Devil's Advocate: Electronic tagging for the innocent

Martin Brampton is a student of smartcard technology but has everyone considered its full implications? He thinks not.

Recently (last week - http://www.silicon.com/a53853 ) we were reviewing the idea of giving everyone a standard smartcard. Government and business could link all kinds of personal information to your smartcard. Naturally, this is an entirely selfless exercise, purely for the sake of providing you with better services. Or could it be part of the erosion of our right to be private citizens?

One reader took the optimistic view and suggested that despite the advocacy of the e-envoy, citizens would rise up in protest against the imposition of a personal silicon chip. I liked his faith in people's belief that "we are not all little machines with our lives condensed into a few numbers on a non-secure chip". But I'm not sure I share his optimism.

Perhaps I am paranoid. There is a large hotel in the leafier parts of Berkshire that provides a venue for rather select conferences. I've been to one or two. As you approach the hotel along its winding drive, a large electronic sign welcomes you, indicating that you have been recognised by citing the registration number of your car. I find this quite unnerving. It makes it so obvious that I am deluding myself when I imagine that we can go where we want and only make our presence known when we choose. Next time, I must make a point of going on my motorbike - that should fool the system if it is dependent on front number plates.

When reader Simon Davis commented, his remarks were calculated to feed my paranoia. Beyond the obvious suggestion that smartcards would constitute a form of identity card, he indicated the next step would be to introduce technology to read the card from a distance. If a number of 'public' places, such as shops or offices, require the card to be carried, life would be severely restricted if one declined the opportunity of a personal smartcard.

Adding a sprinkling of card readers in public places would provide the authorities with the exact location of each individual whenever they moved about. There is something familiar about this situation. It is rapidly becoming a popular way to treat convicted criminals, in which case it is called electronic tagging. So it seems as if we are all to be treated as criminals without having to commit any offence or appear in any court.

The optimists hope that there would be such a public outcry against privacy intrusions that government would be deterred. But much of this is happening already. Many people, both criminals and upright citizens, carry mobile phones. Even with current models, whenever the phone is switched on, its approximate location is known to the phone company. If the mobile operators can ever afford to launch 3G services, extremely precise positioning will be possible.

Again, the optimists think of the supposedly beneficial implications of 3G positioning, such as the possibility of sending SMS messages urging mobile users to call in at the restaurant just round the corner. Government has other ideas. Already it has put forward legislation to insist the phone companies keep detailed records and make them available to the police and security services.

I suppose we might have to tolerate that if it were sensibly controlled. Yet the proposals are for snooping with no recourse to anyone except a commission that sits in private and has no requirement to justify its decisions. Moreover, the right to snoop is not being confined to the police. It is extended to a whole host of government functionaries, private companies and local authorities.

Is there an outcry from the public? The small number of pressure groups that advocate civil liberties have protested but in general both press and public have apathetically accepted the proposals. Evidently people either feel impotent or are willing to give up their civil liberties. I'm worried.

** Martin Brampton is a director and founder of Black Sheep Research (www.black-sheep-research.co.uk ), an independent consultancy providing research, writing and speaking services on a wide range of business and technology subjects. Martin was previously a director at Bloor Research, and has worked with IT as a user and analyst for over 20 years. He is a frequent contributor to silicon.com's Behind the Headlines TV programme and can be contacted at silicon@black-sheep-research.co.uk .