Jack Straw' View

[Owen Lewis]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roland Perry" <roland@linx.net>
To: <ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk>
Sent: 04 July 2000 14:49
Subject: Re: Jack Straw' View


> In article <003b01bfe5b8$5322dc80$3e0a989e@eloka>, Owen Lewis
> <oml@eloka.demon.co.uk> writes
> >Traffic analysis is traffic analysis. Be it electronic messages,
> >vehicles on motorways or persons in a shopping precinct, there is no
reason,
> >it seems to me, to think any one of these to be more unfair or intrusive
on
> >privacy than the other.
>
> I've always wondered about car number-plates. Do they pass the test of
> specificity? Surely the fact they are attached to all cars, irrespective
> of whether the driver is under (even self-certified) surveillance, means
> that the movements of millions of innocent citizens are being monitored.

That's about right, I think. The early systems either could not read numbers
or made an indifferent job of it. Systems now coming into service can read
and log all numbers passing, allowing the movement of a known target to be
monitored in real time or to alert to any number of a 'wanted' or 'watch'
list. As a retrospective operation, it should be become possible to
reconstruct the movements of any vehicle in a particular time period it
these systems are deployed universally.


Owen Lewis