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March 28, 2006
Amusement park or testing ground for a total surveillance state?
This just in from RFID Update:
Computing reports that the Alton Towers theme park in Staffordshire, England, will roll out a new service for guests that incorporates RFID with souvenir DVDs. Guests wear RFID bracelets during their day, while cameras located at strategic points throughout the park snap pictures of them. The pictures are identified by the RFID information such that when guests leave the park at the end of the day, a DVD with up to thirty minutes of personalized and stock photos is available for sale. The system will go into production next spring, according to the article. (For another RFID wristband tourism application, see Friday's article RFID Goes to the Poconos.)Source: http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2152579/alton-towers-visitors-set-rfid
According to the article, Andy Davies, commercial services director at Alton Towers, believes visitors will not be overly concerned about the invasion of privacy implications of wearing the bracelets.
"We will not force the bracelets onto people and the cameras will be unobtrusive, so they will not feel like they are being watched," he said.
But of course they are being watched. Closely.
And photographed.
That's the "beauty" of RFID's power -- if you're one of the watchers.
You can identify and track people everywhere they go, closely monitoring and photographing their every move -- secretly, silently, and invislbly.
Will you be stupid enough to wear one of these wristbands? Or to have an equivalent RFID device embedded in your shirt, shoes or driver's license? They could be there already for all we know.
The industry's sure working hard to keep us from finding out.
- Katherine Albrecht
Posted by Katherine Albrecht at March 28, 2006 10:38 PM
Comments
Would you actually visit the park without wearing the bracelet? Don't you think that the hidden cameras are just as creepy?
Posted by: Noid at March 29, 2006 12:32 AM