-ID: <4244.2805ba34@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com>
Date: 12 Apr 91 18:46:27 GMT
References: <63473@bbn.BBN.COM> <10777@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <1991Apr1.180311.5557@eff.org> <63565@bbn.BBN.COM> <671217954.20214@mindcraft.com>
Lines: 37

In article <671217954.20214@mindcraft.com>, karish@mindcraft.com (Chuck Karish) writes:
> In article <63565@bbn.BBN.COM> cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes:
>>Is the 'common man' better or worse off if the police can track every
>>movement of every person?  Imagine that you could have "knocker ID"?
>>How about being able to buy an 'intrusion monitor', and in the
>>unfortunate event that your house was burglarized, you could just check
>>the "presence logs" and read out the IDs of every person who set foot
>>on your property.  Would you run to embrace it?
> 
> Would you believe it?  Sounds like another invitation to a
> technological arms race.  For an illustration of some of the
> potential problems, take a look at Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids
> Dream of Electric Sheep?"
> 
Back around September 1990, there were two very interesting notes somewhere
in these news groups, comp.risks maybe.  Then silence.  They were both
about school administrations that had made very interesting beds for
their students to lie in.  How about some followup reports about what
happened.

one was a school with about 3000 students that installed a phone system
that would ask for a four digit pid to bill long distance tolls to the
student placing the call.  Thus making a .30 probability that a randomly
chosen code would put a call on somebody's (somebody else's) bill.

The other was about a dormitory with an intrusion control system that
identified people authorized to enter by reading an id card they were
carrying in their pocket.  A system as well designed as cellular phones
for tracking a person's movements.

So come on, were the systems real?  Have the horror stories happened?
Surely there has been a case or two of toll fraud on the phone system,
even if the prisoner tracking, pardon me, resident identification
system hasn't been seriously abused, yet.

dan herrick
herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com