Police want travel card data to track suspicious rail passengers. How much is our privacy under threat?

[joebassman]

Suppose it's like civilisation. Hard to describe, but you know it when you see it.

5 years ago I would have said it was blantently obvious. Now days, I'm not so sure with some of the things that come out.

It still doesn't answer why they need to specifically mention bloke stare. Seems a bit of an outdated stero type now. Sexual predators come in all shapes, sizes and gender. For example I'm sure a shy 16 year old boy would feel intimidated if he was being leered at by a middle age woman.

Would someone share the link to the northern poster discussion thread, please?

I couldn't find it.

 

[MikeWM]

I wonder if the same oldies like the Tesco Clubcard vouchers - they are generated by monitored data on your shopping behaviours.

Something an individual is entirely at liberty to choose to use, or not, for any individual transaction (as I do for what it's worth, I do have a clubcard, sometimes I use it, sometimes I don't). And there is actually a benefit to the user to using it, so each individual can determine whether that benefit is worth the value and/or risk of their data being stored.

I actually can't believe we're back to discussing Tesco Clubcards, this is like the debates about ID cards 15 years ago, where that comparison kept on being brought up. They are completely different things.

How do they feel about CCTV cameras on the bus or tube or in the bank? etc etc etc.

I'm not an 'oldie' quite yet, but I'm uncomfortable with it personally, and this is something else that has irritated me for a very long time indeed. Life proceeded perfectly well before billions of CCTV cameras were dotted around every public and private space, and it would do so now if they were all removed again. The fact we're inches away from face recognition CCTV being rolled out pretty much everywhere ought to make everyone uncomfortable.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not an 'oldie' quite yet, but I'm uncomfortable with it personally, and this is something else that has irritated me for a very long time indeed. Life proceeded perfectly well before billions of CCTV cameras were dotted around every public and private space, and it would do so now if they were all removed again. The fact we're inches away from face recognition CCTV being rolled out pretty much everywhere ought to make everyone uncomfortable.

Face recognition CCTV is a massive concern to me, as is audio CCTV which should, other than bodycams where it's switched on manually for a specific interaction, be outright banned.

 

[joebassman]

I thought this was an interesting perspective about it here by a 20 year old female.

Are you staring comfortably? | Lois McLatchie | The Critic Magazine

There are eyes on public transport in London now. Quite literally, eyeballs, printed on a poster from the British Transport Police. This pair of eyes call on passengers to report anyone who might be…

thecritic.co.uk

 

[Runningaround]

this makes no sense. What are you talking about?

OBVIOUSLY, club card vouchers are not monitored by the police but they are monitored very closely by Tesco who are a private company! Everyone seems happy to let Tesco ( and thier associates) know a great deal about about thier lives, monitor and use that data to retain custom and extract more money from your wallet. There doesn't seem to be much pushback on this. Commercial operations like Tesco know more about you than you do and use that data to control your spending habits. But hey, £5 off when you spend £50!

Yet the police potentially having access to your travel card data is the onset of the Stasi!

While they post on the internet connected to wifi broadband and such without any worry the same device is tracking their day.

 

[Davester50]

Face recognition CCTV is a massive concern to me,

It's not just facial. China has mood detecting facial recognition.
Panorama edition was on last year showing the Uighur's being subjected to it.

I thought this was an interesting perspective about it here by a 20 year old female.

Are you staring comfortably? | Lois McLatchie | The Critic Magazine

There are eyes on public transport in London now. Quite literally, eyeballs, printed on a poster from the British Transport Police. This pair of eyes call on passengers to report anyone who might be…

thecritic.co.uk

There's a few published articles in the Critic showing repeated Police over-step with data.
I'm surprised the Metro Rush-hour Crush hasn't been vilified yet. I give it 18 months.

 

[Islineclear3_1]

I thought this was an interesting perspective about it here by a 20 year old female.

Are you staring comfortably? | Lois McLatchie | The Critic Magazine

There are eyes on public transport in London now. Quite literally, eyeballs, printed on a poster from the British Transport Police. This pair of eyes call on passengers to report anyone who might be…

thecritic.co.uk

Yup, the Thought Police are coming...

 

[Bensonby]

I’m a police officer and I have been mulling this over all day thinking about what my position on this is. I like data, on a professional level the more information I can have can make me more effective in my role and, believe it or not, the ways the police use data aren’t as sophisticated or as ubiquitous as they should be.

However, I’ve come down on the side that I’m against the idea, as I just don’t think it would add much value to the intelligence picture around criminality and that limiter value wouldn’t outweigh the legitimate Article 8 concerns (Article 8 of the Human Rights Act - right to privacy).

There are all sorts of reasons why someone acting lawfully may not want someone knowing where they were going or why: medical reasons, private family reasons, conducting an affair(!), not to mention that lawful business is generally no-ones business but your own.

There are already mechanisms to obtain oyster/smart card data if there is suspicion of a crime. It is straightforward and there is no need for a warrant - it’s covered under the Data Protection Act as an exemption under that Act. I’ve done it several times when I’ve had grounds to suspect a specific person of criminality.

What would this carte Blanche “monitoring” achieve? I find it hard to believe that any travel pattern would trigger genuine suspicion of a crime as the first piece of single-strand intelligence which would then lead to a fully-fledged investigation. It may corroborate existing intelligence, but that existing intelligence should prompt the request for ticket data. I just can’t see how it would realistically happen the other way around. It should be the other way around: suspicion which is corroborated or alleviated by ticket data.

I thought this was an interesting perspective about it here by a 20 year old female.

Are you staring comfortably? | Lois McLatchie | The Critic Magazine

There are eyes on public transport in London now. Quite literally, eyeballs, printed on a poster from the British Transport Police. This pair of eyes call on passengers to report anyone who might be…

thecritic.co.uk

I thought this when I first saw these posters. How on Earth can you prove an offence by someone “staring” absent any other behaviour?

This is where the police have been going wrong in recent years: trying to influence society and behaviour rather than purely concentrating on what is specifically unlawful. It’s mission-creep linked to an ever expanding interpretation of “prevention” and “safeguarding”. This mission creep has not, as far as I can see, ever really been subject to democratic, political, journalistic, or (much) legal scrutiny. There are fundamental issues with the police regarding what they are actually for. What do we pay them to do? It’s a simple question without a simple answer - it was last looked at “in the round” in 1962 in the last Royal Commission. We are well overdue another one.

 

[the sniper]

I'm not an 'oldie' quite yet, but I'm uncomfortable with it personally, and this is something else that has irritated me for a very long time indeed. Life proceeded perfectly well before billions of CCTV cameras were dotted around every public and private space, and it would do so now if they were all removed again. The fact we're inches away from face recognition CCTV being rolled out pretty much everywhere ought to make everyone uncomfortable.

You'd be glad of it if you were a victim of crime and CCTV provided the only worthwhile leads/evidence...

 

[Bletchleyite]

You'd be glad of it if you were a victim of crime and CCTV provided the only worthwhile leads/evidence...

What is that thing about "he who gives up liberty for safety deserves neither"?

Personally I prefer to be less safe than to have an Orwellian approach to surveillance. Face recognition and audio CCTV are both one step too far for me.

 

[Busaholic]

This may be a generalisation, but I note some contributors to this thread who were exceedingly exercised by having their freedoms limited, or taken away altogether, by lockdowns and compulsory mask wearing finding these proposals okay. Logic is obviously not their strong point!

I shop in Tesco primarily as it's often cheaper when buying goods with Clubcard, but I never used Clubcard vouchers, which weren't worth bothering with in my estimation, and it's now been months since I was sent any.

 

[Towers]

What is that thing about "he who gives up liberty for safety deserves neither"?

Personally I prefer to be less safe than to have an Orwellian approach to surveillance. Face recognition and audio CCTV are both one step too far for me.

Indeed. Both are, quite frankly, utterly abhorrent suggestions. Both will, quite obviously, be along shortly regardless.

 

[Busaholic]

Indeed. Both are, quite frankly, utterly abhorrent suggestions. Both will, quite obviously, be along shortly regardless.

I've long believed the British Transport Police should be abolished, together with the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, and these latest 'ideas' add fuel to the fire.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I've long believed the British Transport Police should be abolished, together with the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, and these latest 'ideas' add fuel to the fire.

The CNC aren't really of much concern unless you go knocking around nuclear power stations.

The BTP...have you seen the alternative - the Met, say?

 

[Davester50]

The CNC aren't really of much concern unless you go knocking around nuclear power stations.

The BTP...have you seen the alternative - the Met, say?

The alternative are civil police forces all over GB. After the recent climbdown in Scotland to amalgamate, I'm happy they're still a specialised force.

 

[Basil Jet]

Suppose it's like civilisation. Hard to describe, but you know it when you see it.

They say there's one pervy bloke in every situation, but I've never noticed one. Oh..

 

[the sniper]

What is that thing about "he who gives up liberty for safety deserves neither"?

Personally I prefer to be less safe than to have an Orwellian approach to surveillance. Face recognition and audio CCTV are both one step too far for me.

I've known people get battered/robbed out of view of CCTV and be very disappointed that big brother wasn't watching and there was little prospect of the offender being identified/caught, I'm not sure that they'd have took much consolation from knowing the liberty they happened to be enjoying in those moments!

Mike seemed to have an issue with current CCTV. I'd agree though face recognition and audio CCTV are far more questionable. The majority of people are probably giving far more away freely through their phones to foreign corporations/governments without a care in the world though...

I've long believed the British Transport Police should be abolished, together with the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, and these latest 'ideas' add fuel to the fire.

Ever dealt with the locals on the railway? I think some people might be too based in ideology over real world experience.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The alternative are civil police forces all over GB. After the recent climbdown in Scotland to amalgamate, I'm happy they're still a specialised force.

Yes, I know - the point I was making was that the Met have proven (publically, I'm not making up allegations) to be far more "rotten" than the BTP chief, who would *of course* ask for stuff that makes their job easier, but should simply be refused it.

Mike seemed to have an issue with current CCTV. I'd agree though face recognition and audio CCTV are far more questionable. The majority of people are probably giving far more away freely through their phones to foreign corporations/governments without a care in the world though...

Ah. I don't have a particular issue with video-only CCTV in public places where one would have no expectation of privacy, nor with audio recording of specific interactions only (e.g. bodycams where it's switched on manually for an interaction, or ticket office windows and the likes) which is only analogous to overtly recording a phone call having said you are going to.

My biggest CCTV concern is the widespread use of it in domestic properties where it's very rarely set up properly and often does stuff like look in peoples' windows with no checks and balances nor realistic way to do anything about it, and often records the conversations of those passing by rather than only turning on audio recording when the doorbell is pressed.

However, I'm very strongly opposed to the use of facial recognition in CCTV and think this should be outright banned in law.

 

[Islineclear3_1]

The Met police need to get their own house in order before embarking on mass surveillance for the mere sake of gathering data.

I know not all policemen are rotten but how many of the Met have been convicted of rape or attempted rape in recent times (and thought they would get away with it)?

 

[Davester50]

Yes, I know - the point I was making was that the Met have proven (publically, I'm not making up allegations) to be far more "rotten" than the BTP chief, who would *of course* ask for stuff that makes their job easier, but should simply be refused it.

I wasn't disagreeing, just showing a more recent, politically motivated attempt to remove the BTP with a failing force.

 

[MikeWM]

If you are that determined not be tracked, or live in fear that much Id be surprised if you leave the house.

I have the rather old-fashioned belief that if I'm not breaking the law, it is no-one's business what I'm doing.

But just think if you are burgled or get your car pinched theirs technology out there to help you get it back.

Clearly I've no objection to a crime being investigated. That's far from the same thing as the logging and analysis of all activities, in the off-chance that some of them are illegal. Or even, as in the original story, 'suspicious', without actually being illegal at all.

 

[yorksrob]

this makes no sense. What are you talking about?

OBVIOUSLY, club card vouchers are not monitored by the police but they are monitored very closely by Tesco who are a private company! Everyone seems happy to let Tesco ( and thier associates) know a great deal about about thier lives, monitor and use that data to retain custom and extract more money from your wallet. There doesn't seem to be much pushback on this. Commercial operations like Tesco know more about you than you do and use that data to control your spending habits. But hey, £5 off when you spend £50!

Yet the police potentially having access to your travel card data is the onset of the Stasi!

And I would expect the state to follow some sort of due process to obtain personal data from a private company for the purpose of investigating a crime.

I wouldn't expect it to have carte blanche access to information on how many cans of beans individuals were buying.

 

[the sniper]

I know not all policemen are rotten but how many of the Met have been convicted of rape or attempted rape in recent times (and thought they would get away with it)?

I would think it's less than 0.1% of them, so it is fair to say it's not quite all of them.

While the Met no doubt has issues, I think the perception of it is somewhat skewed by a lack of appreciation for just how big it is and how many people it has to employ. Nearly a quarter of England's Police Officers are in the Met. The more people an organisation employs, the greater the challenges in recruiting/managing them and avoiding society's bad eggs.

 

[Fyldeboy]

If I'm doing nothing illegal it's nothing to do with them.

They need to check and make sure theyre happy that you're not doing anything illegal. Thats their job. There are some bad people out there you know!!!

 

[Bletchleyite]

They need to check and make sure theyre happy that you're not doing anything illegal. Thats their job. There are some bad people out there you know!!!

Population surveillance is not a generally accepted feature of "policing by consent".

 

[DarloRich]

While they post on the internet connected to wifi broadband and such without any worry the same device is tracking their day.

Indeed - and this is kind of my point.

We seem casual about the amount of privacy breaching surveillance we are under on a daily basis. We seem to be up in arms about privacy when the police are involved but casual about giving our most personal details to corporations to exploit for their commercial benefit! We are watched by dozens of CCTV cameras on even the shortest journeys. We pump out our personal and intimate thoughts and details via any number of social media platforms including pictures and videos of our location without thinking. Our personal data is collected, stored, analysed, sliced, diced, traded and manipulated all day ( often without our consent and often outside of this jurisdiction/legal structure) yet the police looking at a database of your travel detail is the thin end of the wedge and the slide to the Orwellian, Stasi led, oppressive state.

I just don't get it. That ship has sailed. How long do you think it would take GCHQ or the Security Service to run a file on you or me? Minutes? Looking at your travel database might reduce that by a millisecond!

 

[deltic]

I struggle to understand some of the comments on this thread. People seem to want the police to catch criminals but do it with one hand behind their back. Intelligence is key to policing and analysing data to spot trends or suspect behaviour is what the police should be doing. The big ticket frauds are usually picked up by data analysis not random checks at stations. Or do we want to spend billions more to ensure there is a police officer on every street corner?

 

[Davester50]

yet the police looking at a database of your travel detail is the thin end of the wedge and the slide to the Orwellian, Stasi led, oppressive state.

We're already there. You only need to look at Miller v College of Policing to see the actions of the police being described as Chilling, and Justice Knowles saying:

Justice Knowles:
In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society.

The police have continued to ignore the ruling.

With regard to this proposal, I have little confidence that this access will not be abused, recent London cases of crime scene photos, and offensive Whats App conversations in the Everard case are not isolated.

Even a domestic flight on BA requires no ID if you do not check luggage. There's little to stop a you travelling on another name.

BA ID Rules
If you are flying solely within the UK, including Northern Ireland, you do not need a passport but we advise that you carry photographic identification with you when travelling, such as your passport or driving licence. This may be requested at certain points in your journey.

Note the may, and not will.

I struggle to understand some of the comments on this thread. People seem to want the police to catch criminals but do it with one hand behind their back.

We live in a free democracy. It's one of the drawbacks.

Intelligence is key to policing and analysing data to spot trends or suspect behaviour is what the police should be doing. The big ticket frauds are usually picked up by data analysis not random checks at stations. Or do we want to spend billions more to ensure there is a police officer on every street corner?

Will you be happy to let the police look routinely at your bank transactions without a warrant, and without suspicion of any unlawful events? I wouldn't.

Article 8 of the HRA gives explicit guidance, such as "personal information about you (including official records, photographs, letters, diaries and medical records) should be kept securely and not shared without your permission, except in certain circumstances".

That's up to TfL to bring it to the attention of the authorities. Not the police to go hunting for.

 

[joebassman]

I was looking at applying for a visa waiver to travel to the states. One of the parts of the form asks what are all the social media platforms you use and what your login user names for these are.

Though it is optional whether you fill it in. Who in their right mind would fill that in?

I’m a police officer and I have been mulling this over all day thinking about what my position on this is. I like data, on a professional level the more information I can have can make me more effective in my role and, believe it or not, the ways the police use data aren’t as sophisticated or as ubiquitous as they should be.

However, I’ve come down on the side that I’m against the idea, as I just don’t think it would add much value to the intelligence picture around criminality and that limiter value wouldn’t outweigh the legitimate Article 8 concerns (Article 8 of the Human Rights Act - right to privacy).

There are all sorts of reasons why someone acting lawfully may not want someone knowing where they were going or why: medical reasons, private family reasons, conducting an affair(!), not to mention that lawful business is generally no-ones business but your own.

There are already mechanisms to obtain oyster/smart card data if there is suspicion of a crime. It is straightforward and there is no need for a warrant - it’s covered under the Data Protection Act as an exemption under that Act. I’ve done it several times when I’ve had grounds to suspect a specific person of criminality.

What would this carte Blanche “monitoring” achieve? I find it hard to believe that any travel pattern would trigger genuine suspicion of a crime as the first piece of single-strand intelligence which would then lead to a fully-fledged investigation. It may corroborate existing intelligence, but that existing intelligence should prompt the request for ticket data. I just can’t see how it would realistically happen the other way around. It should be the other way around: suspicion which is corroborated or alleviated by ticket data.


I thought this when I first saw these posters. How on Earth can you prove an offence by someone “staring” absent any other behaviour?

This is where the police have been going wrong in recent years: trying to influence society and behaviour rather than purely concentrating on what is specifically unlawful. It’s mission-creep linked to an ever expanding interpretation of “prevention” and “safeguarding”. This mission creep has not, as far as I can see, ever really been subject to democratic, political, journalistic, or (much) legal scrutiny. There are fundamental issues with the police regarding what they are actually for. What do we pay them to do? It’s a simple question without a simple answer - it was last looked at “in the round” in 1962 in the last Royal Commission. We are well overdue another one.

The problem is that the brain is not that reliable when perceiving reality and takes a small amount of information and then fills in the blanks. One only has to look at the spinning woman picture to see a demonstration of that. The brain is biased in what it perceives based on previous experiences, events, beliefs, concepts, and ideas so one may think someone is leering at them in a sexual way when in fact they may not even be looking at them. The brain will look for and map out a story based on this so if someone has suffered from negative sexual encounters or assault before they are liable to read and misinterpret a situation that others may see as perfectly innocent.

I agree with what the writer said about autism. I was diagnosed on the autism spectrum and tend to take things as literal. I became extremely anxious when I read the signs on the tube wondering if I would be accused of something and harassed just for making eye contact with someone or if I was looking at the window would someone think I was staring at them. I think I spent most of the journey looking at the ceiling just to reassure myself this would not happen.

I think the government and the police need to decide if they want to continue making the public the enemy as what at times seems to be happening. All this suspicion of the general public is creating resentment and division not only towards the authorities but between individuals. The police need the public as investigations become extremely difficult without the eyes and ears of the public, so if trust is lost then people are not going to help. This is often demonstrated in places such as estates and other areas where there is low trust in the police and it often becomes neigh on impossible to catch criminals there.

The government and police are supposed to be public servants and the clue is in the name, to serve. I know this rarely plays out in reality but the more they give the impression that everyone is suspicious and guilty until proven innocent the more the public will lose trust in them.

 

[MikeWM]

I've known people get battered/robbed out of view of CCTV and be very disappointed that big brother wasn't watching and there was little prospect of the offender being identified/caught, I'm not sure that they'd have took much consolation from knowing the liberty they happened to be enjoying in those moments!

Well, of course. But you could equally say that if I got beaten up after midnight when walking home by a gang of 20-year-olds I'd lament that we don't have a universal curfew of 10pm for under-25s, or similar. We accept that life isn't perfectly safe in exchange for the liberty to go about our business unimpeded. Or at least we did until recently.

Mike seemed to have an issue with current CCTV. I'd agree though face recognition and audio CCTV are far more questionable. The majority of people are probably giving far more away freely through their phones to foreign corporations/governments without a care in the world though...

I don't want to derail the thread into a CCTV debate particularly, because that was a debate I was having 15 years ago and I've accepted I've lost that one and tried to move onto other things that maybe I can have some effect on. But in brief, my issues are:

- Lack of accountability. Who is watching the CCTV and what safeguards are there against abuse?

- Lack of effectiveness. CCTV is all too often used/proposed as an alternative to proper security/policing. A CCTV camera may help find the people who beat me up, but it doesn't stop me being beaten up in the first place.

- As part of the 'slippery slope' we're descending where all routes to conduct your affairs anonymously without being recorded, tracked and logged are being closed, and we're supposed to accept this as 'normal'.

Now CCTV *in current form* is fairly hard to data mine in any straightforward way, so is less concerning than other things in many respects. On that I'll agree. But as we've said, with facial recognition etc., that's about to change.

We seem casual about the amount of privacy breaching surveillance we are under on a daily basis. We seem to be up in arms about privacy when the police are involved but casual about giving our most personal details to corporations to exploit for their commercial benefit! We are watched by dozens of CCTV cameras on even the shortest journeys. We pump out our personal and intimate thoughts and details via any number of social media platforms including pictures and videos of our location without thinking. Our personal data is collected, stored, analysed, sliced, diced, traded and manipulated all day ( often without our consent and often outside of this jurisdiction/legal structure) yet the police looking at a database of your travel detail is the thin end of the wedge and the slide to the Orwellian, Stasi led, oppressive state.

But there are three issues here.

- Firstly some of us are not remotely casual about many of these things at all, and we're already deeply uncomfortable at how far down this path we have gone.

- But secondly the fact we're already a long way down this path isn't itself a reason to object to moves to move us further down it.

- And thirdly there is a big difference between what Tesco or a social media platform know about us, and what sparks the interests of the *police* about us. Tesco knowing I buy lots of cans of Coke every week isn't really a massive issue at this point [1] because what can they realistically do with that information? But coming to the attention of the police can be life-destroying as the police, by definition, have all manner of powers they can use against you.

[1] 'at this point'. If/when this data is shared with the NHS and/or insurers, for example, then maybe that would be something else you would be less keen to provide. Or alternatively when it is shared with the government to work out if you've exceeded your carbon or nitrogen ration for the week, and therefore whether you're allowed to purchase the product at all.

I just don't get it. That ship has sailed. How long do you think it would take GCHQ or the Security Service to run a file on you or me? Minutes? Looking at your travel database might reduce that by a millisecond!

While I find that uncomfortable too, you must appreciate there is quite a difference between actively running a file on a specific person, which will have been triggered by something specific happening of interest, and running data-mining on an entire database and having an algorithm extract from that a collection of people with 'unusual' behaviours.