ICO slaps TfL over Oyster data hoard

Paranoid?

The genuinely paranoid adult will buy a ticket.

"Anonymous" Oyster card swipes in. CCTV (as seen surveying the turnstiles at every tube station) takes pic and the system links the two*. There's your alleged anonymity down the crapper.

The usual Oyster, "we know what you are / were / will be doing" process can then proceed as normal.

*The necessary pinning a name to the face stuff is left as an exercise for government surveillance nazis. Of course, a central database of everyone's facial biometrics would be really helpful here........

Creeping database generation

Whats the betting that the RIPA will allow govt departments to copy the TfL data into the ID-card database, or councils to track whether you live in the right cachement area or ....?

Slowly but surely, small changes are creating the ID card database by stealth. This is of course far far more insecure, fragmented and disorganized than the original proposal.

Mind you, thats probably a good thing. If its insecure, disorganized and scattered around 100 depts, companies and quangos, it'll be so obviously useless that even David Blunkett would have to admit it.

Travelling 2 stops . . . .

It is even better when a bunch of them get on the bus, taking a couple of minutes then get off at the next stop, with the bus probably having taken longer to get there than what it would have done if they walked.

Do not see why they should get free bus travel 24/7 anyway. Give it to them to get to and from school (say 7am till 5pm). They should not be travelling for free at 11pm

Kids

"They should not be travelling for free at 11pm"

No - they should be in bed by then especially on a school night. I don't know, what's society coming to letting the terror kidz travel wherever they want to go.

Paris - cos she knows when get off

Noone seems to be mentioning...

"We take data protection extremely seriously and information is not passed onto third parties except the company which makes the cards..."

Why does the card manufacturer need to know anything about the travellers? Tfl MAY (i don't think so!) but the card maker doesn't need to know names addresses etc to make the cards. Clearly a breach of the DP Act as the data is being shared when it doesn't need to be.

The real danger

The real danger is in a bit of data that many will think innocuous. It's the kid's birthdate. If a paedophile gains access to that and the rest (for a kid under 10) he can turn up at the kid's school or tube station with a present, and convince the kid that he (almost certainly he) is an uncle or family friend that the kid has forgotten since last year.

And it's the only bit of data that they can't justify for dealing with unruly or worse behaviour on the tubes and buses. Yes, they should purge or anonymize the travel history after a week or two (if the police haven't needed it by then, they won't). But the birthday is the most dangerous and unnecessary datum. "Age at time of application" would suffice., if they need to know if the kid is six or sixteen.

If I were a parent I'd get the birthday wrong on purpose whenever it's asked for.

Laughable idea

Hmm how hard will it be for Ratboy or other feral children to get a photocard? Pull a knife on some school kid and take theirs instead. Immediately the excuse for forcing ID cards on the public (to protect you from antisocial behaviour) is invalid since the antisocical won't apply for or keep their own cards.

What ever happened to ..... ????

It used to be the case that you paid your money .. you got your ticket and you travelled from A to B. Now we have to be profiled, traceable objects that can be scrutinised and measured. It's an insidious culture ... and this is the thin end of the wedge.

I think the next time I pay for transport .. it will be a one way ticket out of this paranoid dump of a country.

smelly stuff

"your credit card company passes all your data up to a credit card manufracturer (usually in the far North of Norway BTW)."

Aye... and I bet a pound to a pinch of that smelly brown stuff, they don't copy your details onto a CD then bung it in the post to instantly become "lost"...

I never really understood any need to be posting CD's, when secure FTP is cheap as chips, and potentially quicker, too.

Mind your blood pressure there dangermouse!

You're in danger of becoming that which you profess to detest!

Information sharing

When you get hold of a form, sadly not available for download, and read the small print, you will find that your and your child's details will not only be shared with those immediately concerned with running the system, but also with the Metropolitan Police (and your local force if living outside of London). This is to make sure they haven't been in trouble with the police - you don't get free travel if you have been naughty.

Also, I have heard of someone who registered their child with Oyster using the child's registered name, a name used nowhere else. On their 16th birthday they started receiving junk mail. There's only one place the details could have come from.

The Price of Liberty

The price of keeping your travel activity away from easy scrutiny is to pay cash for your ticket. For those people outside of London that is twice the price of the Oystercard fare.

If you wish to protect your children it costs even more.

This data should only be used for the purpose for which it is gathered, i.e. To let the kids have free travel on London Transport. Any official who releases that data for other purposes, unless personally authorised in writing by the Home Secretary, should be sent to prison for a couple of years.

@travelling two stops

Do not see why they should get free bus travel 24/7 anyway. Give it to them to get to and from school (say 7am till 5pm). "

Ok, I know I'm just a dumb merkin here, but when my kids are in school,

they're there from morning to afternoon and nowhere in between. Why would the local delights need free bus from morning to night if they only ride TO school in the morning and FROM school at night? What am I missing here?

@RotaCyclic - Not quite accurate

- "Haven't people noticed that under Livingston there's been a drive to push as many people into taking up Oyster, by making it much cheaper than tickets."

I think it's more accurate to say that they have made cash prices ludicrous, just to make Oyster viable.

Oyster card prices have risen with inflation -- cash ticket prices (for buses) rose 120% in the space of a couple of years (and even more for Tube I think.