Surveillance

Plans are underway to ensure every person using Toronto's transit system will be photographed as of next June.

The Toronto Sun reports as many as 12,000 mini-cameras are being installed on every bus, streetcar, subway car and at each station.

The cameras will snap photos of each of the 1.5 million people who ride the TTC daily.

If requested, transit authorities will make the images available to police, but only as a crime-busting tool.

The remote-controlled cameras cost $18 million, about one-third paid for by the federal government.

Cradle-to-grave 'registration processes' draw comparisons to secret police

Privacy advocates have slammed government moves to merge the U.K.'s General Register Office, which oversees the registration of births and deaths, into the nation's Identity and Passport Service.

IPS chief executive James Hall said the move would "allow us to explore the possibility of integrating passport, identity card and life event registration processes."

IT is a chilling, dystopian account of what Britain will look like 10 years from now: a world in which Fortress Britain uses fleets of tiny spy-planes to watch its citizens, of Minority Report-style pre-emptive justice, of an underclass trapped in sink-estate ghettos under constant state surveillance, of worker drones forced to take on the lifestyle and values of the mega-corporation they work for, and of the super-rich hiding out in gated communities constantly monitored by cameras and private security guards.

Trafficmaster's SmartNav package uses kit fitted in users' cars and a call/data centre. The car is linked to TrafficMaster by GPRS (and a voice channel for the driver). Drivers can call in to TrafficMaster and ask for a route plan from the call centre; the call centre has real-time traffic data as well as ordinary mapping and locations.

Instructions are delivered by a dashboard speaker or optional screen. The car system has GPS satellite nav, and tells TrafficMaster where it goes in real time.

TrafficMaster sells the info in bulk to the Department for Transport.

From surveillance cameras to data pirating, every bit of life is scanned and stored to meet economic and political agendas. Until awareness is heightened and proper legislation put in place, our right to privacy will continue to be violated, said privacy activists at the Privacy Rights in a World under Surveillance conference held last weekend at Montreal’s Sheraton Centre.