Cops turn Download Festival into an ORWELLIAN SPY PARADISE As if being ankle deep in a muddy field, surrounded by pretend hippies seemingly re-enacting highlights of the Battle of Waterloo was bad enough, attendees of the aptly named Download Festival will be subjected to a new police facial recognition system, and surveillance of their onsite location and expenditure via the debut of …
"The only way to get around the festival and pay for stuff is to use this system. It’s not possible to opt out of this."
Not a great leap from this to what was always my main concern about a national electronic ID system - the eventuality that a card would be needed for every little transaction.
Why not just stamp people at birth and be done with it.
As alluded to rather wonderfully by David Thewliss' character, Johnny, in Naked:
What can such a specific prophecy mean? What is the mark? Well the mark, Brian, is the barcode, the ubiquitous barcode that you'll find on every bog roll and packet of johnnies and every poxy pork pie, and every fuckin' barcode is divided into two parts by three markers, and those three markers are always represented by the number 6. 6-6-6!"
Aah... now there's a movie to bring a nostalgic tear to the eye....
Of course the Beast will be revealed to be the United States of Europe, and the mark will be a universal ID smart card, without which you will not be able to buy, sell or communicate.
YOU LAUGH NOW BUT WHEN IT ALL GOES TO COCK I SHALL BE THE ONE LAUGHING...
I doubt covering your body in mud would work. But I know what would:
People refusing en masse to go to the festival unless the facial recognition and surveillance is removed. This would instantly end it at that festival. Not sure what the critical mass would need to be to achieve this. A third of people to a half would be my wild estimate. And it wont matter if the tickets are already sold or not, people walking away from it in large numbers would have this effect.
Rock / Alternative types fancy themselves misfits and rebels, do they not? They have a definite and real way they could stick it to the Man if they did this.
Or they can wander around knowing their every movement is being tracked and their faces scanned by cameras. Up to them.
Alternative types are often the most conformist, despite their appearance. Not all are of course, but I suspect most people will waive their right to privacy in this case.
I imagine Glastonbury would face more of a backlash due to it's size and the fact it's sold as being a bit alternative and hippy (despite the fact it isn't any more). Reading and Leeds might go for it, depends on what sort of backlash they got on Tw*tter or F*cebook.
Currently as I type, the tw*tter stream is filled fill starving Download punters as their RFID payment system isn't working. So I guess it's sorted itself out.
because they're short-sighted, and they can't see past their nose. Do they care when using gmail? Do they care about cookies and other tracking? Do we care about the cameras at every corner? Do we care that your movements are tracked as your mobile hops from tower to tower? Do we care that our agencies can track you online and offline with no real oversight? Baaaa... I'd better go back to my job, got a mortage to pay...
"The RFID system was only announced *after* the tickets had already gone on sale.
I'm more than a little ticked off about it all."
I think you might need to encourage lots of your fellow festival goers to go play with a Tesla Coil. That should do the job....
I would not have have bought a ticket for Download Festival if I had known in advance about the cashless system and the level of surveillance that it meant I would have been subject to. I am utterly opposed to any cashless system. And why do I need to be watched while I'm enjoying myself???? I intend to boycott Download in future if they think this is the way forward. I am a peaceful person and resent this intrusion into my life. Get off my back Big Brother, shove your surveillance
When considering a new system that involves money, think not how it would work, but how it could go wrong.
This system is an absolute dream come true for the small-time fraudster and grifter. All they need is a small RFID sniffer, an RFID programmer and a supply of RFID tags that look a bit like the ones the organisers have.
Once in the festival, the grifter gets his RFID sniffer going then goes looking for people who look a bit richer than normal festival goers; designer clothing and so on, and walks past them. His RFID sniffer grabs the codes, which in the privacy of his tent he puts onto some more RFID tags, which he sells to willing stooges to try out. When he finds one that is loaded with cash and is an access-most-areas tag, he duplicates lots of them and sells 'em for lots of cash (cash will of course still be present, so people can buy drugs).
Pretty soon the guy who had his tag sniffed finds he ain't rich any more and the festival organisers want to have a quiet word with him, along with all of his clones...
This is how this system will break, mark my words.
"Both are still optional devices"
Try telling that to some teen. You'll find that these are only optional device to those above a certain age. To anyone younger they are items that are absolutely required unless you want to be laying on the ground with some bigger kid pummelling you.
Sadly that's probably true: I do seem to meet more astonishingly gullible and naive people than ever before. They are often pleasant and intelligent in most ways, but they do seem to regard reality as being of purely academic interest as if they will never have to live there.
They just seem to find it easier to say "yes" to whatever they are told, a bit like innocent people who confess to a crime they haven't committed and think "It will all be sorted out later". But by whom? Not someone like them!
"WTF would anyone even consider attending this any festival with this level of surveillance ever?*
* Genuinely sorry to those who go to festivals, but I have an absolute horror of these things. I cannot understand what the fun is is in standing in a crowd of unwashed, off-their-heads people in the cold and wet whilst someone pisses on your tent. Standing in the cold and wet is only to be done when rally cars are involved :-)
> I cannot understand what the fun is is in standing in a crowd of unwashed, off-their-heads people in the cold and wet whilst someone pisses on your tent.
High chance of getting laid. Then again...
> Standing in the cold and wet is only to be done when rally cars are involved
...what would you know about that?
>:-)
Not exactly accurate... The Panopticon is a system where you COULD be surveilled at any time, but you don't know WHEN you're surveilled.
With this system, and those to come, you know you're ALWAYS being surveilled.
The Panopticon was devised in an era when humans had to do all the surveilling themselves. In that respect, it was actually a much friendlier system (albeit fictional).
well, the whol epoint of secret/ covert cameras is that they are hidden, you can't see them
and the rfid doesn't tell you every time it logs and sends off your location
few years ago they were even caught putting cameras in urinals....supposedly to 'catch' sex offenders of course....
And what's the chances that they'll do the same as the usual 'Points' systems, where by you can only add certain fixed amounts to your account, but purchases won't line up with these amounts so you'll always end up with some unspent that you can't get back.
(For example, see Microsoft Points for Xbox Live, which it seems they're now getting rid of, which is nice)
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