Hacker News Reader

Comment by jruohonen | Hacker News Reader

Same here with the city's local transport system. Ironically, they've pretty much also forced everyone without a car or a bicycle to use their mobile [surveillance] app, so you are pretty much [presumably unlawfully] forced to disclose your personal data in order to go to work. The only alternative is an old-fashioned credit card -style thing, but even that requires you disclosing your real identity for who knows what reason.

Ironically, when you visit Central Europe, for instance, you can use similar transport services just fine with cash. Furthermore, the city's mobile app hasn't really done anything for the tax payers; in fact, the fees have only increased. But I'm sure someone somewhere benefits from the personal data collected.

A cross-reference:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38013750

View on HN

You can use them with cash but why would you go through all those hoops? Better fix the personal data creep and illegal surveillance at the source, I'd say, then we can all benefit from good travel system planning and all those wins which big data promised us - while mostly delivering more ads instead.

We should really just stick to anonymous stored value cards that can be recharged by cash. Forcing anything else is surveillance overreach.

Cash payments aren't the easy win you think they are. The system has to know where the money was paid from and when, at which point you just go back to the CCTV.

Any system that relies on a UID is trackable, it just depends how much legwork you're prepared to put in.

That’s also true of any digital means, and watching CCTV doesn’t scale well. Adding that legwork is precisely why cash is a win

China has proven that no one needs to "watch" CCTV, because the system will automatically identify everyone in the camera frame.

That still requires more resources than mobile app tracking, and it's easier for people to disguise themselves against a camera rather than mobile app tracking, so mobile app tracking is the greater current threat.

But CCTV identification will improve and it will be harder to fool, so I don't want that either.

As so many people here bash and misunderstand the GDPR, I can tell you why. I leave the surveillance out.

What I man by (probably) unlawful is not that they wouldn't have the right to collect that data due to public interests. And I am sure many locals wouldn't bother sharing their data with the city if it helps to improve its and hence theirs transport system (like it probably does). But you'd have to reverse engineer the app to see whether the data goes also to ad-tech and who knows who else. That's one thing.

And also a telecom has the data due to different obligations. But they also do business with it. That's the second thing. Also the smartphone manufacturer probably has it, and that's the third interesting thing.

But, now, under the GDPR, none of them "own" the data because it is your personal data. With this point, please also stop using the term PII. This covers anything and pretty much everything; like the author, I am interested in the geolocation data but I'm sure there's a lot more interesting stuff.

Then, under the GDPR---because it is your personal data and it "belongs" (for a lack of a better term) to you---you'd want to exercise the many rights granted to you by the laws, the GDPR and the Charter. Particularly, you'd want to exercise your rights to have your personal data and transfer it to another system in a portable manner. In fact, you want it real-time through a 24h API because it is your fundamental right.

Then, assuming you have your personal data from the city, from the telecom, and from the smartphone manufacturer, you can compete with them, do AI/ML with your personal data, do crowd-sourced science with others, do open data with open source, donate it to your favorite city in Europe or even the EU, or, hell, even sell your personal data if you want to.

That's why I wrote unlawful (probably).

What a hopeless ideal. You don't have any control over personal data when the law assigns ownership to you.

The law assigns personal ownership of your data, to control you.

The farcical idea that some law will allow the individual to reverse decades of progress towards electronic identity systems (even for themselves) is a joke.

It's over for the British, the culture won. You cannot oppose cultural movements anymore, because they happen behind a computer screen. Britian is dead.

What? No state owns me.

Who said a state does own you?

You can't say no to electronics. The cat behind the curtain could be anybody. A state, a corporation, a theocracy, ect.

Xi Jin Ping (or a Jihadist) could hypothetically set all the electronic rules in the UK and nobody would know the difference.

When a cultural revolution happens behind the electronic curtain, your conscience can't know it, or oppose it.

Severing control of one's behaviour, from the individual conscience and placing it in the hands of electronics.

Brings into existence total cultural control of Britian, without the ability for individuals to oppose it or understand it.

Our world used to run on written agreements and Kantian-esque moral emotions with Duty. None of that matters or has any influence over an electronic life. All that matters is the will, so told by the unseen electronic controllers.

Britian is dead and Britian is not allowed to know it.

Given the ubiquity of cameras and how optimized face recognition has gotten over time, this is mostly pointless at this time. You will be tracked unless you really pull a major disguise every time you go out.

> Ironically, they've pretty much also forced everyone without a car or a bicycle t

In many cities across the Western world, and even here in Eastern Europe, it has become impossible to "hide" your movements by car inside big cities because of the authorities forcing mobile parking apps down people's throats. In other words it has become almost impossible to pay for parking by cash, anonymously, to a machine installed at the side of street, you have to pay via those mobile apps (or through SMS, which is basically the same thing).

London hardly needs to track you with parking apps. Ubiquitous ANPR cameras will instantly flag up any vehicles of interest. If you want to drive into the city to do something naughty, better swap license plates!

Flowdan - Welcome to London

They got Oysters, they’re not just seafood

So the boy-dem can follow and see you

> The only alternative is an old-fashioned credit card -style thing, but even that requires you disclosing your real identity for who knows what reason.

Oh bullshit. You can buy and use an oyster card anonymously. I do. Stop spreading FUD.

Me too, but I wonder for how much longer ...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com