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Posted on 10 Nov 2009 at 12:53

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The next generation

While the technology currently fuelling the geolocation debate requires consumers to use gadgets and kit that we have to enable, the next wave could have more sinister, Orwellian undertones.

Employers and authorities are considering a much more personal approach, practically barcoding people to see where they are, how and when they move and who they come into contact with. It may sound like a control freak's dream, but the technology is already ready and able - it's merely the social and ethical concerns that stand in its way.

A project dubbed "the internet of everything" is under way at the University of Washington's computer science department, where students have signed up to a project that tracks both people and objects throughout a huge campus building, mapping them on a web browser that everyone can see.

The project's organisers issued RFID tags to volunteer students and lecturers, and also attached them to items such as keys and laptops. These people and objects were then tracked though a network of 200 RFID readers spread throughout the building.

"We have been looking at simple apps to find friends or lost objects and that went fairly well, although usage dropped off when people got more familiar with the software and it was no longer a novelty," says Even Wellbourne, a lecturer involved with the project. "But now we have improved the software so people can look at where they've been - and ask "How often have I used the stairs instead of the lift?" - and compare their activities to their friends.

"The key to getting people to use the technology is setting rules about who can see you and when. It might be that my boss can only see me when I'm in my office, or it might be that only people working on the same project can see me during lunchtime, but people need control to feel comfortable with the system."

According to the researchers, the amount of concern over privacy depended very much upon who was able to access the data. "On a scale of one to five, when it was friends they were not concerned about privacy," says Wellbourne. "When asked about how concerned they'd be about an employer seeing that data, the rating shot up to 3.7. When asked how concerned they'd be about the government, that shot up to five out of five."

The concept of being monitored around the workplace or wider environments using RFID tags might seem far-fetched, but there are already 17 million people in Britain carrying just such a device. Londoners use Oyster cards to access buses, trains and tubes in the capital. The information of their movement is logged to enable the transport authorities to apply the right charges to the cards. Transport for London says this information is confidential, but the details are stored on the company's database each time a passenger passes through a turnstile, and are available for the police to access.

The natural extension of this is the inclusion of similar technology in the government's proposed ID cards, and strategically placed readers to capture the location and date-stamp data of anyone carrying a card.

"It has always been part of the card's design to facilitate 'contactless' operation using EPC/RFID chips," said a spokesperson for privacy campaign group No2ID. "The cards will not contain the audit trail that will be on the register, so the cards could not leak information about where citizens had been, but the various RFID card encryptions currently available have been hacked. Any new system could, given time, money and skills, also be cracked."